Airmen with multiple Air National Guard security forces units learn squad tactics pulling an ahkio sled Jan. 18, 2023, as part of a 16-day Cold-Weather Operations Course led by the Air Force at Fort McCoy, Wis.

More than 50 Airmen were participating in the training from across the Air Force.

Besides learning about use of snowshoes and moving as a squad over terrain pulling an ahkio sled in a cold-weather environment, the Airmen also learned about cold-weather shelters, survival techniques, cold-weather uniform wear, and more.

Fort McCoy has a long history of supporting cold-weather training.

Eighty years prior to this training, in January 1943, the installation hosted winter training for the Army’s 76th Division prior to the Division

Chief Master Sgt. Anthony Harvey, security forces manager with the 164th Mission Support Group, 164th Airlift Wing, at Memphis Air National Guard Base, Tenn., helped get the training organized. Harvey had previously trained in Fort McCoy’s version of the Cold-Weather Operations Course (CWOC).

He said holding an all-Air Force version of CWOC at Fort McCoy in 2023 made sense. The 16-day course his team of instructors is teaching is reflective of the former Fort McCoy CWOC course that ended in the spring 2022.

“We actually had to turn away people for this session because there was so much interest,” Harvey said. “We’re glad to come here and hold this course.”

Fort McCoy’s motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.”

Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.

The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.

Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on the Defense Visual Information Distribution System at https://www.dvidshub.net/fmpao, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”