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RECOGNIZE ALL WAR VETS

Airmen sweating it out in combat zones are being defrauded by the legalistic process of awarding the Combat Action Medal.

One thing the Army gets right is the concept of the combat patch. Soldiers who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan wear their unit patch on their right shoulder for the rest of their careers, whether or not they have come under direct or indirect fire. When you see that patch on a soldier, you know he has been there.

The Air Force owes a debt of honor to all its members who have performed the mission in combat zones. There are thousands of airmen who are there, have been there and are going again. Honor them with either a permanent place for their patch to be sewn onto their airman battle uniform or with some other device that is put on that uniform.

Maj. Ken Haltom

Dover Air Force Base, Del.

COPS’ DEPLOYMENT TEMPO

I have not met an aircrew member with a deployment tempo like this: 12-month deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, six short months at their home station, followed by another one-year deployment.

That is the tempo for security forces “cops,” who are in the most abused career field in the Air Force. There are small career fields that suffer almost as much — with never-ending, back-to-back deployments — but nothing at the rate of security forces.

The Air Force is run by pilots, including the senior flying leadership. They make the rules that everyone else must follow, never expecting they or their kind will to have to live under the severe hardships their rules have created. If an aircrew member is downrange for more than a couple of weeks, the leadership will decide that his flying skills are so perishable that he will have to be pulled back to his home station to train.

I do not see the Air Force leadership addressing the long deployments of security forces cops. They are not worried that a cop has been functioning as a ground-pounding soldier too long and needs to be quickly returned to his home station for refresher police training.

You cannot build and maintain a middle noncommissioned officer corps of seasoned, trained and determined leaders with this deployment schedule.

We are entering the ninth year of war with no end in sight. In the past, if an NCO reached staff and tech sergeant ranks with eight to 12 years of service, that person would probably stay for a 20-year career. But middle NCOs in that very category are voting with their feet.

Times are hard in the civilian work world, but spending more than 60 percent to 70 percent of a military career deployed away from home in a country where the locals hate you or want to kill you, and in a place where you cannot even have a beer at the end of the duty day, is growing old.

How long is the Air Force going to keep this destructive deployment cycle up, and how many cops will be forced to vote with their feet?

Maj. Van Harl (ret.)

Colorado Springs, Colo.

CLOSE THE RETIREE PAY GAP

The pay charts in the Oct. 26 issue show that the pay gap between active-duty and retired members is continuing to grow.

In the past, when Congress set the pay for active-duty and retired personnel, they made sure that the difference in pay between those who retired at one point was in balance with those retiring at a later time. That went away when retired pay was tied to the cost-of-living allowance.

The pay gap for many grades is now more than 15 percent for retirees, in the same grade, who retired in different years. This is especially true for those who retired before the big pay raises that started in 1999 and the early 2000s.

Since there is no cost-of-living allowance forecast for this year, it would be an excellent time for Congress to adjust the retired pay for those within the same grades to ensure that no one has a pay gap of more than 10 percent.

I would encourage all retirees to contact their representative in Congress and ask that this be done.

Dianne Lambert

Monument, Colo.