Cadets in the four-year AFROTC program will attend Field Training after their sophomore years in college. Prospective cadets who are joining AFROTC for the two-year scholarship option must attend a special version of Field Training, which includes 60 additional hours of classroom instruction.
Field Training cadets learn hand-to-hand combat, weapons marksmanship and operation, small-unit leadership and survival skills. They will participate in a 14-day mock deployment. Field Training also brings cadets from various detachments together so they gain experience dealing with the management of larger, more diverse units. According to Captain Anthony Lamagna, Headquarters AFROTC, "The cadets are treated somewhat like they are in basic training. We break them down and then build leaders out of them."
Field Training is mandatory for cadets that wish to progress into the Professional Officer Course segment of their AFROTC curriculum. Field Training is designed to improve the leadership skills of cadets, while also providing a system to test and rank them. Cadets at Field Training are in constant competition with each other for position on an order of merit list that will determine which career slots they are eligible for upon graduation. For this reason, much of the AFROTC sophomore year is spent in preparation for Field Training.