JOINT BASE ANACOSTIA-BOLLING, Washington, D.C. –
The U.S. Air Force’s 11th Contracting Squadron completed the Contingency Contracting Officer training course on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, Washington, D.C., Aug. 21, 2025. The capstone exercise ensured the squadron’s capability to provide operational support in a contested environment.
“The goal of these scenarios is to ensure that when the time comes to deploy against a near-peer adversary, they can hit the ground running,” said retired U.S. Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Nathan Wallace, 11th CONS chief of contingency and command support.
While typical operations use electronic systems to draft contracts, the two, 10-person teams practiced contracting procedures in bare-base scenarios which required honing market-research skills, evaluating quotes and manually writing the contracts.
“This training simulates a deployment setting for contracting officers and contracting specialists,” said Tech. Sgt. Donald Suver, contracting officer with the 11th CONS, who emphasized the training is particularly vital to those who have minimal experience with manual contracts.
During the exercise, Airmen processed 37 contingency scenarios, reacted to a simulated chemical warfare attack and held briefings for senior leadership.
While the contracting team operated independently in this exercise based on a real-world contingency scenario, providing efficient support to other squadrons makes up the squadron’s most challenging problem set.
“This mission goes beyond us here at contracting,” said Capt. Erica Cepe, 11th CONS officer in charge of the Services and Commodities Flight. “Our point of success depends on establishing and maintaining relationships with our cross-functional teams, like the Logistics Readiness Squadron and Civil Engineering, and being able to get them what they need.”
This training took several months to plan and Air Force- level support from the career field. The Air Force Installation Contracting Center provides comprehensive acquisition solutions and contracting services to facilitate mission-critical operations, along with coursework, objectives and outlines to create training scenarios across the Air Force contracting squadrons.
“The AFICC team specifically works on contingency contracting and they craft a lot of the scenarios to give us a baseline of training scenarios that we can add on to,” said Wallace. “The planning process consisted of completing an eight-week academic course prior to this field exercise.”
While the planning was tedious, the training time is vital.
“As a contracting officer, when you are downrange, there is no time to plan, but you are expected to execute,” said Wallace. “I hope this training will serve our Airmen when they need it most.”
The completion of the Contingency Contracting Officer training demonstrated the 11th CONS’ commitment to maintaining operational readiness by ensuring Airmen have the necessary skills to be successful while forward deployed and in their everyday mission.