Gates: No more personnel cuts for Air Force

Stars and Stripes ^ | 6/11/08 | Lisa Burgess

[Dawnsblood]

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Monday that he plans to “immediately stop” all further reductions in Air Force personnel.

Gates made his promise while addressing airmen at Langley Air Force Base, Va., late Monday afternoon to discuss his ouster of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley.

Along with the usual airmen lost through normal attrition, Air Force leaders had planned to cut an additional 6,800 airmen from the rolls in fiscal 2009, Capt. Michael Andrews, an Air Force spokesman for personnel matters told Stripes on Monday.

Of those, 4,700 would have been enlisted members, and 1,900 officers, Andrews said.

In his address at Langley, Gates said the American public’s focus on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is mostly about the Army.

However, Gates said, “the reality is that our Airmen and women, and those in the other services are under strain as well,” Gates said. “In fact, you have been forward-deployed, and at war for 17 years – since the first Gulf War.”

Pentagon leaders know this, Gates told the airmen, “and are working to ease the burden.”

And his first step, Gates said, is to stop the Air Force’s personnel cuts.

Unlike the Marines and Army, which are both expanding, the Air Force has had a “Force Shaping” plan in effect since 2002, when Air Force leaders announced that they would said cut 40,000 personnel over the course of the next five years, and use the money they saved to modernize the Air Force’s aging air fleet.said.

[PurpleMan]

“Military golf course professionals react with joy”

OUCH!

[kcm.org]

President Bush is sending signals to Persia to poo-poo or get off the pot!

[Roamin53]

They have been cutting way too deep and are losing valuable personnel. of course I expect this to be worse if Obama wins.

[nevergore]

Titlelist golf ball stock shot up on the news......

[JRios1968]

They have been cutting way too deep and are losing valuable personnel.

One reason I am now a civilian. 

[MinorityRepublican]

Well I think we need to automate our Air Force while we continue to increase the number of infantry in both the Marine Corps and the Army.

[Mr. Silverback]

Thank God. Though I’ve been pleased with Gates so far, he should have put a stop to “Force Shaping” the minute he was sworn in. You don’t cut troops in the middle of a war. We’re just going to have to pony up for new jets.

[K-oneTexas]

I hope there are no additional cuts. The total number of service members is controlled and capped by Congress. As of 2007 legislation:

US Army - 520,000 (36% of Total Force)
US Navy - 373,830 (26%)
US Air Force - 328,270 (23%)
US Marines - 186,209 (13%)
US Coast Guard - 39,121 (3%)
For a total of 1,449,428 service members

We're already "running near empty!" But we've got a lot of great men and women serving.

[PurpleMan]

Maybe not. Someone is going to have to ferry all of his congressional cronies around.

[Yo-Yo]

Issued to every Airman upon completion of Basic Training at Lackland AFB:

</sarc>

[jagusafr]

“Hey, no problem - we’ve got all those Guard and Reserve folks out there and they LOVE to be recalled/activated/mobilized/[term du jour]! We’ll just use them, since they don’t count against end strength! Sign me up for more new toys!”

Colonel, USAFR

[Mr. Silverback]

I hate to contribute to the stereotype, but I don’t think I knew any male Air Force officers who didn’t play golf. Plenty of senior NCOs, too. One of the family jokes is that I got out for medical reasons, with the medical reason always related to golf: pulled my hamstring and couldn’t golf, failed a psych eval because I said golf is not a real sport, etc. Then there’s the one where I was discharged for failing a room inspection...they couldn’t find my golf clubs anywhere...

[Yo-Yo]

I know it's a stereotype, but there is a grain of truth to the matter.

However, just to be fair, my Father-in-Law was drafted into the Marine Corps during the Korean war, and spent his entire enlistment working at the Camp Pendleton Golf Course.

[Mr. Silverback]

Ouch!

BTW, saw one of Hountain Home’s B-52s at the Rockford Airfest on Saturday. Just freakin’ awesome to get back into that cavernous bomb bay.

[DesScorp]

" Thank God. Though I’ve been pleased with Gates so far, he should have put a stop to “Force Shaping” the minute he was sworn in. You don’t cut troops in the middle of a war. We’re just going to have to pony up for new jets."

As critical as I am of USAF doctrine and policy, yeah, it's kind of stupid to cut troop levels during wartime. Just because they're not infantrymen doesn't mean they can't help the war effort.

As an aside, you'd have more money for "shiny new planes" if the ones you wanted didn't cost so much. And I'm not only criticizing USAF here... my own service, the Navy, has a useless, uber-expensive white elephant in the DDG-1000 program. The surface warfare people need to take a cue from the Naval Aviation people and evolve current weapons into new ones, a'la the hornet into the Super Hornet program. It's the only way to do it affordably now. And we used to know this. After all, the Aegis class cruisers used prior tech in their program to save costs. From the weather deck down, the Aegis ships used the Spruance/Kidd class destroyer hulls. When Spruance construction was done, they kept the line open and just started building them with the new Aegis bridges.

I've long felt USAF should have done the same thing. In fact, you looked at doing so with the F-16XL program, which would have been an excellent (and very affordable) light strike fighter program. If I'm not mistaken, one faction of USAF wants to do exactly this in bomber acquisition, by getting new build B-1's with evolved technology. That's an excellent idea, as we have BUFF's with engine pods falling off.

[Mr. Silverback]

Couldn’t agree more. One good piece of news we were discussing in another thread is that the A-10 is being modded to a standard called the A-10C, which will keep it in service past 2020.

[DesScorp]

Hell, the Warthog is one of those planes USAF should put back into production.