Air Force fills out Army ranks in Iraq

[RamboLiberal]

Source: TheState.com - South Carolina

A row of rumbling flatbed trucks and Humvees outfitted with gun turrets lurches toward a mock village of cinderblock buildings where instructors posing as insurgents wait to test the trainees' convoy protection skills.

The training range is Army, as is the duty itself - one of the most dangerous in Iraq these days. But the young men and women clad in camouflage and helmets training to run and protect convoys are not Army; they're Air Force.

They are part of a small but steady stream of airmen being trained to do Army duty under the Army chain of command, a tangible sign the Pentagon was scouring the military to aid an Iraq force that was stretched long before President Bush ordered 21,500 additional U.S. troops there.

"What we've seen is the Department of Defense continues to find ways to meet the requirements imposed by the commander in chief," said retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, a senior fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center in the John F. Kennedy School of Government.



Read more: http://www.thestate.com/361/story/36739.html

[lovuian]

1. this is a sad truth my nephew is among them

it so sad I warned him he may go to Iraq
this is his second round
I sent him packages and he asked for me to send him more
I'll be sending tootsie rolls his favorite

[roguevalley]

23. My cousin, Hannah, got talked into this. She's twenty and in the Air

Force. She's leaving in May. I could just SCREAM! I will send good thoughts to your nephew too, sweetie. I will pray for them both.

[SicSemperTyranus]

2. Plenty more here in Afghanistan

I and hundreds upon hundreds of other USAF troops are filling Army slots here in Afghanistan too. At a nearby camp there are so many Air Force there aren't jobs for all of them - some of them work every other day because if they all showed up at work at the same time there wouldn't be enough desks or computers or for that matter work for them to do. The Army's solution? They're demanding even more personnel from the Air Force - our requirements to support the Army are set to quadruple. And once the Army gets them, they rarely put them in jobs related to what they actually do in the Air Force - I know a Medical Corps captain who was given a job teaching artillery to Afghan Army recruits (needless to say he knew nothing about it). An NCO I know who's an Air Force Civil Engineer (and power systems expert) was given a job as the camp handyman. He fixes toilets or whatever the Army wants. The Army is the most hopelessly dysfunctional bureaucracy on Earth. The only solution they ever come up with is "MORE"; more people and more money to try to plaster over their serious lack of organization and planning. And I once thought the Air Force was hopeless...

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. What is the root of that dysfunction?

Are their officers just that terrible? Is it the general staff? Or is it something that comes from DoD meddling?

[SicSemperTyranus]

12. It's a result of so many factors...

that it's difficult to pin one down. Mostly it's the love of bureaucracy and the unbridled growth of the mission without any real attempt to assess the "where are we, where do we need to go?" part of it. I tried to diagram my chain of command once on a dry-erase board and gave up when I ran out of colors. To the best of my knowledge I work for everyone everywhere, and I get conflicting guidance from each of them. The military is like a homeowner who wants to expand his house but has no plan and never stops to re-asses. He ends up putting a bathtub in a room with no plumbing and builds a garage with no access to the road. Then he pays a builder double to come in and fix the mess (if the builder's MPRI or Halliburton or Blackwater it'll be quadruple and the house will end up with a pool in the garage and still no access to the road).

There is some interference from the Pentagon, but we would have mostly done this to ourselves anyway - they just give focus to the dysfunction.

[Kolesar]

13. There are companies like that in America

Well, at least one that I can think of. :evilgrin: Good luck to you and your fellow airmen.

[AnneD]

16. Two ways to describe the situation.....

SNAFU and FUBAR. The Commanders create a SNAFU and the troops deal with the FUBAR mission. This is so unacceptable. Soldiers are trained for totally different jobs. It is like asking a Cardiologist to preform brain surgery and expect the same results.

Nurses have the same problem on a daily basis any more. Hospital CEO's think a labour and delivery Nurse can replace a Med Surg Nurse or vise versa. The only thing those practices have in common is stitches and vital signs. The only thing an airman and a soldier have in common is they both were uniforms and they both sign contracts.

Daddy was a MSgt in the Air Force so I grew up around that, but I enlisted in the Army, so I KNOW that. Apples and oranges. And further proof of poor planning and strain on the military.

[aquart]

5. Welcome to DU.

[TexasLawyer]

6. Welcome to DU!!

I appreciate the perspective.

[BlueCollar]

10. Former Navy here

Welcome aboard...

:hi:

[EFerrari]

19. Welcome to DU SicSemperTyranus

Be safe.

[DCKit]

3. I guess it doesn't matter that neither the AF or Navy folks are trained for that duty.

[rodeodance]

7. "Many airmen were surprised at the assignment."

Few of the airmen, who once mostly moved or fixed equipment on Air Force bases, imagined they would be sent to fight in a ground war, but course trainers say it makes little difference.

"We want to be one team, one fight. It doesn't matter which service tape you have on your uniform," said 1st Lt. Matt Addington, the course commander.

Most Air Force enlisted personnel haven't had ground combat training, and the Army has its own sets of weaponry, terminology and command chains - all of which have to be taught to the airmen.

The Camp Bullis training, in an area named for two airmen killed in Iraq convoys, includes courses on assault rifles, roadside bomb recognition, combat first aid and driving tactics. The airmen live in a camp designed like a forward operating base, sleeping on cots, eating MREs and scrambling to shelter when air raid sirens sound.

The training culminates with a 72-hour exercise that includes instructors dressed in long white shirts and tapestry caps, planting mock roadside bombs and shooting blanks at the convoy from open windows in an "urban warfare village."

Many airmen were surprised at the assignment.

[trof]

15. That has to be understatement of the year.

"Uh, sarge? I'm a hydraulics technician. What's this?"
"That's a rifle, son."
whoa

[SicSemperTyranus]

14. We get special training...

...to varying degrees. Those of us assigned to Army jobs get the most - two months of infantry training in my case.

[truthisfreedom]

8. Total kludge factor.

Misfits.

[SicSemperTyranus]

9. Want to know the really appalling part?

In most cases that I have personally observed Air Force troops generally perform better than Army troops, even in areas we're not trained in. I led a 20-man Air Force team through two months of basic combat training at an Army base (that's two months BEFORE our one year here) and even though none of us are 'combat arms' troops in the Air Force, and had never even met each other before showing up there, we generally outperformed, outplanned, and outfought the Army INFANTRY units we were in training with. It was kinda sad really. The Army instructors had no clue how to deal with people who comprehended everthing the first time and aced virtually every test or exercise we undertook. In Iraq the Air Force convoys, while attacked just as often as Army ones, take far fewer casualties proportionally, so much so that the Army's trying to figure out why. The mindset we have in the Air Force is utterly foreign to the Army, and vice versa. I'm not saying we're better than the Army, but we seem to be more effective with less people in the same situations.

[TwilightGardener]

17. My husband is an active duty AF comm officer, and it's not just the

Army dragging the AF in--it's the AF itself! My take on it is, the Air Force is desperate to get into the fight, and get more people in on those AEF rotations--good experience and career building, dont'cha know! At least that's my husband's commander's attitude. The scale and pace of deployments is definitely picking up, and I'm pretty sure the AF sees it as all good. Now, as to Army vs. AF competence--my husband has observed what you have for years. The charge that the AF is just a bunch of geeky "technicians", rather than warriors, is maybe true, but that tech-minded approach seems to make for more common-sense, efficient ways of problem-solving.

[Ilsa]

20. I know someone who is living in WestPac with her AF husband and

kids. Her husband and his unit were deployed to Iraq. He came home with testicular cancer, according to her blog. She told some of her closer friends that three other guys from his unit are in the same condition.

Damn, what are they doing??? :grr: :cry:

[tabasco]

25. Thanks for your service, bro, but keep things in perspective.

They sure didn't have Rangers training you back at Camp Swampy, and no matter who was teaching you, they considered it a successful day of training if nobody got shot by accident. Don't overestimate your abilities and don't underestimate the abilities of the grunts who do this for a living day in and day out. Stay safe my friend.

:patriot:

[SicSemperTyranus]

26. Oh I know

And I didn't mean for it to sound like it did, but it was humorous how fast we blew through all their courses and training with absoluely no problems, and meanwhile the Army troops were having to repeat and repeat and repeat. Granted the best I would ever be able to do in a firefight is (hopefully) not get killed, and I sure as HELL wouldn't want to do what those guys do every day of the week. But then again our Security Police, ROMADs, Trans, and ground Special Forces units (among others) really do what they do every day of the week too, and do it every bit as well.

[SpiralHawk]

11. "Don't worry, I won't have to serve." - Commander AWOL

"You can set all your worries aside. I have a 'special republicon exemption' and so while your sons and daughters are fighting to maximize oil profits for my cronies, I will be out on the golf course having a ball with my special republicon chickenhawk pals. I felt you would like to know."

- Commander AWOL

[Bigmack]

18. Been doing this since 2005 at least!

I'm reposting from:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2562409#2562795

What the hell was a female Air Force person doing providing convoy security? I know women are in the combat zone these days.... but... with all apologies to anybody in the Air Force... airmen (and women) have no business doing convoy security duty.... they're not trained for it. Maybe it's just the old Marine sense of superiority, but I believe that anybody who's being sent into ground combat needs LOTS of training with weapons and explosives.

A week of grabass does not equal infantry schools and live-fire exercises. Lots of experience with shit going out and shit coming in.

Those people are being sent out without the indoctrination and training to succeed and stay alive.

I have to admit a certain amount of sexism here, too. The idea of sending an untrained young woman into combat just doesn't sit well with me. I'm not saying women can't do the job., or that they can't fuck up just like the men. I just get this gut feeling that a country that sends untrained women into combat is "eating it's own seed corn".

- - - - -
Airman killed in Iraq http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123011980



9/30/2005 - SAN ANTONIO (AFPN)  -- An improvised explosive device killed a female Airman during a convoy mission supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Airman 1st Class Elizabeth Jacobson, 21, was providing convoy security Sept. 28 near Camp Bucca, Iraq, when the vehicle she was riding in was hit by an improvised explosive device.

The Riviera Beach, Fla., native was assigned to the 17th Security Forces Squadron at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas. Airman Jacobson had been in the Air Force for two years and had been deployed to Iraq for more than three months.

She is the first female Airman killed in the line of duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

- - - -

Air Force Personnel Assuming Non-Traditional Roles in Iraq, Afghanistan
Voices Magazine Newswire
By Jon E. Dougherty
11 October 2005

| Voices Magazine | In an effort to augment a U.S. Army strained for manpower, the Air Force has begun assigning thousands of ground personnel in combat roles to support Army operations.

The Los Angeles Times reports that some of the new roles for airmen include acting as interrogators, prison sentries and gunners on supply trucks.

In all, some 3,000 Air Force personnel are being assigned these new roles, and some are being deployed for as long as 12 months rather than four.

...

Air Force officials told the Times they expect to deploy another 1,000 ground personnel in combat- and combat-support roles over the next few years, but they don't plan to make these jobs "core competencies" within the Air Force.

The U.S. Navy is also undertaking non-traditional roles. The paper said by summer the Navy expects to have retrained 3,000 to 4,000 sailors as prison guards, cargo handlers and for other jobs that have traditionally fallen to the Army.

(more)

http://www.voicesmag.com/Archives/News/oct2005/air_forc...

[TwilightGardener]

21. SP's (MP's in the other branches) are the most in-demand category

of airmen to fill Army needs, from what I understand. Whether or not they are qualified for convoy security, I can't say, but she was killed by a roadside bomb--that's an equal-opportunity killer, had nothing to do with her skills. I would bet the Army is pretty grateful for these Air Force SP's, no matter what.

[SayWhatYo]

22. I would have been in the AF right now...

had it not been for high blood pressure DQing me. I was always disappointed because of that, but given this sort of news, I'm not so sure.

[Klukie]

24. My brother and sister inlaw are in the AF

My sister inlaw will probably be deployed to Afghanastan sometime in the fall. I am not certain what her job will entail. My brother says that there are currently around 8000 Army billets for AF personel to fill. They start with volunteers first and then proceed to fill the spots by assigning troops to a task that comes as close to their career field as possible. From what I hear there are alot of convoy drivers needed. I am very fearful for them both.

on edit.... The AF is currently downsizing to save funds for aircraft, so they are being pulled in two directions here.