Air Force Ground Troops?

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roy reali

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I was listening to NPR this morning. I know what some of you are thinking, why would any member of this forum listen to that radio station? I have a good reason. Around here, it is one of the few radio stations we get. Actually, sometimes they do report and comment on things that no one else seems to.

They had a story this morning about the Air Force. They are now training 5,000 airmen a year to help with the ground fighting in Iraq. This is not good.

I joined the Air Force right after high school. I joined this service because I liked airplanes and wanted to work around them. I did understand that any military branch can be called into action at any time, but the Air Force doesn't come to mind when one talks about ground forces. In fact, while in the Air Force we used to joke around that if ground fighting ever came down to us, we would be in a world of hurt.

Guess what, we are!
 
Air Force truck drivers and EOD personnel are already involved. The nature of the beast. Army tours have been increased from 12 months to 15 months. which means that the Army is going to need assitance from the other branches in areas that they usually have the missions in.

The back page of the DD Form 4/1(Enlistment/ReenlistmentDocument) 9 a (1) Required to obey all lawful orders and perform all assigned duties.
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Guess that means you should get some Arrrrmmmmmmmy Trrrrraiiiiiiningggggg.......
 
Re:eghad

When you start using the Air Force as ground troops, things are not going well. You call on the Air Force when you need a B52 to get someones attention. Which I think is long overdo.

What is next, sending in the Civil Air Patrol?
 
For some unfathomable reason, GWB (under the thrall of Rumsfeld at the time) was incapble of actually taking us to war. He was deluded to believe in war on the cheap with a volunteer army made of the poor and lower social classes.

If Iraq was so damn important - we would have mobilized and swarmed the joint with troops. Thus, they still play games within the available forces and we see logistic troops and the AF playing real infantry roles.

Let be conspiratorial here - if we went to war - there would be a draft:

1. Folks would sue to let gays in.
2. Folks would sue that why should they go if gays get a free pass.
3. Folks would sue to draft women. Some women would sue to have the right to be drafted. Men would sue not to go if women weren't drafted.
4. The country would not tolerate a draft with the outs that let Bush and Cheney avoid the war (and Clinton also).

All this would fry Bush's right wing social agenda. Also, maybe a draft would snatch up the twins.

So, it is another indication of the pure incompetence of the Bush administration in fighting a war that they claim is crucial to our safety.

If we are fighting them there as to stop them from coming here - why aren't there more of us over there?

There is no escaping Bush's stunning incompetence.
 
Wow. Guess they couldn't find enough suckers to join us under the Blue to Green program, so they're just letting them continue to wear blue while doing the Green's job. Sucks to be them.

We didn't have the manpower to accomplish this mission from the start. Anybody with a brain (and who was willing to listen to it) knew it would take an occupying force of upwards of half a million troops (I believe our own doctrine suggested such a ratio). Shinseki even said as much publicly, and was quickly shouted down. The reason? We didn't have half a million troops to deploy, at least not indefinitely...so what he was saying was that we couldn't have our war.

We never had much of a chance of this going well without either A) a draft or B) broad international support. We weren't willing to stomach the former or willing to wait for the latter...so now here we are.
 
Another stupid idea of Mr Rumsfield combining branches of the military along with down sizing. Think about ww2 and then consider Iraq with approx. 22m people. In truth technology is great but in the end it always comes down to the man with a rifle and now we're there.
 
My Background

I joined the Air Force several decades ago. I know of friends and relatives that have done time in one of the other services. We have often compared notes.

I went through six weeks of basic training. Air Force boot camp is nothing more then a glorified boy scout camp. Our only exposure to shooting any weapon was a one time trip to the base range. We each fired a hundred rounds through an M16. If the bullets landed somewhere in front of the muzzle we passed. Our physical to "graduate" training was being able to run a mile and a half under sixteen and a half minutes. A person can walk that. We had no bayonet or hand-to-hand combat training.

Talking to folks that went through Marine or Army boot camp forced me to make only one comparison betwen them and the Air Force. We all wore boots. Physically, they did more in one day then we did in six weeks. Weapons were actually issued to them and accurate shooting was mandatory for graduation. They were trained to and expected to fight.

The Air Force is a military branch. But it must be the least military of all of them. Everyone in the Air Force is there to support a flying mission. The pilots do the fighting, the rest of us kept them in the air. If a war is coming down to using Air Foce people for ground fighting things are bad. It would be like a football team that had to start substituting cheerleaders for players.

No matter how you want to cut it, this is not good.
 
Hey Roy...we all have our roles to do..what the Air Force does..they do well. I wouldn't expect them to do my job..I know that I couldn't do many of theirs!
 
There's just no such thing as good news anymore. Every day the news is as bad as the day before. And if we ever do go home the S will really hit the fan bigtime and we won't be able to do much more than we're doing now.

Ew, light bulb. We could end this thing asap if we fire our Commander-in-Chief and name him president of our enemies. They wouldn't stand much of a chance.
 
Hey Roy...we all have our roles to do..what the Air Force does..they do well. I wouldn't expect them to do my job..I know that I couldn't do many of theirs!
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So very true. But I will say this: I did a majority of my deployment operating out of an airbase, and wow do they have it better than the Army does when it comes to living conditions.

Ew, light bulb. We could end this thing asap if we fire our Commander-in-Chief and name him president of our enemies. They wouldn't stand much of a chance.
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:D
 
Re:juancarlos

My step son did time in the Marines. He could not believe the quality of the chow that airmen got when he ate at an Air Force Base.
 
Get serious guys. I was in the Army. We know the Air Force lives in luxury. I went to an Air Force base and the mess Sergeant asked me what I wanted for breakfast. I thought this was some kind of enemy trick! :D Just kidding, we are all in this together and the Air Force does it's job as well as any for this Country.

We could end this thing asap if we fire our Commander-in-Chief and name him president of our enemies. They wouldn't stand much of a chance.
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Never have I read a more true assessment of the situation. The thing is are our enemies dumb enough to have him as their commander?...we are not that lucky!
 
I don't know Mr. Meyer, I personally think a draft is a bad idea. You get unmotivated, unwilling and mostly undertrained (because of poor motivation) troops.


Like Robert Heinlen said. "I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!"
Source: Guest of Honor Speech at the XIXth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961.


volunteer army made of the poor and lower social classes.

Personally I think you perception of the volunteer Army is a load of rubbish.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/upload/cda05-08_t1.gif

The chart came from this Article in 2005

http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/cda05-08.cfm

Of course you could just construe this to what Mark Twain said "There are liars, damn liars and statiticians."


If there was a draft, which I would not support, I would probably join back up, I am just closing in on 40, but just to keep the standards up in the Army. (I finished up my time as a 95D, so you guys would know what I would be doing)
 
Thanks for the update there, TwoXForr. Last numbers I found when I looked were from like 1999 or 2000, but were largely the same. Looks like the upper quintile is even catching up (while recruits in general weren't disproportionately poor before, the upper quintile was even more underrepresented).

There are some interesting socioeconomic factors in military enlistment, at least there were prior to 9/11 (and likely still are some), but generally not the ones many claim and they aren't particularly simple.
 
Mr. Meyer:
I tried very hard not to take your statement about the makeup of the Army personally. I was unable to do so.

I'm not going to attempt to counter your argument with statements about myself, you can check the link Twoxforr provided.

I will simply say I find that remark highly offensive and leave it at that.
 
Every Airman a rifleman? That don't sound right. But seriously on the subject of Airforce chow great was the day when we landed on airforce bases and they brought out the Airforce box chows. We Marines usually got a soggy sandwich, hard boiled egg and a punch in the chops. You get that Airforce chow we are talking two sodas, two sandwiches, bag of chips, cookies, fruit and a damn candy bar. After eating that you had to punch your own head and do 50 push-up (4 count anyone?) just so you would burn off all the damn geedunk

***EDIT***
I posted this before I got a chance to read the post by Mr. Meyer. I can honestly say that you have no idea what you are talking about. The majority of the Marines and Sailors that I served with and trained were not from the supposed "lower classes" And if they were they were more then happy to be in the service because they were not continuing the endless cycle of poverty and welfare. These "lower classes" you so flippantly refer to are the guy or girl next door who instead of sucking money from mom and dad for another 4 years decided that they won't be a leech and they will make thier lives worth something and SERVE. Service yea thats a novel idea nowadays.
 
I don't know Mr. Meyer, I personally think a draft is a bad idea. You get unmotivated, unwilling and mostly undertrained (because of poor motivation) troops.
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Not true. I guess I have to be serious. You can say I am old and things have changed...maybe you are right. But I was in the Army when the draft was in place. Actually I volunteered, but gained a lot of respect for the draftee's. The problem is not the draft but the war they are being asked to fight. If they think it is truly to help their country then draftee's will stand strong (and have) with everyone else. I agree with one thing. Draftee's will rebel more if you put them in war for the wrong reasons. You know like being so dumb to start a war that is really a religious war and finding you have no good way out. Sound familiar?
 
Re:firecaptdave

The NPR story I heard said that now the Airmen will assist in clearing cities. They will be fighting side-by-side with "normal" ground troops.

Let me repeat, this ain't good.
 
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