News from the Air Force

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Aircraft Mishaps Now Top Cause of US Deaths in Afghanistan

As combat operations wind down in Afghanistan, aircraft accidents have become the main cause of combat-related deaths among US military personnel there, reported McClatchy. Of the 33 US lives lost since the start of the year, 13 have been in five aircraft crashes, including the four airmen who were killed on April 27 in the crash of an MC-12 surveillance airplane near Kandahar Airfield, according to the news service. The four other crashes involved an F-16, Apache attack helicopter, Black Hawk helicopter, and Kiowa reconnaissance helicopter. Among the remaining deaths, eight came from improvised explosive devices, four from small arms fire, two from indirect fire, and six more from some other means, including two so-called "green-on-blue" attacks, states McClatchy's April 30 report. The latter are cases in which Afghan security forces suddenly turned their guns on US forces. In related news, a commercial 747 cargo airplane under contract to the Defense Department crashed on April 29 while taking off from Bagram Airfield, killing the seven civilian crew members.

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Three airmen from the 93rd Air Refueling Squadron at Fairchild AFB, Wash., lost their lives in last week's crash of a KC-135 tanker near Chon-Aryk, Kyrgyzstan, announced Fairchild officials. Killed in the May 3 mishap were: Capt. Victoria A. Pinckney, 27, of Palmdale, Calif.: Capt. Mark T. Voss, 27, of Boerne, Tex.; and TSgt. Herman Mackey III, 30, of Bakersfield, Calif., according to the May 5 release from Fairchild's 92nd Air Refueling Wing. "We're a strong family here and it's truly heart wrenching when members of this family make the ultimate sacrifice for their nation," said Col. Brian Newberry, wing commander. He added, "These airmen leave behind an incredible legacy of service and honor in protecting our nation and the world. They show what we all know: freedom is not free." The cause of the mishap is under investigation. The crash occurred shortly after the KC-135 took off from the Transit Center at Manas, which is near Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. Manas is a major air hub for sustaining coalition operations in Afghanistan. The Fairchild crew and the KC-135 were deployed to Manas.

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Sexual Assault Prevention Chief Arrested for . . . Sexual Battery


Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, chief of the Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response branch at the Pentagon, was arrested over the weekend for sexual battery in Arlington, Va., according to Arlington County's crime report, issued on Monday. Krusinski's arrest comes at a time when the Air Force has been dealing with a sex abuse scandal in Texas among its military training instructors and facing lawmakers' ire for the decision of a three-star general to overturn a sexual assault conviction. Police charged Krusinski, 41, for allegedly grabbing the breasts and buttocks of a woman in a parking lot in the early hours of May 5 while he was drunk, states the report. USA Today reported that the Air Force removed Krusinski from his position while the case is under investigation. Stars and Stripes reported that Krusinski has been in the SAPR office only several months. The office, which a one-star general oversees, manages programs meant to prevent sexual assault in the ranks, support victims when offenses do occur, and hold perpetrators accountable.

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Wright-Patt Gets C-17 Training Center

Boeing delivered a C-17 training center to Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, where Air Force Reserve Command's 445th Airlift Wing operates nine C-17s, announced the company. The facility, which includes a new and fully networked C-17 weapon system trainer, a training management system, computer-based training devices, a core integrated processor task trainer, and portable flight-planning devices, will enable the base to cut costs by training pilots and loadmasters onsite, according to the company's May 7 release. "Since we received our first C-17 at Wright-Patt in January 2011, our local crews have had to go on temporary duty at other bases around the country to keep up their flying certifications," said Michael Galle, C-17 program manager for training systems at the base. "Now that we have our own training center, we can increase training efficiency and reduce travel time and costs," he said. Wright-Patt's WST has the ability to be networked with other Air Force WST devices around the globe for cross-team mission training, states the release.

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Northern Exposure

The Air Force relieved 17 launch control officers with the 91st Missile Wing at Minot AFB, N.D., of their authority to control and launch Minuteman III nuclear missiles following poor performance in one aspect of a consolidated unit inspection. The decision to sideline the officers for at least two months came following a March inspection in which the wing received a poor, yet passing grade—the equivalent of a "D"—in missile crew operations. Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told members of the House Appropriations Committee's defense panel on May 9 that Air Force inspectors gave the wing an "excellent" rating in 14 of 22 total categories, "satisfactory" in seven categories, and "marginal" in one. "That one area [where they were] rated marginal was missile crew operations. It is unusual for a missile wing to be graded marginal in that area. It does not happen very often," said Welsh. "Now, to be clear, marginal is passing. It meets the minimum standards for getting the job done, but it is not the level [wing leadership] would expect from their crew performance."

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Gen. Philip Breedlove last week took charge of US European Command during a ceremony at the command's headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. Breedlove, who previously oversaw Air Force units in Europe, succeeded Adm. James Stavridis, who led the command since summer 2009. Stavridis is retiring from the Navy after a 37-year career. He will also relinquish his position as NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe to Breedlove in an upcoming ceremony, according to a Defense Department release. "Today, we transfer command responsibility from one outstanding leader to another and recognize the accomplishments of the men and women of US European Command over the past four years," said Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who presided over the May 10 change-of-command ceremony. "I will endeavor to continue the tremendous work of Admiral Stravidis to foster and strengthen partnerships both locally and across the region," said Breedlove. Stavridis told Breedlove, "You will be superb and I'm proud to turn this command over to you." The former is slated to become dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Mass

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The 23rd Flying Training Squadron at Fort Rucker, Ala., conducted the first training flight of its new Career Enlisted Aviator Rotary Wing Fundamentals course, according to unit officials. The course—the first of its kind in the Air Force—will act as a "crash course in helicopter operations," providing enlisted aircrew members with a foundation in flying before they get to their graduate-level training at Kirtland AFB, N.M., said TSgt. Seamus Feeley, CEARF student flight chief, in a release on May 10, three days after the inaugural flight. Before the course, enlisted aircrew members, including aerial gunners and flight engineers, would arrive at Kirtland without any prior flight experience. As such, failure rates for mission qualification training on helicopters and CV-22 tiltrotor platforms were "upwards of 50 percent," according to the release. Squadron officials hope this course will change that. "CEARF will save lost time and money by reducing washouts and allow more individuals to successfully complete training and fill a critically undermanned career field," said Feeley. The course takes 36 training days to complete. CEARF will train about 88 flight engineers each year, states the release.

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Mountain Home Maintenance Unit Inactivates

The 366th Maintenance Operations Squadron at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, stood down as part of an Air Force-wide effort to align field and company grade officer slots with operational requirements, according to a base release. "This inactivation is a result of a decision made by our senior leaders almost a year ago to correct a long-standing imbalance in the ratio of field grade officers to company grade officers in the maintenance officer career field," said Col. James McClellan, 366th Maintenance Group commander. "If not corrected, this imbalance would prove to make the maintenance officer career field unsustainable in future years as the demand for senior officers would not be met," he added during the May 13 standdown ceremony. By the end of the fiscal year, the Air Force plans to inactivate more MOS units service-wide, states the May 16 release. The 366th MOS provided staff support for the maintenance group while also supporting the base's F-15E operations. As part of the change, about 150 airmen will come under a different squadron and leadership.

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Hard Landing for C-130

A C-130 transport made a hard landing on Sunday at Forward Operating Base Shank in Logar province, Afghanistan, during an aeromedical evacuation mission, announced Air Forces Central Command officials. There were no injuries in the incident, which occurred at around 2:20 p.m. local time on May 19, they said. The airplane and crew are assigned to the 772nd Airlift Squadron at Kandahar Airfield. The cause of the hard landing is under investigation.

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Not a Good Situation

A total of 31 squadrons across the Air Force have stopped flying as a result of budget sequestration, said Lt. Gen. Burton Field, deputy chief of staff for operations, plans, and requirements. That includes, 13 fighter and bomber squadrons, two AWACS squadrons, and 16 "training or some other kind" of squadrons, said Field during an AFA-Air Force Breakfast Program event in Arlington, Va., on May 23. In addition, "seven or eight" other combat air force squadrons are flying "at a very reduced rate," and all Air Force tankers and C-130s are "flying at the bare basic rate," said Field. "That's not a good situation for an Air Force," he said. However, there may be some glimmer of hope for dormant aircrews. That's because the Fiscal 2013 reprogramming request that the Pentagon has submitted to Congress would enable some of those squadrons to start flying again, said Field. "But only a small chunk," he noted. "Maybe a four-ship's worth or a six-ship's worth, just so we have the capability in case something bad happens."

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Modernization Faces the Knife

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley laid out the price of Congress' continued refusal to accept hard choices and set budgets that the service can plan to. "If there continues to be resistance to force structure changes, to base closures, to constraining growth in compensation, and given our current focus on trying to improve readiness," continuation of the sequester into the next fiscal year likely would require "disproportionate cuts to our modernization programs," said Donley during a May 24 press briefing in the Pentagon. "These cutbacks in modernization would put at risk the Air Force capabilities this nation will need in the decades ahead," said Donley, who is stepping down from his post on June 21. He noted that in answering the last call for $487 billion in Defense Department-wide cuts, "the cancellation or delay of modernization programs accounted for 65 percent of total Air Force reductions" across the future years defense program. Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, appearing with Donley, said the sequester has "driven us over the readiness cliff," and the Air Force can't even think about new starts until its "readiness crisis" is addressed. "We've entered a period from which we must first recover before we can think about what else might be possible down the road," said Welsh.

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Kadena Pilot in Stable Condition after F-15 Goes Down in Pacific

An F-15 pilot assigned to the 18th Wing at Kadena AB, Japan, was in stable condition in a military medical facility after the crash of an F-15 on Monday in the waters of the Pacific, announced base officials on Tuesday. Japanese rescuers recovered the pilot, who had ejected from the F-15 about 70 miles east of Okinawa at about 9 a.m. local time during the May 27 sortie, they said in a release. The Air Force has not released the pilot's name. The cause of the mishap is thus far undetermined, the officials said, noting that they would release more information as it becomes available. As a result of the mishap, the wing announced that it would suspend F-15 training at Kadena for one day. "It's common practice to stand down training operations after a major mishap to allow aircrews time and opportunity to reflect on what happened and re-focus on training requirements," states the wing's May 28 release. "Every F-15 at Kadena will undergo an inspection to ensure they are safe to fly."

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The Ohio Air National Guard's 179th Airlift Wing in Mansfield welcomed the first two of eight C-130Hs that it is taking on as part of a mission switch, according to a unit release. The two aircraft, formerly flown by the Alaska Air Guard, touched down at the Mansfield Lahm Airport on May 24, states the release. The wing is losing its four C-27J airplanes in this fiscal year as part of the Air Force's divestiture of the C-27 fleet. In their place, it will receive the eight C-130s, along with nearly 200 extra personnel. All eight of the C-130s are slated to be in place by June 2016, according to unit officials.

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Looking at Nuclear Motivations

While US policy is pushing towards nuclear disarmament, the rest of the world is taking a different tack, said Barry Watts, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, on Thursday. While the United States and Soviet Union held the overwhelming majority of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, the concentration is not as dense today, as countries from Pakistan to North Korea to Iran are either declared nuclear powers or seeking to expand into the realm, he said during a presentation sponsored by AFA's Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies in Arlington, Va. Watts cited North Korea and Iran, in particular, as countries that learned lessons from the US invasion of Iraq—and see nuclear weapons as a protective measure against "conventional regime change," as he put it. Use of nuclear weapons in the event of a conventional war is not necessarily clearly defined by some countries, noted Watts. For example, Russian military doctrine has a very different view about limited nuclear use in a theater context and Pakistan appears to entertain similar thoughts. The danger is that the limited use of nuclear weapons could be seen as a "new normal" by some nations, he said during his May 30 talk

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The Air Force anticipates that the F-35A strike fighter will be ready for initial real-world operations by December 2016, service officials told Congress last week. The Air Force intends to declare initial operational capability sometime between August 2016 and December 2016 when the first F-35A operational squadron has 12 to 24 aircraft in place and sufficient airmen are trained to fly and maintain them, according to a Pentagon report issued to lawmakers on May 31. The F-35As at IOC will be capable of conducting basic close air support, interdiction, and limited suppression and destruction of enemy air defense operations in a contested environment, states the report. "This announcement is exciting news for the Air Force," said Secretary Michael Donley in a May 31 release. At IOC, the F-35As will utilize Block 3I software—the Block 2B software package hosted on a better system of processors, sources indicated. While the F-35As in that configuration will be adequate for threats of 2016, the report states that "the Air Force will require the enhanced lethality and survivability inherent in Blocks 3F and beyond" to meet requirements in later years.

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The Air Force's second-to-last factory-fresh C-17 transport arrived at JB Charleston, S.C. This airframe is the 222nd C-17 that manufacturer Boeing has supplied to the service. Airmen of Charleston's 437th Airlift Wing and Air Force Reserve Command's 315th AW will operate the aircraft as part of the base's 52-airplane C-17 force. Members of the 315th AW ferried the airplane to Charleston from Boeing's assembly plant in Long Beach, Calif., on May 30, according to a base release. Also on board the C-17 were Lt. Gen. Robert Allardice, Air Mobility Command vice commander, and Lt. Gen. Mark Ramsay, the Joint Staff's director of force structure, resources, and assessment. The Air Force's previous C-17—the 221st off the line—arrived at Charleston on April 25. The Air Force is expected to receive its final C-17 on order later this year.

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Long-Range Strike Bomber and Assurance in the Pacific

Naval assets and strategic air forces are going to be a "huge component" of the next two decades of US strategy and the nation needs to make sure it gets the balance right, said Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's seapower and projection forces panel, on Tuesday. The Air Force's Long-Range Strike Bomber is a component of this balance, Forbes told reporters during the June 4 meeting in Washington, D.C. When asked about the health of the LRS-B program, Forbes said he believes the Air Force and Office of the Secretary of Defense have been "very forthcoming" about its progress towards an on-ramp capability in the mid-2020s. "I think they've been transparent to us at this particular point," he said. "It doesn't mean we don't have problems and things to do," but the program is "moving along," he added. Forbes also wants the Pentagon doing more strategic thinking about "cost imposition strategy" as it relates to countries like China that have invested in asymmetric tools, such as cyber weapons and ballistic missiles, to counter US advantages in the Pacific, such as aircraft carriers.

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Meet Your Team of the Year

*Aircraft loadmasters are the Air Force's 2013 Team of the Year. "We are honored to have the opportunity to highlight these airmen who embody the core values of our USAF: integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do," said AFA President Craig McKinley in a release. Each year, the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force leads a group of major command-level command chiefs that selects a career field for the honor and then identifies individual members within that field for special recognition. This year, those members are: MSgt. Erin L. Manley, a loadmaster superintendent with the 15th Airlift Squadron at JB Charleston, S.C.; TSgt. Russell J. Cantrell, an instructor supervisor with the 344th Training Squadron at JBSA-Lackland, Tex.; SSgt. Nicholas J. Rizzo, an MC-130H loadmaster with the 15th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla.; SrA. Katherine D. Mackey of Air Force Reserve Command's 68th AS at Lackland; and SrA. Nicholas E. Cunningham, a C-130J instructor loadmaster with the 37th AS at Ramstein AB, Germany. Loadmasters play "an essential role in the United States Air Force by providing detailed support to every mission we fly," said AFA Board Chairman George Muellner. "We thank them for their exceptional service," he said. Loadmasters supervise the loading and unloading of cargo, vehicles, and personnel on a variety of aircraft.

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Every Dollar Counts Campaign Wraps Up

Airmen submitted more than 11,000 cost-reducing ideas during the Every Dollar Counts campaign, a month-long initiative that allowed airmen to recommend areas of savings for the Air Force, according to a service release. Of those recommendations, 38 percent had to do with personnel policy, 23 percent involved logistics and installation support, and 11 percent dealt with changes in information technology, according to the June 5 release. "Today's fiscal constraints are the tightest our Air Force has experienced in many years," wrote Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Larry Spencer in a June 5 letter thanking airmen for their ideas. "Your overwhelming response during the Airmen Powered by Innovation Call for Ideas has emboldened us all with confidence that our Air Force will persevere through these tough times and emerge a more effective and efficient fighting force for America."

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Basic Electronic Warfare Training Goes Airborne

Air Education and Training Command has incorporated electronic warfare training into the airborne portion of its undergraduate combat systems officer training, according to a release. A T-1 aircraft modified for electronic warfare took to the skies at NAS Pensacola, Fla., on June 4, symbolizing this new era of training, states the 12th Flying Training Wing's June 5 release. "Incorporating a formalized, airborne electronic warfare training platform is a first for flying training at the undergraduate CSO level," said Lt. Col. Timothy Moser, 451st Flying Training Squadron commander. Previously, students received the EW portion of combat systems officer training "only in a simulator with basic flying skills taught in the aircraft," states the release. "The electronic warfare skills are now integrated into the flying where the concepts initially taught exclusively in the simulator are reinforced airborne," states the release.