Air Force personnel seeing longer tours downrange

[unhappycamper]

Air Force personnel seeing longer tours downrange
By Jennifer H. Svan, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Thursday, November 29, 2007

While the majority of airmen still deploy for four months — the shortest of any service — Air Force missions for many downrange are getting longer.

About 42 percent of airmen are deployed for taskings greater than 120 days, while 10 Air Force career fields now deploy for either 179 or 365 days, according to Capt. Tom Wenz, an Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon.

Civil engineering and contracting were the latest career fields to be extended to a six-month deployment — and longer if advanced training is required.

“Changes to the standard rotation are based on the requests by the respective career fields and are driven by requirements established by the Combatant Commander,” Wenz wrote in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes.

In a recent letter to his airmen, Maj. Gen. Del Eulberg, the Air Force Civil Engineer, said over the past three years, civil engineers have been in “a surge operations tempo that has a majority of our forces on 179-day tours, others on 120-day tours and an increasing number on 365-day tours. To meet the continuing high demand while providing commanders a measure of predictability and stability to home station missions, we sought and received approval to place all civil engineers in an alternative construct for AEF Cycle 7 beginning January 2008.”

Civil engineering airmen will deploy for six months and then have 12 months at their home base before being eligible to deploy for another six-month tour. That means over a two-year period, a civil engineer could be away from home station 12 months or more, depending on training required ahead of any deployment.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50570



uhc comment: Del Eulberg also wrote a backtalk article praising the privatization of military housing --> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=259x7510

[midlife_mo_Jo]

1. My nephew is in one of the fields that will be going from a 4 month

deployment to year long deployment.

In his field, there is no shortage of men and women and they have been easily rotating in and out of Iraq, but talk is that they are deploying for longer stints because of the "fairness factor." Great. We can make even more families miserable in order to be fair.

How about making fewer people miserable and putting fewer people in danger and get the hell out of there?

[TwilightGardener]

2. Yes--my husband had also been deploying for the standard AF four month rotations, and

that was recently bumped up to six months for his job, even though there's no manpower reason to do so. It's not like he's replacing exhausted army guys, the services don't generally work like that. Stupid. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan just aren't "Air Force wars", they're mostly ground wars--BUT the AF commanders want a piece of the action (good career-builder, you know), and are trying to get their airmen in there for as much and as long as possible.

[midlife_mo_Jo]

3. Hope and pray your husband stays safe!

[TwilightGardener]

4. Thanks!

Same for your nephew!