Category: Air Force

The sad news comes to us that former Air force combat controller Sean Harvell’s lifeless body was found on a beach in California after someone fished him out of the water. The Air Force Staff Sergeant was awarded two Silver Stars for his actions in separate engagement in May and July 2007 – the first airman to be so awarded in the war against terror. His brother, Andrew, was killed in Afghanistan in 2011.

From the Long Beach Post;

According Sgt. Brad Johnson of the Long Beach Police Department (LBPD), officers were dispatched to a screaming subject on the beach around 1:00AM. Upon arrival, they discovered a private security person performing life-saving measures on the man, who had been found in the water.

Officers attempted life saving measures as well, before the Long Beach Fire Department (LBFD) arrived and took over.

The man could not be resuscitated, according to the LBFD’s Brian Fisk, and was determined deceased.

He also starred in a recruiting video for the Air Force;

The citations for his two Silver Star Medals are posted at Military Times’ Hall of Valor.

On Friday, Technical Sgt. Steven D. Bellino killed Lieutenant Colonel William “Bill” Schroeder, commander of the 342nd Training Squadron at Lackland Air Force Base. Bellino then turned the gun on himself. The Washington Post says that Bellino was an FBI agent and an Army veteran of the Iraq War before he joined the AIr Force to become a pararescue “PJ”.

Bellino, first identified by The Washington Post early Saturday afternoon, had previously worked for less than two years in the FBI, partly in the New York field office. It was not immediately clear how Bellino obtained the rank of technical sergeant, a mid-ranking enlisted airman, after serving in the Air Force for less than a year. But the Air Force does have a program that allows veterans with previous military experience to join the service full time to take specific jobs that are hard to fill, including pararescueman.

The San Antonio Express-News says that Bellino went AWOL after failing the water endurance test and he was facing disciplinary proceedings the morning of the murder/suicide.

On Friday Bellino came to Forbes Hall on the pretext of accepting nonjudicial punishment, according to the blog and law enforcement and military sources who spoke on background because of the ongoing investigation.

[…]

When the assailant, armed with two Glock handguns, produced a weapon, Schroeder told the senior NCO, a first sergeant, to run.

During the struggle, the technical sergeant fired at the first sergeant but missed her as she fled. Schroeder then fought with the assailant and was shot three times in the arm before being shot in the head.

The account could not be confirmed by Air Force officials at Joint Base San Antonio, which is handling the case. The San Antonio Express-News asked to speak with someone from the command, but they declined to respond.

A couple of people asked me what happened in this video;

I’m still not sure I know – but apparently it was a clash of personalities. Someone wanted retired Senior Master Sgt. Oscar Rodriguez, the fellow being removed from the ceremony, to speak at his retirement ceremony and the commander didn’t want him to speak. There is a full explanation at John Q Public, the authority on all things Air Force.

I read the whole thing, but it all seems rather childish to me. I know how I would have avoided the whole thing if I’d been any one of those folks.

Also from Fox News;

A spokesman from the reserve said that the confrontation stemmed from “an unplanned participation” at the event.

“Rodriguez ignored numerous requests to respect the Air Force prescribed ceremony and unfortunately was forcibly removed,” a Travis official said in a statement to FoxNews.com. “We will continue to investigate the situation fully.”

Neither Rodriguez nor the honoree could be reached for comment.

There are other ways to occupy the Air Force’s time, I’m sure, you know, terrorists and all that.

For some reason, last night the video was posted on Fox with no explanation, so everyone was confused. I’m still confused, if the truth is told.

Early last week, this person, Alicia Watkins, presented herself to presidential candidate, Donald Trump, as a journalist with press credentials. Somehow she had convinced someone at the Trump campaign that she was a reporter for Troops Media, so they gave her credentials. Five seconds of investigation later determined that she wasn’t, but by that time Donald had hired her for his campaign staff. She is fairly attractive, so I’m guessing that was a major factor in Trump’s decision, but it is what it is. Anyway, folks began to question her story immediately. It turns out that she has been on the Oprah Show claiming to be a homeless Air Force veteran. She has claimed that she was injured in the 9-11-2001 attack on the Pentagon, she has also claimed that she was injured in an IED explosion when she was stationed in Afghanistan. So, you know, being the diligent reporters that we are, we applied for a FOIA on her military records.

So while we were doing the background, John Q. Public, a blog about Air Force issues, wrote their own breathless piece about her. They admitted that she may have been at the Pentagon and they admitted that she was in Afghanistan in 2006. So I thought they had a FOIA on her, so I wrote to them. Turns out that no, they didn’t have a FOIA, so I’m not sure where they got their information. In the meantime, Watkins got wind of the fact that people were looking into her background, so she reached out to our buddy, Bulldog at Guardian of Valor. She promised him documentation for her claims. In fact, she sent this letter to him;

It’a letter from an unknown Air Force officer attesting to her status as a wounded warrior. The signature block and contact information are blacked out, so it’s pretty useless. We were in the process of checking on the letter, when the Air Force Times decided to interject themselves into the process, they claim that they have talked with the Air Force Personnel Center in San Antonio, Texas.

In 2014, Watkins appeared in a news segment aired by WJLA-TV, Washington’s ABC affiliate, touting the therapeutic benefits of riding horses. She repeated the story about having suffered physical and emotional injuries due to combat, telling the WJLA reporter that she served in Afghanistan and Iraq. “I experienced IEDs, suicide bombers,” Watkins said in that report.

Watkins deployed to Qatar in 2003 and to Afghanistan in 2006, Dickerson said. There is no record of her deploying to Iraq in the information AFPC provided.

Watkins joined the Air Force in 1998 and retired as a staff sergeant after nine years and six months of service, Dickerson said. She was in the information management career field, working as a network engineer.

Watkins served at the Pentagon from October 2000 to July 2004, time that included her deployment to Qatar, Dickerson [a spokesman for the Air Force Personnel Center in San Antonio, Texas] said. She also served at Los Angeles Air Force Base from July 2004 to her retirement in May 2008, time that included her deployment to Afghanistan.

According to the Air Force Times, there is no evidence that she was injured either in the Pentagon, or Afghanistan but she wore the Purple Heart on her Air Force uniform during some of her media appearances;

I suspect that the imperative to discredit a woman of color who supports Trump overrides most of the cautions that everyone would normally exercise in this situation. While I don’t think that Watkins is being entirely truthful, I don’t have the proof in front of me which tempers my writing at this point. We’re still waiting for the National Personnel Records Center to answer our request.

I will ask your help in verifying the document above, if any of my readers has experience in the Air Force wounded warrior community. Personally, I don’t see a need to even create a document like that, unless the intent is to deceive. But that’s just a feeling I have.

Fox News reports that the Air Force has told base commanders that they can authorize folks on their bases to carry weapons in order to enhance security on the military installations;

The military branch earlier this month sent out a letter to its base commanders around the nation reminding them that they can authorize subordinates to carry guns, even while off-duty and out of uniform. It also established three programs to help ensure that armed service members are in a position to protect their bases.

“None of these programs gives the installation commander authorizations they didn’t already have the authorization to do,” Maj. Keith Quick, the Air Force Security Forces Integrated Defense action officer, said in a statement according to Military.com. “We are now formalizing it and telling them how they can use these types of programs more effectively.”

The decision came as a result of the service’s examination of data available on the actual State of the Union, according to Military.com;

The Air Force also did not release the data showing how many active-shooter incidents were stopped by someone on the scene carrying a weapon. A spokeswoman said the data came from the FBI, and cannot be released by the Air Force.

The Air Force has three programs to prepare members of that service for carrying weapons on base.

Under the Unit Marshall Program, unit commanders can have airman to train under Security Forces personnel and open-carry an M9 pistol at their duty location.

Airmen selected for UMP would be instructed in use of force, weapons retention and weapons training. The role of these airmen would be to protect themselves, their immediate work space and the people within it, Quick said.

[…]

Commanders also can take advantage of the Security Forces Staff Arming program, which enables SF airmen working in staff billets at the squadron, group, wing or major command levels to carry a government-issued weapon while on duty, with the approval of the installation commander.

And, finally, there’s the Law Enforcement Officer Safety Act;

[Major Keith Quick, the Air Force Security Forces Integrated Defense action officer] said the Air Force now allows its members to request LEOSA credentialing.

“This affects base personnel because we have given the option to the installation commander to allow security forces members to carry under LEOSA on the installation while they are off duty,” Quick said.

3E9 sends us a link to the Defense News which reports that Air Force Vice Chief of Staff General David Goldfein claims that the world has changed since the Air Force last decided to take the A-10 Thunderbolt, the Air Force’s flying tank, out of the inventory.

“What happens is that life gets in the way of the perfect plan,” Goldfein said. “So when we made the decision on retiring the A-10, we made those decisions prior to ISIL, we were not in Iraq, we were coming out of Afghanistan to a large extent, we didn’t have a resurgent Russia.”

Shelving the A-10 retirement plan is a key policy shift that the Pentagon will reportedly lay out next month in its fiscal 2017 budget request, according to a Jan. 13 Defense One article.

Top officials had already hinted the Air Force could push off retirement of the A-10 by a few years to meet commanders’ demand for the close-in attack plane, beloved by troops for the distinctive roar of its Gatling gun. The service needs more close-air support to protect troops on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, and for the possibility of missions in trouble spots, such as Libya or Yemen, according to Air Combat Command chief Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle.

I can count three times in the last three decades that events have saved the A-10 – mostly because there’s nothing on the fightline to replace the ugly, effective creature. By the way, we don’t love the Warthog because of the sound of the Gatling gun, we love it because it kills bad guys in droves and it has no equal. Just the sight of the aircraft scares the life out of it’s perspective targets and raises morale of the good guys on the ground.