Texas Senator visits Sheppard, tours Raptor maintenance training facility

  • Published
  • 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison got a look at the next generation of training at Sheppard July 3 when she toured the state-of-the-art F-22 Raptor Maintenance Training Facility - a project she's quite familiar with.

Being the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, Senator Hutchison is involved in funding for all sorts of military construction projects, including the facility she toured, along with building new student dormitories and upgrading runways.

The senator said she doesn't want any other nation to gain air or space superiority and that she wants to help provide training to make sure Airmen are ready to go out on the frontlines.

She also said Sheppard is a premier training base and that the committee is in the process of increasing efforts and adding capabilities.

One of the new capabilities will be the addition of initial skills F-35 Joint Strike Fighter maintenance training. The current plan is for airframe specific training to take place at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.

Senator Hutchison also said Sheppard is key in helping the United States create relationships with its allies, noting the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program. Sheppard members are mentors to trainees that come from other countries, and that has given the U.S. friends all over the world, she said.

Brig. Gen. Richard Devereaux, 82nd Training Wing commander, said it was an honor to have the senator visit Sheppard and recognize how important its training mission is. 

"The combat capability of our Air Force starts right here at Sheppard, we're so proud of that, and it's not a capability that will emerge years down the road, it's a capability that happens months after our students graduate from here," General Devereaux said. "So we're very vital not just to our Air Force but also to our nation's security and we're just proud to have a U.S. senator reinforce that for us."

Senator Hutchison has been a member of the Senate for 15 years and is the first, and so far only, woman elected to represent the state of Texas in that capacity.