The Louis F. Garland Department of Defense Fire Academy at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, is the perfect place for Airmen interested in firefighting to land. LFGFA was founded in 1993 as the largest Fire Academy in the U.S. Established as a strength multiplier, the LFGFA provides an average of 1,000 joint firefighters per year.

Students at the LFGFA become certified Fire & Emergency Services warfighters. Over 68-days in the West Texas heat, every initial skills graduate attends an apprentice course and obtains six nationally recognized certifications. Upon returning to LFGFA, students can attend any of the ten advanced courses to further their skills in a contested environment. The courses and certifications help these firefighters advance their skillsets and become valuable warfighters.

The start of an Airman’s journey in their chosen schoolhouse is important, as the coursework will prepare them for the future fight they’re embarking on. All the courses provided by the Fire Academy are critical to the DOD F&ES delivery of response capabilities. DOD F&ES capitalizes on the enhanced knowledge, skills and experience the Fire Academy brings to the course to develop the human capital that cannot be replicated by other outside vendors or agencies.

These courses are critical to meeting the Chief of Staff’s focus on Great Power Competition re-optimization and the Department of the Air Force’s efforts under the Basing and Logistics Enterprise Strategy to develop the Airmen we need for the future fight.

The LFGFA’s front-line instructors play a key role of incorporating the warrior mindset and bringing credibility to the courses through their experiences both in the field and at deployed locations. These volunteer instructors are encouraged to tell their stories to convey real world application to a controlled training environment.

The LFGFA not only keeps the embers hot by upholding their tradition of high training standards, but they have kept that flame burning by introducing new innovative trainings.

In 2021, the LFGFA introduced the “Ready Firefighter” program, which instills the importance of peer support systems upon entering the career field. In this program, tech-training graduates will operate in a first-string capacity as a first responder when they get to their duty station, helping to create Multi-Capable Airmen firefighters.

The LFGFA is home to the Fire Officer Strategies Tactics and Leadership Course, which is the first new course in 15 years. FOSTLC strategically targets Great Power Competition by bridging a tactical gap in the development of non-commissioned officers and company grade officers. The course solidifies concepts and tasks that are not common in F&ES, and provides NCOs and CGOs with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully command and mitigate emergencies without the oversight of on-scene incident commanders or senior fire officers.

The future firefighters at the LFGFA receive hands-on experience in their training, and hear stories from those who came before them. Promoting their strength multiplier mindset, the LFGFA continues creating multi-capable Airmen through their program.