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Base showcases new trainer development facility

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  • By Susan Griggs
  • 81st Training Wing Pubic Affairs
KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. --  A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new trainer development facility is 8 a.m. Wednesday.

Members of the 81st Training Support Squadron's trainer development flight have already made the move to the new structure and couldn't be happier with their new home, according to Bruce Scott, flight chief.

He pointed out that the new building moves the 31 members of his flight and the 10 members of the 81st TRSS training technology flight's SIMWARE section into the same location.

"The fact that both the hardware production and the software development components are now under one roof is an incredible bonus that will prove to be more efficient and effective," Mr. Scott explained. "Together we've saved the Air Force millions and millions of dollars with in-house development and production of training equipment."

Construction of the new facility at the southwest corner of Larcher Boulevard and Chappie James Avenue began 16 months ago.

About $13.5 million dollars was invested to replace the aging facility and to update manufacturing equipment that will allow for quicker project turnaround times and a more consistent product.

The under-the-roof square footage of the new trainer development facility is about 38,000 square feet, said metal trades supervisor Tomme Lassabe.

"There are numerous administrative and executive offices on both the first and second floors of the building," Mr. Lassabe said. "However, the new industrial area which occupies 18,000 square feet is the real jewel to this facility."

The new building offers a variety of special features, such as a down draft paint booth, a powder coating paint booth and oven and a multi-cam router for fabricating items from wood, plastics, and metals. It features an improved sawdust collection system with under-floor duct work, a fused deposition modeling machine.

There's a larger welding shop size and integral fume collection/extraction system, a materials receiving and warehouse storage area, a transfer truck height loading dock with dock leveler, an overhead crane with a two-ton capacity hoist to handle materials and equipment and a 4,000-pound electric fork lift for materials management and loading/unloading.

Three-dimensional printing and scanning are in the works, but not yet installed.

"Trainer development's function is to provide high-quality trainers, training devices and simulators throughout Air Education and Training Command with a realism that allows instructors and students to perform various maintenance and performance tasks as if they were using the actual, more costly equipment," Mr. Scott noted. "The addition of several new pieces of industrial equipment, updated software and a new communications and network infrastructure will open doors to other avenues of training that previously had to be outsourced."

The old facility was the result of two separate buildings being joined together. The north building was constructed in the 1940s and had once been an aircraft engine test cell. The south building was erected in 1969 and ironically suffered its first hurricane damage from Hurricane Camille while it was still under construction.

About 25 percent of the old facility was deemed uninhabitable after Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago.

"Numerous attempts to stop leaks in the roof over the years proved to be impossible," Mr. Scott commented. "The heating, ventilation and air conditioning system in the facility required constant attention and had to be nursed along to provide what little cooling the building had. The network infrastructure had deteriorated to the point where connectivity was a hit-or-miss proposition."

"This new state-of-the-art facility is extremely important for us to continue to carry out our assigned mission of engineering and manufacturing trainers and simulators," Mr. Scott concluded. "The new equipment tremendously enhances our design and fabrication capability and will help secure our role into the future."
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