Category: US Air Force

This is a pretty interesting read by an Air Force Academy alumnus who recently saw the changes the academy has gone through to train officers for today’s Air Force:

None of this was happening. They were walking at rest, not greeting anyone. Actually, they were ignoring the upperclassmen walking by. I stopped one of them and asked him, “Cadet, are you recognized yet?”

“No, we are not,” was his response. He kept walking. There was no “sir” in his response. He obviously knew I was an alumnus and former military officer. The problem was that he simply didn’t care. He didn’t care because he had been taught not to care. Military bearing was absent. Completely gone. Removed.

And then, the shock continued.

As the time started to get close to the Noon Meal Formation, where the cadets form up and march into Mitchell Hall for lunch, I again realized nothing was happening. Cadets were nonchalantly walking to the huge cafeteria where they are served all at once during the school week for lunch. I subsequently found out the formation had been cancelled due to high winds. I laughed to myself.  There wasn’t even a breeze. Wow, things really have changed.

Inside the noon meal, all former military decorum and training at the lunch table had been vaporized. There was nothing. The freshman cadets didn’t even have the civilian decency to serve their alumni guests first, not to mention any military bearing. They just took the food and ignored everyone else at the table.

It gets worse: after lunch, my colleagues walked into the academic building. Before my eyes, where there used to be formal lecture halls, was a Dunkin’ Donuts. My jaw hit the floor and I actually took a picture– I was that amazed. This was no longer a military academy; it was UCLA in uniforms.  [Ops Lens]

Here is the most profound thing he realized from his visit to the US Air Force Academy:

Not once did I hear the word warrior. In a flash, I got it. The academy was no longer training cadets to be Air Force warriors. They were no longer training to fight for our country and win wars. They were being trained to function in the bureaucracy. The academy was all about competing with civilian institutions in a variety of ways.

You can read much more at the link, but I am curious if anyone agrees with this former cadet’s assessment of the current state of the US Air Force Academy.

I would hope there was more to this story because if his leadership actually thought not wearing a helmet on a hoverboard was worthy of an investigation then something is really wrong in today’s Air Force ROTC:

A Baylor graduate whose Air Force career was in jeopardy after he was seen riding a hoverboard without a helmet received his commission as a second lieutenant after all on Friday.

Chris Delzell, 23, of China Spring, passed a physical fitness test on Friday and then was commissioned as a second lieutenant.

“I hope to help the Air Force get ready for the war that we’re fighting and the next war or any threat down the line to our country’s freedom,” he said.

The commissioning ceremony almost didn’t happen.

Delzell graduated in May from Baylor University with a degree in computer engineering,

The four-and-a-half year Air Force ROTC student says he was expecting to report on June 30 to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to “start building weapons for our country to fight the enemy.”

But a week before finals last month an AFROTC captain spotted him riding his hoverboard to and from school without a helmet and wrote him up.

The report says Delzell used “poor judgment” and that while riding the hoverboard in the department’s offices, he damaged Baylor property.

Delzell says he nicked a wall, leaving a one-inch gash that he immediately offered to pay to repair.

Delzell said that was informed of the investigation, he was stunned. [KWTX]

You can read the rest at the link, but the Army would never have conducted an investigation like this.  That is unless he wasn’t wearing his reflective belt then all bets are off.  😉

That is what the popular Air Force blog JQ Public believes:

Last year, commanders at Osan Air Base in Korea decided to install high-definition, 24/7 surveillance cameras in the common areas of dormitories housing some 3,000 airmen. The rationale stated at the time was, generically, the safety of those airmen. Not litigated at the time was whether the cost of the new capability would be offset by the marginal gain in safety, but such debates are rarely entertained in such an authoritarian system. Ideas are presumed valid, good, and lawful the instant they gain command sponsorship.

Fast forward a year and the system has predictably loosed from its “safety” moorings and morphed into a tool for the control and criminalization of the base’s junior airmen. Over the past few weeks, we’ve received several reports that commanders are not using video footage merely to aid in criminal investigations after a report of wrongdoing, but are proactively reviewing all footage to scan for unreported wrongdoing.

For many, the new policy feels like pre-emptive criminalization — demonstrating that the chain of command is not genuinely concerned about safety or well-being so much as it cares about nailing airmen for innocuous or minor transgressions that would normally fall well below the threshold of official notice.  [JQ Public Blog]

You can read much more at the link and it is an interesting debate.  However, overall I like the cameras in regards to being a tool that can be used to collect evidence if a crime in the dorms was to occur.  However, I don’t think the cameras should be used as a substitute for leadership presence in the dorms.  Instead reviewing hours of video tape leaders should instead be walking in the dorms and communicating with their troops instead.

Alicia Watkins who has more than received her 15 minutes of fame over the past few years claiming to be a wounded warrior from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  However, she has now been officially outed as having lied about her background.  The Air Force Times was able to get a copy of her DD-214 that shows she was not a recipient of the Purple Heart and never deployed to Iraq:

Official military records contradict several claims made by an Air Force veteran whose story of surviving the 9/11 terror attacks and battling severe combat injuries gained her access to prestigious events and captivated  celebrities, most recently Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump.

Alicia Watkins, who retired from the Air Force in 2008 for undisclosed medical reasons, has since appeared on multiple mainstream news and TV programs, including “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and the TLC reality series “Say Yes to the Dress,” to discuss her struggles after sustaining a career-ending back injury from an improvised explosive attack in Afghanistan. However, there is nothing in the list of awards and decorations contained in Watkins’ military personnel file indicating she was ever involved in an enemy attack. A spokesman for the Air Force Personnel Center in San Antonio, Texas, Mike Dickerson, provided Air Force Times with Watkins’ decorations, awards and deployments, as noted on her DD-214 discharge form.  [Air Force Times]

I recommend reading the entire article at the link, but the Air Force Times piece has still left some questions unanswered.  For example she was assigned to the Pentagon during the timeframe of the 9/11 attack.  However, was she there the day the attack happened like she claims?  The fact she was not awarded a Purple Heart directly contradicts the claim she has made that she was injured during the attack.  This also proves she was not wounded by an IED in Afghanistan as well.  The other part of her narrative that has yet to be resolved is if she really knew the Army soldier who died during the 9/11 attack that she supposedly started a charity for.

Then her personnel records show she was only awarded 8 awards, but she has been seen wearing 19 awards to include the Purple Heart.  Then there is the fact that she was not awarded an Afghanistan Campaign Medal. The Air Force Times says she deployed to Afghanistan, but if she did not receive the campaign medal that means she was not in theater long enough to receive it.  Personnel receive the medal after 30 consecutive days in theater or 60 non-consecutive.  So she may not have even been in Afghanistan longer than 30 days.  I am also amazed that after nearly 10 years in the Air Force she did not receive an Air Force Achievement Medal.  This really makes me wonder about her performance if as an E-5 she did not receive at least an achievement medal.

Anyway this should close the book on her, but I am sure she will defend herself by saying the Air Force screwed up her records like many other people caught inflating their service tend to do.  It will be interesting to see if any legal action is pursued because she has profited from her wartime injury claims which is against the law.

You can read more about the DD-214 findings over at Guardians of Valor as well as John Q. Public.

It will be interesting to see what aircraft Northrup Grumman comes up with.  I wonder if a drone capability was even considered?:

Northrop Grumman has won the coveted Air Force contract to build the next-generation stealth bomber, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.

Northrop Grumman beat out a competing Long Range Strike Bomber design offered by Boeing and Lockheed Martin to build up to 100 new aircraft set to reconstitute the nation’s aging fleet of 159 conventional and nuclear bombers.

The program is highly classified and the Air Force did not offer many details on the design or a prototype illustration of the new bomber.  [Stars & Stripes]

Great job by this airman who was involved in taking down a terrorist before he could fully launch his attack:

The Air Force is awarding Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone its highest noncombat honor, the Airman’s Medal, for his heroic actions aboard a Paris-bound train, the Air Force announced Monday.

Stone, Alek Skarlatos and college friend Anthony Sadler took down a gunman wielding an AK-47 and box cutter as he began an assault on a high-speed train headed for Paris late Friday.

The trio have been hailed as heroes in France, where they were awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest honor, on Monday by French President Francois Hollande.

“What the gunman did not expect was a confrontation with our very own Captain America. Believe it or not, that is what Airman Stone’s friends nicknamed him during Air Force technical training,” Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James told reporters Monday when announcing the medal.

If it had not been for Stone’s actions, James said, “I’m quite sure today we would be sitting here considering a bloodbath.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

The Air Force Times has an article about ideas airman submitted that helped save money. Of more interest were the ideas submitted to save real money that the AF rejected:

FIVE COMMONLY REJECTED
These ideas are commonly submitted and have been, and will continue to be, rejected, Yepsen said.

The five most common:

1. Overseas housing allowance
Modify the overseas housing allowance system to allow the government to recoup the housing allowance not utilized by the member. This idea can’t be implemented because overseas housing allowance is governed by policy external to the Air Force.

2. Temporary duty air travel
Allow members to book travel at fares lower than the government contracted rate. This idea can’t be implemented because temporary duty air travel is governed by policy external to the Air Force.

3. Commissary privileges
Open the commissary to civilians and contractors who work on base. This idea can’t be implemented because commissary privileges are governed by policy external to the Air Force.

4. Terminate Tops in Blue
The cost of the Tops in Blue program is 80 percent covered by nonappropriated funds, with a significant portion coming from commercial sponsorship dollars. After each Tops in Blue show, base and wing commanders provide feedback; these surveys indicate that 96 percent of commanders feel that Tops in Blue is an excellent value to their Airmen and to the Air Force. Additionally, MAJCOM commanders in 2011 overwhelmingly expressed the need for Tops in Blue. Based on this feedback, the service believes the program brings outstanding value and is an excellent tool for morale-building, community relations and recruiting.

5. Stop fallout money
Modify end of year spending habits to limit wasteful spending. The end of year closeout process is a deliberate process that carefully executes prioritized Air Force needs.

Number 1 has been discussed here quite a bit at the ROK Drop and the best way to implement this would be to have the servicemember and military split whatever the difference in cost savings is. For number 5 this is a colossal waste of money every year throughout the government I never see ending. Anyone else have some money saving ideas that the military should consider?

If this is true than I do not see how the Air Force is going to win on this issue:

An atheist airman at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada was denied reenlistment last month for refusing to take an oath containing “so help me God,” the American Humanist Association said Thursday.

And in a Sept. 2 letter to the inspectors general for the Air Force and Creech, Monica Miller, an attorney with the AHA’s Apignani Humanist Legal Center, said the airman should be allowed to reenlist without having to swear to a deity, and instead given a secular oath. Miller said the AHA is prepared to sue if the airman is not allowed to reenlist.  [Air Force Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but the Air Force is blaming Congress for the wording of the enlistment.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who have been following the Krusinski case:

The Air Force has decided to punish a former sexual assault prevention officer accused of groping a woman outside a Washington-area restaurant last year by issuing him a letter of reprimand rather than pursue a court-martial, according to an Air Force document obtained by Stars and Stripes.

The disposition decision by Col. Bill Knight, the commander of the 11th Wing, “was based primarily on the fact that [Lt. Col. Jeffrey] Krusinski had already been acquitted during his civilian trial,” according to the document, which is being reviewed.

A letter of reprimand “is designed to improve, correct and instruct those who depart from standards of performance, conduct, bearing and integrity and whose actions degrade the individual and the unit’s mission,” according to the Air Force.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but Krusinski’s career is obviously over.  Considering the alternatives I am sure he is happy with being able to retire once he reaches 20 years of service.  It will be interesting to see if the Air Force decides to make him retire as a Major though which would be a huge financial loss for him for a crime that he was acquitted of.

Somebody really screwed up over this:

A B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads and flown for more than three hours across several states last week, prompting an Air Force investigation and the firing of one commander, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

The incident was so serious that President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were quickly informed and Gates has asked for daily briefings on the Air Force probe, said Defense Department press secretary Geoff Morrell. He said, "At no time was the public in danger." […]

The plane was carrying advanced cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a Defense Department policy not to confirm information on nuclear weapons.

The missiles, which are being decommissioned, were mounted onto pylons on the bomber’s wings and it is unclear why the warheads had not been removed beforehand.

The Air Combat Command has ordered a command-wide stand down on Sept. 14 to review procedures, officials said. They said there was minimal risk to crews and the public because of safety features designed into the munitions.

In addition to the munitions squadron commander who was relieved of his duties, crews involved with the mistaken load — including ground crew workers — have been temporarily decertified for handling munitions, one official said. [Pauline Jelinek, AP] (HT: Nomad)

I’m not in the Air Force, but to be fair this does seem a bit overblown because I would assume planes have taken off from US soil before and flown with nuclear weapons on board.  Somebody in the Air Force can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m sure it is going to be dealt with and already people already being held responsible for it.