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The Guard's Warrior Training Center at Fort Benning, Ga., opened a permanent air assault course in late January.

Attached to the Infantry Center at Ft Benning, the Warrior Training Center was established in April 2004 to help meet the growing training needs of Guard soldiers who regularly deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new air assault course at Benning, is complete with a 60foot rappel tower and obstacle course but it's only a portion of the center's program for training Guard soldiers in helicopter operations.

The team of 13 air assault instructors acts as a mobile training team for Guard units around the country.

The Army's primary air assault schools at Fort Campbell, Ky., and Fort Drum, N.Y., are open to all soldiers — active, Guard and Reserve — but they are not as practical for Guard units.

For what it cost to send about 40 soldiers to Ft Campbell, the Air Assault school training team can fly out to conduct training for an entire unit.

Air assault training is a 10day course that teaches soldiers the art of helicopter warfare. Soldiers learn how to rappel, first off of towers, then out of a helicopter. But the skills they are more likely to use include how to set up landing zones and how to rig equipment to helicopters for transport.

Students learn to "slingload" everything from water buffaloes to howitzers.

The course also includes plenty of physical training such as running, taking on an obstacle course and marching 12 miles.



The training team, which also trains active units, usually trains four National Guard classes of about 210 soldiers each per year.

The cadre report having had as many as 330 soldiers show up and try to get into a course.