Air Force News, news from Iraq - Air Force Times

Slower op tempo would help, but that won’t happen soon

Beyond the factors Air Force leaders can control, wishful thinking comes into play. A briefing slide on options to encourage more enlisted airmen and officers to stay in stressed career fields recommends “reduce operations tempo.”

However, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates pushing the Air Force to play a larger role in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are no indications the need for airmen to fill “in-lieu-of” and high-demand jobs will decline.

For a common reason why a career field is stressed, look no further than the AFSC’s deployment tempo.

Of the 11 career fields labeled as stressed, six have deployment schedules calling for airmen to be deployed six out of every 18 months. A seventh AFSC, security forces, is on a schedule to deploy six out of every 12 months.

Overall, 14 AFSCs are on a deployment tempo that calls for airmen to be gone half the year, every year. Twenty-one AFSCs deploy for six out of every 18 months.

In addition to security forces, the enlisted career fields with a requirement to deploy for half the year are: airborne battle management systems; flight attendant; air traffic controller; airfield management; intelligence applications; imagery analysis; Germanic crypto-linguist; network intelligence analyst; aerospace maintenance superintendent; logistics plans; utilities systems; historian; linguist debriefer; and interpreter/translator.