The mission of the Air Force is to provide security for the United States. The mission of the security specialty field is to provide security for the Air Force. The security specialty field is related but separate from the law enforecment field. Both fall under the Security Police Squadron.

Protection of aircraft against threats and weapons is the main job of security. They also secures incidents of inflight emergencies and disasters on base, enforce perimeters of closed-in security areas, control weapons and act as members of the primary and reserve Security Alert Team. Some members in the security filed make up fire teams, which are four man teams who have the primary responsibility of neutralizing hostile situations. According to 1 Lt. Christine Aziz, shift commander of C-flight, the people in security are broken up into four flights. One permanent day flight and three swing-and mid-shift flights. "Security is an extremely stressful job because we sit for hours on end waiting for something to happen." Lieutenant Aziz siad security people usually work a 10-hour day for six days a week. "But it isn't unusual for a person to put in 15 to 20-hour days during a generation or exercise." The Lieutenant is the shift commander for both law enforcement and the security field on Plattsburgh AFB. She said the job is physically demanding on a deployment, but other than that it's all mental ability. "There is a heavy responsibility to lower levels of rank in security. It would be up to the individual handling a situation to analyze, discriminate and take crae of it," she said.

The M-203 40mm grenade launcher, M-60 fully-automatic machine gun, M-16 fully- and semi-automatic rifle and the .38 caliber revolver are some of the weapons used by security specialists. Training on a flight level is done on a daily basis. Lieutenant Aziz added that the Security Police training section also conducts monthly training exercises. "We're always in training to anticipate any type of situation."