Air Force fills out Army ranks in Iraq

By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer Sun Apr 15, 7:08 PM ET

CAMP BULLIS, Texas - 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.
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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.

No plans to expand the Air Force's role in convoy operations have been announced since Bush ordered the troop surge in Iraq, but Ryan said the Army and other branches of service have been looking at every possible job that can be shifted — from the Air Force performing convoy duty to the Navy setting up medical facilities far from waterfronts.

"I can't imagine there are any jobs that they could be doing that they aren't doing, but certainly, that doesn't mean they're not continuing to look to find every possible instance where we can use the full military to solve this problem and not just have this be an Army and Marine Corps issue," he said.

Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the military's chief spokesman in Iraq, said it makes sense to bring in other branches of service for routine activities such as the convoy operations, whereas "it's not something we should do to use them to clear buildings and conduct operations."

The 2,225 airmen who have been trained and sent to run convoys in Iraq and
Afghanistan so far remain a relatively small part of the overall force that includes tens of thousands of soldiers, who are sent for longer stretches and more frequent deployments.

The training at Camp Bullis began nearly three years ago, without the elaborate camp that evolved with the persistent need for Air Force help and long before Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week extended active Army deployments by three months.

The Air Force is running a regular rotation of 5-week courses for airmen to work convoys between Kuwait and Iraq. Recently, separate training was created for those being deployed to Afghanistan.

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.

"I was expecting just to be a vehicle operations troop, dealing with wreckers, forklifts — vehicles like that," said Senior Airman Robert Bledsoe, who manned a 50-caliber gun during his first deployment to Iraq. "It opened my eyes a bunch."

He completed a second round of training last week with a unit that will deploy within about a week for a 6-month tour, longer than the standard 4-month deployments for most Air Force personnel but much shorter than the 15-month tours active Army personnel now face.

Staff Sgt. Stewart Jordan, a transport instructor for the course, said even the most reluctant airmen-turned-soldiers usually come around, ultimately finding the mission fulfilling.

"Those that it's tougher on realize that they signed on the dotted line," he said.

So....do ya have something against Airmen learning how to defend themselves?

I sleep with one every night.

you don't see a problem with this? How will this effect Air Force recruiting? Isn’t this part of a larger systemic problem? Where does all of this end?

Well no, I don't Vaughn.

I suppose in your opinion it would be better if every Air Force personnel in Iraq had their own personal jarhead or doggie to provide personal protection for them. Then we could get every airman a tutu and ballet slippers and they'd not have to worry about getteing them dirty.

Why bother having individual branches, get rid of the marines, navy, air force and coast guard, give all the responsibility to the Army, they are all infantry first, they have experience with fighting an air war, (Army Air Corps) and it would end the jealousy amongst the services, it would also save America a ton of cash by eliminating all the other services bureaucracy.
This is just another sign of how broken the military really is. If you old timers can’t see it for what it is, go to the VA and get fitted with some new glasses, the rest of the world, including our enemies, can see our military’s sorry condition perfectly.

Let's see now, since this's been happenin' for over a hundred years methinks it must be a real bit of breakin' news. The Navy's medical folks go with the Marines where ever they get sent and've been doin' it since 1898, eh? Must be news to MICHELLE ROBERTS, the Associated Press Writer that authored this story though. Gotta love how extensively these stories get researched!

And before 1898 the Marines went anywhere the Navy took em, eh Doc.

Air Force Pinched by Iraq Ground War

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

(04-24) 16:00 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

The Air Force's top general expressed frustration on Tuesday with the reassignment of troops under his command to ground jobs for which they were not trained, ranging from guarding prisoners to driving trucks and typing.

Gen. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, said that over 20,000 airmen have been assigned worldwide into roles outside their specialties.

With President Bush and Congress in a standoff over Iraq spending, the Pentagon is shifting money among services and accounts, including drawing down funds earmarked for other later purposes.

"Somebody's going to have to pay us back," Moseley said. "I don't have to want to have concerns about getting that money back."

In a breakfast session with a group of reporters, Moseley said he was trying to be realistic. "We live in a joint world. We live in a military that's at war. And we live in a situation where, if we can contribute, then sign me up for it."

Still, the Air Force general added, "I'm less supportive of things outside our competency."

He said people were being assigned to jobs they weren't trained for. He cited Air Force airmen being used to guard prisoners and to serve as drivers and cited one instance in which an Air Force surgeon was assigned typing chores after three days at her new post.

"We got her back," Moseley said.

Others are being assigned to help the Army provide security in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Moseley said he didn't mind the use of airmen as drivers as much as some of the other new duties usually performed by the Army, such as guarding prisoners.

"Not only do we not have a prison, but very rarely do we have anybody in prison," he joked.

"So, to take our people and train them to be a detainee-guarding entity requires `x' amount of time away from their normal job," said Moseley.

"Those are the things that are very frustrating," he said.

He said the swap-outs come at a time when the Air Force's budget is burdened, when there is little money for new aircraft and when maintaining an aging fleet of older planes, some of them going back to the 1950s and 1960s, is getting increasingly expensive.

"Operational and maintenance costs have gone up 180 percent over the past 10 years, operating these old aircraft," he said.

As part of Bush's troop buildup in order to try to secure Baghdad and nearby hot spots, there are currently about 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Of these, about 9,500 are Air Force. An additional 1,100 airmen are in Afghanistan, according to the Air Force. Roughly 24,100 Air Force personnel are stationed throughout the broader region.

With much of the action in Iraq now focused on neighborhood-to-neighborhood efforts to contain violence, there has been less attention on the roles of the Air Force and the Navy.

Moseley said the Air Force still has vital responsibilities in Iraq, including striking targets, surveillance and search and rescue missions.

The Pentagon says it has enough money to pay for the Iraq war through June. The Army is taking "prudent measures" aimed at ensuring that delays in the bill financing the war do not harm troop readiness, such as moving money from other accounts, according to instructions sent to Army commanders and budget officials April 14.

The Defense Department also said it plans to ask Congress to approve the temporary reprogramming of $1.6 billion from Navy and Air Force pay accounts to the Army's operating account.

The $70 billion that Congress provided in September for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has mostly run out, and the Army has told department officials to slow the purchase of nonessential repair parts and other supplies, restrict the use of government charge cards and limit travel.

On another subject, Moseley said he had ordered a review of vulnerabilities of U.S. military satellites, partially in response to China's anti-missile test in January, in which it used a missile to destroy one of its own old weather satellites. He said he found China's move alarming.

China's motives remain unclear, but demonstrating that it can shoot down one of its own satellites also suggests it could knock another nation's satellites out of the sky if it chose, which Moseley said would be widely seen as an act of war.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n.../w140326D30.DTL