US Air Force Grey Berets Today

Combat Weather Team (Airborne)

CWT(A) personnel are a small cadre of specially trained United States Air Force Staff Weather Officers (SWOs) tasked with providing tactical meteorological support for conventional Army Airborne forces at several locations world-wide.

The title SWO is held by both officer and enlisted personnel tasked with this duty. Previous and alternate names for this career field are: Battlefield Weather, Combat Weather, Army Support Weather. The scope of support is extremely broad, from mission intelligence to special operations. SWOs are not the same as legacy Special Operations Weather Team (SOWT) members.

Training

SWOs are required to first complete training requirements for all Air Force Weather personnel before attending training specific to SWOs.

Officers

Officers are degreed Meteorologists and must meet the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) basic instruction requirements before entrance into the career field is allowed. After commissioning into the United States Air Force, officers must attend Officer Training School (OTS) at Maxwell AFB, Alabama (Unless ROTC/Air Force Academy cadet program was completed). Following OTS Officers will then attend Weather Officers Course at Keesler AFB, Mississippi.

Enlisted

Enlisted personnel are not required to have a degree, and must only meet specific aptitude test requirements to enter the career field. After enlistment, all members must attend Basic Military Training (BMT) at Lackland AFB, Texas. After BMT, an eight month initial weather skills course is attended at Keesler AFB, Mississippi. Finally, a year of on the job training must be completed before fully qualified.

Staff Weather Officer

After completion of the above training, weather personnel attached to Army units must then complete additional trainings.

Army Weather Support Course (AWSC)

The AWSC at Fort Huachuca, Arizona is meant to better integrate the Air Force personnel into Army units. Here they will learn about the Army’s history, rank structure, organizational structure, and how weather is used in decision making processes. In addition to this course work, combat, land navigation, and other pertinent battlefield skills are taught here.

Evasion and Conduct After Capture (ECAC)

The ECAC course is a training utilized to better prepare military personnel in the event they must evade, or are captured in combat zones.

Additional training

SWOs must complete additional position qualification and combat skills trainings at their respective units and must remain combat mission ready through annual trainings and exercises in order to remain qualified and deployable. Army schools such as Air Assault, Airborne, and Ranger schools are available for attendance, but usually optional.

Further details can be found in Army Regulation 115-10 / Air Force Instruction 15-157, Weather Support and Services for the U.S. Arm

Special Reconnaissance

Mission

Special Reconnaissance (SR) Airmen are special tactics operators with unique training to conduct multi-domain reconnaissance and surveillance across the spectrum of conflict with focus on lethal and non-lethal air-to-ground integration of airpower. They deploy rapidly and undetected by any means, anytime and anywhere to systematically – and with impunity – obtain, transmit, exploit and action time-sensitive information. U.S. Air Force special reconnaissance employs as an element of special tactics teams to prepare the environment, ensure global battlespace awareness, provide global access and affect air, space, cyberspace and information superiority for the successful execution of Joint Force objectives.

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History

The U.S. Army Weather Service originated in 1917 to provide the American Expeditionary Forces with "all the meteorological information needed, and to undertake special investigations in military meteorology and related problems". They first took part in World War I combat operations in France in 1918, within the Army’s Signal Corps.

During World War II, especially trained weather observers, sometimes referred to as guerrilla weathermen, infiltrated behind enemy lines to provide intelligence in support of airstrikes, airlifts, and airdrops. In every conflict since Vietnam, special operations weathermen have participated in the majority of special operations missions, conducting austere environmental reconnaissance operations, and setting conditions critical to the success of follow-on forces.

On May 5, 2008, the Air Force approved to establish a new Air Force Specialty Code for Special Operations Weather Teams (SOWT), formally recognizing the need for a special reconnaissance capability, uniquely trained to conduct weather operations and to collect and analyze environmental reconnaissance. These operators have since been an integral part of Special Tactics able to conduct multi-domain reconnaissance and surveillance across the spectrum of conflict and crisis.

Beginning in 2016, Headquarters Air Force and Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) recognized the need to look critically at the entire formation. Recognition of the Air Force’s challenges in an era of great power competition drove the evolution of Special Tactics teams.

On April 30, 2019, SOWT transitioned to Special Reconnaissance, expanding the capabilities and lethality of Air Force Special Tactics. SR will continue to maintain their application of lethal and non-lethal air-to-ground integration of airpower. Additionally, they will focus their primary skillset on reconnaissance – long cultivated within their community – into a multi-domain, tactical capability able to provide battlespace awareness, and generate effects of strategic and operational significance.

For more info, hit these links:

U.S. Air Force Careers - Special Reconnaissance

U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet - Special Reconnaissance
Air Force Special Tactics (24 SOW) - Special Reconnaissance (SR)