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Captain awarded Bronze Star for intel work

The Bronze Star was awarded to an Air Force intelligence officer whose work helped U.S. forces find and detain Iraqi insurgents.

Capt. David Hearn, with the 50th Operations Support Squadron out of Colorado’s Schriever Air Force Base, received the medal at a mid-October ceremony. Deployed to Iraq from May to November last year, Hearn helped gather and present intel to a Joint Special Operations Task Force.

“We would build a target package consisting of the targets’ known locations, his associates and meeting places, and then pass that on to the Special Forces soldiers,” Hearn said at the ceremony, according to a statement. “Then they would track him down.”

His work resulted in more than 750 targets, 350 successful missions and 1,800 intelligence packets. Some of his material was later used by the Iraqi judicial system to convict insurgents, the statement said.

“There are soldiers and Marines out there,” Hearn said, “who have earned their Bronze Star through direct combat with the enemy or through even greater sacrifice – their lives.”