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Category: Air Force

  • Air Force Academy racial slurs

    The other day, five Black Air Force Academy prep school students awoke and found racially-charged messages scrawled on the boards outside their rooms. The New York Times reports;

    The episode attracted national attention when Tracye Whitfield, the mother of one of the students, posted a photo on Facebook of the message, which paired the words “go home” with a racial slur. “It’s a nerve-racking feeling,” Ms. Whitfield told a local news station in Colorado Springs, near where the academy is located.

    The preparatory school, usually called the “prep school,” prepares candidates for admission to the academy proper. About 240 students, called “cadet candidates,” attend the school each year.

    The Superintendent of the Academy responded;

    In a five-minute address in front of the academy’s 4,000 cadets and 1,500 staff members, Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria affirmed the Air Force’s belief in “the power of diversity” and insisted that “small thinking and horrible ideas” had no place there.

    In recent months incidents like this have happened across the country. Many times the incidents turned out to be folks just stirring up trouble.

    For example, from Fox News;

    …an Indian-owned store in Charlotte, N.C. was set afire, a rock thrown through the window and a racist note left behind. It read, in part: “We need to get rid of Muslims, Indians and all immigrants.” It was signed, “White America.”

    Days later, police arrested a suspect. He was not a white supremacist, nor a Donald Trump supporter, nor Caucasian. He was an African-American man, 32-year-old Curtis Flournoy. Surveillance video showed him lighting the fire.

    In January, a black restaurant server in Ashburn, Virginia claimed a customer wrote on the receipt, “Great Service, don’t tip black people.” The customer later maintained the slur was written by the waitress herself, who was upset with a one cent tip the customer left in response to her poor service.

    And in December, an 18-year-old Muslim woman who claimed that three men attacked her on a New York subway and tried to pull off her hijab was charged with filing a false report.

    The National Review writes about a few others. Fake Hate Crimes lists hundreds of incidents.

    LeBron James, the basketball player, reported to police that someone had painted racial phrases on his gate. The Los Angeles police say that they found no evidence of the phrases, or no video evidence from James’ cameras that the crime ever happened.

    I hope whoever did this at the Air Force Academy is caught and punished severely – WHOEVER it turns out to be.

  • Happy 70th, Air Force

    Happy 70th, Air Force

    According to Wiki, the US Air Force was born from the US Army Air Corps on September 18, 1947. The other day, the President visited Andrews Air Force Base to celebrate the anniversary;

    President Trump expressed his pride in the men and women of the United States Air Force. “Our air superiority is unquestionable not because we have the best equipment, but because we have the best people by far.”

    “Each of you is a living, breathing symbol of our great Nation,” the President declared. “Nothing inspires more confidence in our friends or incites more fear in our enemies,” he said as he went on to assure them that together they will shape tomorrow’s world with the “strength and skill of American hands.”

    President Trump concluded his speech by thanking the men and women of the United States Air Force for their dedication to their country and wished the United States Air Force a happy 70th birthday.

    My only begotten son is currently serving in the US Air Force and today he’s training up for a deployment to the war against terror later this year.

  • German prosecutor investigates illegal arms shipments through Ramstein AFB

    Stars & Stripes reports that the German prosecutor’s office in Kaiserslautern, Germany is investigating charges that US contractors shipped Soviet-style weapons from Eastern Europe to Syria through Ramstein Air Force Base.

    Ramstein — a key U.S. military logistical hub overseas from which cargo is ferried throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa — was linked to Washington’s effort beginning in 2013 to arm Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State, according to a report Tuesday in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

    The weapons transfer through Ramstein would have required permission from the German government, the report stated.

    Officials with Germany’s Economic Affairs Ministry told Stars and Stripes that the ministry did not give the U.S. military permission to transport weapons to Syria through the country. They denied having any knowledge of such activities.

    Officials at Ramstein deflected inquires from the media to the Pentagon.

    The report was based on months of research by journalists with the newspaper, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. The organizations cite internal emails they stated were obtained from the U.S. military, interviews with whistleblowers and official documents, such as the United Nations arms export reports for 2015 and 2016.

  • US troops saving the world

    US troops saving the world

    Military Times reports that thousands of US troops are deployed to hurricane-ravaged areas in the wake of Irma;

    The Army has positioned more than 16,700 soldiers as well as civilians from the Army Corps of Engineers in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and continental United States to assist with recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Irma.

    More than 150 boats, 3,400 trucks and 680 generators are in use or have been made available to governors of states and territories where the hurricane made landfall, Army spokesman Col. Patrick Seiber said in an email Sunday.

    “Governors are best postured to determine the needs of their residents and establish response priorities, and are currently using Army National Guard soldiers to help meet those needs,” Seiber said.

    Thousands of Marines and their amphibious vehicles are spread out in Florida.

    The active duty Army is deployed to assist National Guard assets;

    The 101st Airborne Division, of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, is positioning its helicopters to be used in search and rescue operations and resupply of food, water, medical supplies and other necessities the state may need.

    The 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is overseeing the Army’s wheeled-vehicle effort, officials said. A convoy of about 100 high-water vehicles and nearly 400 soldiers are on their way from Fort Bragg to help locate and rescue people trapped by the flooding.

    Eggs sends us a link to the news that his former Air Force unit is also assisting in South Florida;

    Fresh off of a Hurricane Harvey deployment, Air Force reservists with the Brevard County-based 920th Rescue Wing are now flying HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters across South Florida, searching for stranded victims of Hurricane Irma.

    The combat-search-and-rescue wing moved three Pave Hawks from Patrick Air Force Base to the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando on Thursday, before Irma’s gusts began blasting the Sunshine State.

    On Monday, after winds died down, citizen airmen flew Col. David Garfield, commander of the 482nd Fighter Wing, back to Homestead Air Reserve Base. Afterward, they flew a search-and-rescue mission in South Florida, said Maj. Cathleen Snow, 920th Rescue Wing spokeswoman.

    Meanwhile, some of the troops are gearing up for deployments to the war against terror. You can quash their funding, but you can’t stop them from doing what they do.

  • Air Force plans Irma relief

    Air Force plans Irma relief

    Poetrooper sends a link to the Miami Herald which reports that the Air Force is planning their relief to begin in South Florida to rescue residents from the aftermath of Hurricane Irma;

    U.S. Air Force special operations pilots are testing flights with C-130 cargo planes around the massive storm from Mississippi to the Keys in anticipation of the mission, which will include Air National Guard flights of more C-130s and helicopters following the fixed-wing flights.

    “The help is on its way,” [Monroe County Emergency Management Director Martin] Senterfitt said during a conference call Sunday afternoon.

    “We’re going to get more aid than we’ve ever seen in our lives,” Senterfitt said.

    Supplies and personnel could be coming in by air to Monroe County by early Monday morning, Senterfitt said.

    The first arrival will be at Florida Keys Marathon Airport, which can handle about two C-130 planes at a time. The plan, said Senterfitt, is to have two C-130s land every two hours on the airfield there.

    Just a reminder that the troops do more than fight our wars for us.

  • Lt. Col. Eric Schultz passes

    Lt. Col. Eric Schultz passes

    Stars & Stripes reports that Lieutenant Colonel Eric Schultz was killed when his aircraft succumbed to gravity over the Nevada Test and Training Range, approximately 100 miles northwest of Nellis Air Force Base.

    The Air Force isn’t telling which brand of aircraft he was flying when the incident happened, but in the picture above, he’s sitting in an F-35 six years ago.

    The aircraft was assigned to Air Force Materiel Command, which leads development of new combat technologies for the service.

    […]

    “Information about the type of aircraft involved is classified and not releasable,” Maj. Christina Sukach, chief of public affairs for the 99 Air Base Wing at Nellis, said in an email.

    Two A-10 pilots safely ejected from their crafts earlier this week when they crashed in the same airspace above the test range.

  • A-10s crash

    A-10s crash

    Stars & Stripes reports that two A-10 Thunderbolts crashed in Nevada yesterday – both pilots ejected safely;

    Air Force officials do not know what caused the crash that happened about 8 p.m., local time, Wednesday at the Nevada Test and Training Range, a large military reservation north of Nellis. They said an investigation into the incident would be launched.

    From AVGeekery;

    While it is too early to speculate, it is highly unusual for two A-10s to crash at the same time. One of the few plausible explanations is that there was contact between the two jets. We’ll update you as we learn more.

  • LTC Denis Paquette forced out of the Air Force

    LTC Denis Paquette forced out of the Air Force

    The Stars & Stripes tells the story of Lieutenant Colonel Denis Paquette who was charged with building a unit in Tunisia, on what began as a secret UAV base, but became “Party Central” for the 70 airmen and twenty contractors on the football-field-sized base.

    He allowed his folks to keep and consume alcohol, despite directives from his commanders which forbade alcohol. He also started an inappropriate relationship with an enlisted female airman 20 years his junior;

    “It starts out with a mentorship but it goes way, way, way over the line after that,” said Maj. Rachel Lyons, senior trial counsel for the Air Force, in court. “After that, he uses personal knowledge of her family to get closer to her … and to try to take the relationship to the next level.”

    When others in the camp became uncomfortable with how much time the two were spending together, the two were advised to limit their personal contact, according to testimony. To continue communicating out of the public eye, the two began writing what prosecutors called “love letters” to each other, while also still spending time together, including at a party one night in July where both were said to be drinking.

    Well, he faced a general court martial which decided that he should leave the Air Force;

    The judge, Col. Mark Milam, found Paquette was negligent in performing his assigned duties, a lesser offense than the dereliction of duty for which he was charged. The judge also found Paquette did not violate the same general order regarding alcohol consumption on numerous occasions. He was also found not guilty of the most egregious charge against him: abusive sexual contact.