BAUMHOLDER, Germany — The military working dog attacked Air Force Staff Sgt. Christopher Clawson like a hungry mountain lion on a wounded deer.

Clawson, an instructor who played the part of an insurgent, lumbered down the hill but didn’t have a chance.

“Get down on the ground!” a security forces airman yelled as the dog latched onto Clawson’s padded forearm. He fell to the dirt as the squad moved in and apprehended him. “Dog secure!” the handler yelled.

The exercise at a training range just outside the town of Baumholder helped prepare security forces airmen and military working dogs for what they might face in Iraq or Afghanistan. Air Force security forces members must endure the required two-week training program before they deploy.

For the first time, airmen from bases worldwide and scheduled to deploy to Balad, Iraq, will come to Germany to receive training from the Air Force’s Europe-based regional training center, better known as Creek Defender. The Air Force is studying whether it would make better sense to have regional training centers offer specialized training catered toward deployment locations.

The Air Force’s new “teaming” concept involves each center being responsible for several deployment locations and molding its program to prepare airmen to those specific sites.

Creek Defender, based at Sembach Annex in Germany, is the first center to serve as a training hub for those heading to the U.S. military’s largest base in Iraq.

Nearly 80 airmen from bases across Europe completed the program last weekend, learning first aid, how to react to roadside bomb attacks and the proper way to search for a downed pilot. Those who participated will deploy in the next several months.

Creek Defender has been around for years, but has evolved into a training tool geared for combat and what airmen might face in Iraq and Afghanistan. Airmen have historically focused on base protection, but that has changed with the wars.

Security forces now often venture outside the base wire to sweep fields for possible surface-to-air missiles, and, in some cases, help hunt for insurgents who might attack air bases and convoys. Thousands of airmen are deployed in Army positions in what the Air Force calls “in lieu taskings.”

About half of the airmen who attended the training near Baumholder have never been downrange. But all of the program’s 28 instructors have, and they used their experiences to help put the curriculum together.

Airmen must complete 79 tasks, from how to change a tire while on a convoy to doing foot patrols.

Those who went through the course last week said the regimen is much harder than they expected. One airman passed out from exhaustion and had to be evacuated to a German hospital.

Senior Airman Brandon Ferrell, assigned to the 435th Security Forces Squadron at Ramstein Air Base, is deploying to Iraq and said he was surprised how much he learned in only two weeks.

“I can honestly say I came into it and underestimated it,” Ferrell said. “I didn’t think I would learn much from it. But the certain situations that they put you in out here? They really test what you’re made of, what you do know and what you don’t know and how you carry yourself in those situations.”

The exercise organized the students into squads, which rotated through training stations spread out among the range’s picturesque hills and trees. In one exercise, a squad on foot searched for a downed coalition member. But during the search, they came across an insurgent.

Squads learned how valuable military working dogs are on such missions. Air Force teams are using the dogs increasingly to help detect explosives and find insurgents in urban areas in Iraq. During this scenario, the dog helped track down Clawson hiding in the trees.

“Basically what happens is we get a troop that comes in here with a baseline of zero combat training — maybe, one to two weeks,” said Master Sgt. Tammy Hartz, superintendent of Sembach’s regional training center. “We actually advance them to the point where they would be able to go downrange.”