Built for the Line: How Det. 5 Trains C-17 Maintainers
The 373rd Training Squadron Detachment 5 is an education center for most C-17 maintenance courses under Air Education and Training Command. Known as the “Prime Detachment,” the schoolhouse doesn't just run the curriculum, it writes it.
Instructors are currently working on six new courses, aimed at maintainers heading into the “En Route” system, a network that keeps C-17s flying and functioning when they are far from home base.
“Our role is to make sure the Airmen out there on the line are fully prepared for that operational tempo,” said U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Samuel Pankey, Det. 5 integrated avionics instructor.
C-17 avionics depend on specialized test gear, and Det. 5's training devices must closely replicate how those systems respond during hands-on maintenance. The training space mirrors the aircraft's maintenance environment at a level of detail found in only a handful of facilities across the Department of War, and the new En Route courses will use them.
Det. 5 is one of six C-17 field training detachments nationwide, creating a network that continues to train maintainers if one location becomes unavailable.
In the classroom, students learn how C-17 systems work and how to apply the technical information they will rely on in the field.
U.S. Air Force Airman Alyssa Weikel, 373rd Training Squadron crew chief student, entered the training pipeline without experience using tools or working with mechanical systems, which made the course’s early hands-on portions challenging.
As classroom instruction began connecting the theory behind aircraft systems to the work she was performing, those challenges became easier to work through. A lesson on hydraulics and pneumatics marked a turning point.
“After that lesson, I felt a lot more confident answering questions in class,” Weikel said.
That progression from understanding a system to diagnosing it is where the training becomes more demanding. Pankey said maintainers must rely on their own knowledge and experience when a technical order does not provide the full picture.
For students preparing to take those skills to an operational unit, that knowledge also comes with the confidence to apply it independently.
“Confidence is everything in a contested environment,” Weikel said. “Maintenance is dangerous and important, and we have to do tasks alone, so we have to be confident with what we do.”
Pankey has seen where that confidence ends up. Years after coming through Det. 5, he ran into a former student on a temporary duty to Ramstein Air Base, Germany. The student was on the flight line launching a C-17.
“The feeling I got seeing that impact was immeasurable,” Pankey said.
That impact isn’t limited to one unit. Det. 5 trains Active Duty, Reserve, Guard and partner nation maintainers together. Pankey described the alternative as a hundred people building the same fence with no way to check in with each other. Some of those fences would come out wrong.
“By us working with our allied nations and sister units, it keeps everyone on the same page,” he said.
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