Air Force ROTC
It was a beautiful and rewarding fall semester for Det 875, Air Force ROTC. We said farewell to Maj. Kristen Baker as she left for Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas to serve as the deputy director of the Force Support Squadron. Kristen left big shoes to fill, so the Air Force sent two officers! Lt. Col. Rach Smith is a Guardian in the U.S. Space Force and will serve as the detachment’s director of staff, while also managing our fifth-year cadets. Capt. Amy Silverbush is a civil engineer, having just spent a year deployed to Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates, and is the primary instructor for our AS200 class. Additionally, we are fortunate that headquarters renewed the contract for our civilian instructor, Kate Lowe. Kate is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve and F-16 pilot. She started last academic year and will continue as our primary AS400 instructor. We also welcomed Staff Sgt. Bryce Larkin to the team, an administration non-commissioned officer in charge of cadet actions. Our cadets are in good hands with this elite team! Our first celebration of the semester was with the 48 graduates of field training. Several were awarded high-performance orientation flights, and even more went on to capstone training events at various Air Force and Space Force bases. The goal is for every cadet to get those opportunities next summer.
Cadet Carter Kinkead, this fall’s cadet wing commander, led the new leadership team as they organized 16 leadership labs, 60-plus PT sessions, and over a dozen additional development and training events. New this year was Air Force Exercise (AFEX), which replaced the detachment’s traditional fall Warrior Day. This new event still included training in expeditionary skills but added a new element: a tabletop wargame developed by the Air Force Wargaming Institute. Focused on a high-end fight against a peer enemy, this game teaches cadets how to use different elements of air and space power, including cyber, joint, and coalition components. Cadet Corey Casiano, AFEX leader, described the wargame as “a way to teach basic airpower concepts to our junior cadets, as well as more advanced tactics like agile combat employment to our senior cadets.”
Flyovers are always an exciting part of the game day experience at Virginia Tech. This season, we had a unique opportunity to showcase the Air Force to our fans with a 10-minute flyover of campus one hour prior to kickoff. Additionally, the aircrew from the 326th Airlift Squadron at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware conducted two low-level incentive flights over the Blue Ridge Mountains for 200 cadets. We also hosted 1st Lt. Micaela Albright ’19 who brought an HH-60W rescue helicopter in for an exciting Drillfield landing, impressing more than 300 joint-service cadets, and members of the university and Blacksburg communities.
This semester, the cadet wing was honored to host two incredible speakers. Air Mobility Command Director of Operations Maj. Gen. Darren Cole talked about his experiences as an ROTC cadet, instructor/evaluator pilot in C-141, C-21, and C-17 aircraft, and his growth as a senior leader impacting the lives of thousands of airmen. Later in the fall, Lt. Col. Brian Desautels visited from the joint staff and described his harrowing experiences as the Personnel Recovery Task Force commander in the final withdrawal of U.S. personnel and its partners from Kabul, Afghanistan in August 2021. He tied together the leadership traits our cadets are building here at Virginia Tech with the skills they will need as airmen and Guardians.
Cadet Kinkead captured the experience perfectly. “It’s an honor to be a part of the leadership development that culminates with our eight newest Air Force lieutenants at the fall commissioning ceremony,” said Kinkead.