

For sixty years, the Air Force had an imperfect but effective Basic Military Training (BMT) process. Disheveled and dissimilar groups of civilians were barked into rough-hewn lines by seemingly rabid Military Training Instructors (MTIs), arms tugged downward by luggage while chins lifted skyward in the bellowing mis-delivered repetitions of reporting statements and other nonsensical things.

MTIs were the focal point of this transformational process. Sharp as razors. Credible. Intimidating. Immaculately and unquestionably professional. They were the best noncommissioned officers (NCOs) from across the Air Force, brought together at Lackland for the privilege of ensuring the service’s newest airmen emerged from indoctrination not as slipshod individuals, but as blue-bleeding teammates possessed of military bearing, attention to detail, and most importantly, the character to serve. The process took six weeks. It fortified the spine of airpower through five hot wars and a cold one.

Then, everything changed.

In 2008, the Air Force lengthened BMT by two weeks to make indoctrination more “martial.” The view at that time was that the service faced an increasingly expeditionary future, with airmen serving alongside fielded soldiers and Marines rather than working from a distance.

It was a weird idea given that the whole point of airpower is relative freedom from surface tethers and the advantage gained by not needing physical presence to win. But no one in a position to challenge the idea really questioned it. Just like that, a formula that worked for six decades was re-written.

The consequences have been grave.

When the Air Force lengthened BMT, it didn’t provide sufficient additional manpower to conduct the more robust course. Immediately, this stretched MTIs thin, making chronically arduous hours and professional fatigue the new norms. The service also cut back on the number of officers it assigned to BMT squadrons in an effort to free up manpower for competing priorities. The net effect of these changes was a new balance in the supervisory system that meant less direct surveillance of MTIs and their activities.

By 2011, just three years after the changes at BMT, Lackland was rocked by a pervasive sexual assault scandal implicating several MTIs. Some had exploited their increased autonomy to sexually victimize psychologically vulnerable trainees.

Now, to be clear, the criminality that occurred at Lackland is the responsibility of the criminal perpetrators, not vague entities such as “the system” or “manpower.” But it’s equally important to recognize that some environments are more conducive to criminality than others. The Air Force believes this, as evinced by efforts to “change the culture” of its organizations in an effort to reduce the incidence of sexual assault. An official investigation into the 2011 Lackland scandal found that the environment created by insufficient manning and supervision emboldened perpetrators and made it easier for them to offend.

In other words, there is the potential for criminality in any organization because we can never eradicate criminal intent from human nature. But whether would-be criminals act on their impulses or suppress them depends to some extent on how we design, man, and operate an organization. Context also matters, and it’s always been understood that a special context like BMT process places trainees at heightened risk of victimization because of the extreme power imbalance built into it.

But rather than embrace this reasoning and return BMT to the sustainable resource model that existed before 2008, which would be akin to admitting contributory culpability for the scandal of 2011, the Air Force has continued careening down the path of experimentation, relying on draconian micromanagement to prevent criminality by brute force rather than achieve it through a proper organizational climate.

The most recent experiment is to once again shorten BMT, but to then chase it with a quasi-BMT “Capstone” week, which borrows its moniker from the mandatory charm school generals attend before pinning on their first stars.

The Air Force explains Capstone thusly:

“During Capstone, trainees are instructed on wingmanship, resiliency, leadership and followership, sexual assault prevention and response, the warrior ethos, and how Airmen can balance their personal and professional lives.