Background
Air Assault School qualifies soldiers to conduct airmobile and air assault helicopter operations, to include aircraft orientation, slingload operations, proper rappelling techniques and fast-rope techniques. The school itself is 10 days of rigorous, fast paced training. The high standards of the school require the student to ruck march 12 miles in under three hours the morning of graduation, to be a awarded their wings.
The original school is located at Fort Campbell, Kentucky (home of the 101st Airborne Division). There are also or have been schools at Fort Rucker, Alabama; Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; Fort Hood, Texas; Camp Blanding, Florida; Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Drum, New York; Fort Ord, California, and elsewhere. Instructors at the course are referred to as Air Assault Sergeants. It is open to both males and females. The school is composed of learning helicopter insertion techniques, pathfinder operations, sling load operations as well as repelling from buildings, cliffs and helicopters. Each day begins with rigorous physical training that includes unit runs from two to five miles. Attention to detail and tedious packing lists, the contents of which you carry in a 30 pound ruck sack daily, are also the order of the day; one missing item from these lists or failing any task from any phase of the course, could cause the student to be dropped from the school immediately.
Courses offered at the Air Assault School include: Air Assault, Pathfinder, Pre-Ranger, Rappel Master and Fast Rope Insertion/Extraction (FRIES)/Special Purpose Insertion Extraction (SPIES) Master courses. TSAAS is also home to the Division's Parachute Demonstration Team.
The 101st Airborne Division, a parachute and glider-borne unit that conducted two jumps during World War II, was converted to an Airmobile unit in 1968 in Vietnam, becoming the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile). The parenthetical designation changed to Air Assault in late 1974. The Airborne tab over the unit's Screaming Eagle shoulder patch remains because two of the division's units, the parachute rigger detachment and the pathfinder company, are both still on jump status. Graduation from the Air Assault School is not required to be a Soldier in the 101st, but it is looked upon as an achievement of excellence by the chain of command.
In 1998, a new 34-foot (10 m) tower was completed and Phase Three began to train at this site. On December 17, 1999 the new Sabalauski Air Assault School facility was dedicated and for the first time in several years all phases of instruction are conducted at one facility. Over sixty classes are run annually, training over 8,000 soldiers per year.
Read more about this topic: United States Army Air Assault School
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