Subscribe
MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, Kan. – McConnell is the original home of the KC-46A Pegasus. The KC-46 took its first flight in 2014, and in 2019, the 373rd Training Squadron’s Detachment 8 began to train crew chiefs on the new airframe. It takes a village of Airmen to raise a young aircraft, and it all starts here.
The Mission Ready Airmen (MRA) course is the main class that Detachment 8 offers. This 56-day lesson plan is designed to prepare students for maintaining and supporting the KC-46.
Using a variety of training tools to educate students, detachment cadre provide hands-on experience, even when a KC-46 is not due for repair. One way they accomplish this is through virtual maintenance trainers.
“We take advantage of our resources here at McConnell and work with the host unit to actually be able to put hands on the jet,” said Staff Sgt. Caleb Freeman, 373rd TRS military training leader. “We also have electronic learning platforms where students can virtually walk through the aircraft, but from the classroom.”
With the KC-46 being the newest tanker in town, much of its maintenance and repair is new information, and with that, comes innovation. Detachment 8 consistently paves the path for future maintenance training, which involves the development of augmented hardware trainers. They also help set up field training detachments for the KC-46 at other locations, such as Travis Air Force Base, California, and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, which incorporate interactive digital objects into real-life environments.
While the 373rd TRS impacts the Air Force mission from coast-to-coast, they also lead the way in their role of reviewing contracted curriculum for the Air Education and Training Command, and Air Mobility Command.
“Every 3 years, AETC courses go through a Periodic Course Review,” said Tech. Sgt. Nathaly Docarmo, 373rd TRS Detachment 8 section chief. “This past winter was the first time the MRA course has gone through a PCR. As we are currently the only throughput for KC-46 crew chiefs, our MRA instructors have taken on an enormous role in rewriting the course standard and implementing ‘lessons learned’ in the years following implementation of the course.”
The detachment’s instructors also take their expertise outside of the classroom, and into the hangars. This gives Detachment 8 and the 22nd Air Refueling Wing opportunities to collaborate and fuel mission success for both parties.
“With the KC-46 being a new aircraft, there’s a lot of things getting worked out – things that haven’t happened before,” Freeman said. “Our instructors go over and try to help out with that as much as they can because they’re teaching the aircraft every day, and they are among the first crew chiefs who have worked on the aircraft operationally.”
The 373rd TRS, Detachment 8 is the motherland for all KC-46 crew chiefs, impacting operational readiness for joint forces around the world. Without their teaching, McConnell could not perform its primary mission of world-class aerial refueling.
| Date Taken: | 04.11.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 04.14.2025 14:01 |
| Story ID: | 495138 |
| Location: | MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, KANSAS, US |
| Web Views: | 17 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Detachment 8 – where KC-46 crew chiefs are born, by A1C Patrick ONeill, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
