Lackland: The Gateway to the Air Force

Seven miles west of downtown San Antonio, Joint Base San Antonio Lackland has processed every single airman who has ever entered the United States Air Force. That is not a figure of speech. Since February fourth, nineteen forty-six, every man and woman who joins the Air Force arrives at this base for basic military training before they go anywhere else, which is why Lackland is officially called the Gateway to the Air Force.

The base began as an extension of the neighboring Kelly Field. Construction of a replacement training center started on June fifteenth, nineteen forty-one. The first class of nearly two thousand cadets began training in November of that year, even before their barracks were finished, for a nation that was still technically at peace. They graduated in late December facing a nation at war.

The San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center, as Lackland was first designated, provided classification and preflight training for pilots, bombardiers, and navigators. In November of nineteen forty-two, the first enlisted recruits arrived for basic military training. The base was formally named Lackland in honor of Brigadier General Frank Lackland, who had commanded Kelly Field and done much of the early planning for the training center.

Over the decades, more than seven million young Americans have passed through Lackland's gates for basic training. The base also became the home of the Air Force's Security Forces training, its military working dog program, the Inter-American Air Forces Academy, and the Air Force Pararescue and Combat Control pipeline.

Today Lackland is part of the vast Joint Base San Antonio complex, which consolidates what were once three separate installations. But the basic training mission has never moved. Every new airman's first morning in the Air Force begins here, on the same fields where America's air warriors have been shaped since the nation's darkest hours.