Why don't all members of the Air Force have to be fully qualified to be a rifleman in case of hostile events?

When I was in I think it depended on what you worked on. The unit I was with we had to be M16 and pistol proficient as a crew chief. Sad thing about it is that you only saw the weapons once a year. The Security police ran the firing range and the instructors were ex army. So we received a little more knowledge than other airmen.

When did they change it? I was in the USAF back in 1962 til 1966 and we had to qualify. I was later placed in the A combat defense unit during the Cuban Crisis and we switch over from The M1 Carbine to the AR15. I was later transferred to Base Police but my unit were shipped to Nam.

When I was in...in 1966...if I remember correctly we had to qualify every two years...I qualified at Lackland and at Pope AFB. I'm not aware that this has changed in our current Air Force.

Not sure why my original response isn't here so we will try again. As an aircrew member, officer and SAC senior Command Post Controller, I was required to be qualified on both a 0.38 cal revolver and 9mm semi-auto pistol and did so on an annual basis. I also fired expert in both of them. Army ROTC awarded me an expert marksman on a 200M range with iron sites on an M-14. Enlisted troops in the Air Force who have non-wartime skills (gym personnel, clerks, accounting & finance, computer data enty etc) are qualified annually on a rifle. I retired from the Air Force 25 years ago, and this may have changed, but these troops were augmented into Air Force security forces using M-16 and M-4 rifles. As far as I know, anyone receiving flight pay was qualified on some sort of weapon, FACs, Prime beef (Combat Civil engineers), Law Enforcement, Security Forces, PJs, Command Post Controllers, and anyone who worked or delt with nuclear weapons. BTW, it was an Air Force member that was in the last Olympic Games in the biatholon, which required cross country skiing and bolt action small arms rifle skills (0.22 cal).

The Air Force may have radically changed in the past 25 years, but when I was in SAC, we, as aircrew members and officers had to be qualified in .38 and 9mm sidearms. Security forces were qualified in M-16 operations and those who had AFSCs (MOS) that did not translate to a warfighting code (think clerks, food prep, accounting & finance, gym staff, band members etc) were augmented into the security force and had to qualify on the M-16.

I had to qualify on the M1A1 carbine when I was in basic training (1963) and every year thereafter. Don't they do that anymore?

Man to man combat should be last resort.

oh no! Let's just call in the Marines to guard our base and flight line! Seems so much more cost effective. That way we can safely be loading the bombs, etc. on our big important planes...sigh. dripping with sarcasm at this point. Really on a more sincere note why do we waste .223 ammo on zeroing for AF types??!! Not cost effective. DoD has been issuing the 22LR magazine to fit in a modified .223 magazine for training safety. All non-combat MOS should train with the .22LR rounds for weapon familiarity only. Possibly less friendly fire mishaps that way. After all congress is always looking for some cheap way to get the 'job' done anyway.

I was in the Air Force in 66 in basic we had to fire the m1 carbine 30 cal. and according to our DI the new M16. I was a crew chief on jets . We were told that even if we went to VN we still wouldn’t have a gun . Not even a side arm. I thought that to be total fuckin bullshit.

When I served during Vietnam in the USAF we were required to qualify every year. When I got overseas to Nakon Phanow we were all assigned an M-16 rifle. We did not carry, but we were ualified. I don't know how they do it now.