by Col Barry Mines, AFIT/CESS Dean

Having just returned from a year long deployment to Afghanistan, I was able to see first hand how our student graduates from the AFIT Civil Engineer and Services School were able to put to use the skills they acquired through some of our classes. Deployment lengths vary depending upon the particular job, location, and career field AFSC. During my year as the 455 Expeditionary Mission Support Group Commander, I worked closely with the 455^th Air Expeditionary Wing’s two-person protocol office. Generally the office was run by an officer and an NCO who were on a 120 day deployment. During my year I worked with six individuals in protocol who had all attended the protocol course we offer here at AFIT’s Civil Engineer and Services School. All these individuals performed superbly and implemented the knowledge they gained here at AFIT. One would be amazed at the high number of distinguished visitors a deployed location receives. During my year, we had two different Joint Chiefs of Staff visit, plus several congressional delegations, the Secretary of the Air Force, and numerous general officers and SES equivalents as well. Each itinerary and briefing was personalized to meet both the DV's mission and also to educate them on the mission challenges we experienced as well.

As the senior Air Force Civil Engineer in Afghanistan, I could not have been prouder of the civil engineer community and their huge impact on the mission. I know at one time I searched our personnel database and found at that time there were 72 civil engineer officers (32Es) of various background: electrical, civil, mechanical, and EOD officers performing duty all over Afghanistan. All of these civil engineer officers had at some time received their initial training here at AFIT’s CESS to obtain their civil engineer badge. These civil engineers were performing a wide variety of jobs in Afghanistan. Many of the jobs AF engineers were filling were in-lieu-of (ILO) taskings. The Air Force supplied the largest number of officer engineers to help support the CJ7 staffs of first the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) 82 and then later the CJTF101 when it replaced the 82^nd Airborne Division. Many AF engineers were serving on provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) who were managing construction of roads, bridges, schools, and clinics in remote locations in Afghanistan which was truly having a huge positive impact on the Afghan people. This was probably having more of a positive impact on the Afghan populace than us killing the Taliban. Additionally, AF engineers were highly desired to fill and run facility engineer teams (FETs) which are small public works offices at many of the major operating locations in Afghanistan to manage the construction at these locations, again which was generally to support the Army. In fact another AFIT Instructor, Lt Col Chris West, was running the FET for Bagram Airfield which had the largest presence of US forces and operations in Afghanistan. Our engineers were writing statements of work (SOW) for various projects and managing a close to $70M a year construction program at Bagram Airfield Afghanistan. The students we turn out from AFIT are using their skills all over the world to meet the mission requirements not only for the Air Force but to support the DoD as well.