A Look at Air Force DrawdownTom Philpott | November 08, 2007
The Air Force has pared its active duty force by 25,500 personnel over the last two years. It will cut another 17,000 personnel over the next two years to reach a self-imposed strength target of 316,500 by October 2009.
The idea, say service leaders, is to free up budget dollars through manpower cuts and organizational streamlining in order to afford replacement of a dangerously aged fleet of aircraft for the next conflict.
The day-to-day manager of this controversial wartime drawdown, now past its halfway mark, is Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel. He discussed the drawdown, and the reasons behind it, during a Nov. 7 address to a group of Air Force leaders, congressional staffers, defense analysts and press. It was part of the Air Force’s Defense Strategy Seminar Series which it conducts periodically on Capitol Hill.
Trained as a logistician as well as a pilot, Brady quipped that managing the drawdown “is a lot like managing parts, except these parts each have an e-mail account, an attitude and a congressional representative.”
He immediately turned more serious, noting the “painful” effect a force reduction has on individuals. A 12 percent staff cut over four years might not be perceived as “a big deal” to the chief executive officer of a corporation, Brady said. It is to a service in wartime, he suggested.
And, he added, “if you’re one of the young men or women walking out the door, it’s a 100-percent cut….Everybody that’s with us is a volunteer. They came in thinking that they had a life, a career. And some of those careers have been cut short.”
Rest of article at:
http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,155811,00.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
