Francis S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base, Westhampton Beach, N.Y. -- Ninety Airmen from 16 squadrons across the nation sharpened their mission-essential skills during a Home Station Readiness Training (HSRT) event hosted by the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing at Francis S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base, April 7 to 11, 2025.
The week-long training, led by the 106th Force Support Squadron, focused on preparing Airmen for the demands of deployed and contingency environments, as required by the Air Force Instruction, Ready Airman Training.
This directive mandates that Airmen develop and maintain warfighting skill sets, such as food service operations, tent construction, search and recovery, tactical combat casualty care (TCCC), and mortuary affairs—to ensure they are fully prepared to support mission requirements at home station and while deployed.
“HSRT is a mandatory required training that takes place biannually,” said Capt. Douglas Duncan, 106th Force Support Squadron commander and training lead. “We focus on wartime skills, so everything from food operations to tent building to search and recovery.”
This year, the squadron introduced new concepts to further elevate readiness, such as instruction on the military decision-making process and leadership development.
“We did a lot of instruction on the military decision-making process,” Duncan said. “We brought instructors in from other squadrons to give different perspectives on planning, leadership, execution, and troop-leading procedures. More skills that go outside of what the book requires us to know.”
Senior Master Sgt. Leah Fishman, 140th Wing Force Support Squadron senior enlisted leader, Colorado Air National Guard, and HSRT participant, explained the importance of joint training and maintaining readiness.
“We have to make sure that we stay current in our duties and know how to operate in our job in a contingency environment,” Fishman said. “It’s important to train with other units because you get to learn from other people, you get all different levels of experience from the Airman level up to the chief level.”
Throughout the week, Airmen received hands-on training in TCCC, mortuary affairs, search and recovery, and tactical vehicle familiarization.
“The material is important because it drives what these AFSCs do when they're in a contingency environment, when they're in a deployed environment,” said Chief Master Sgt. Neil Allison, 106th Force Support Squadron senior enlisted leader. “As a leadership team, our job is to make sure that our people are ready to deploy, to fight in any contested environment that we may come across.”
Airman 1st Class Bianca Bell, a 106th Services member, described the training as an opportunity to expand on skills learned during initial job training.
“It’s a nice refresher,” Bell said. “We’re going in-depth and actually learning on a more complex level than at tech school. Doing the search and recovery and mortuary affairs training really benefitted me because I didn’t really learn that in tech school, so it was a nice hands-on learning, and really helpful being able to actually use the materials that we would use on a deployment.”
Duncan said the training was a success.
“We have certainly had our bumps in the road, like every training does, but we have a great crew here from the Force Support Squadron, and we’ve been able to get together and overcome every obstacle placed in front of us this week. It’s been an absolutely great week of training,” he said.
The 106th Rescue Wing, based at Francis S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base in Westhampton Beach, New York, operates and maintains the HC-130J Combat King II search and rescue aircraft, and the HH-60W Jolly Green II search and rescue helicopter. The 106th Rescue Wing is home to a special warfare squadron with pararescuemen and combat rescue officers, specializing in rescue and recovery, and deploys for domestic and overseas operations.