Editorial: Deployment policy unfair

[CommunityEditor]

The Air Force’s new deployment policy is supposed to be built on fairness.

Instead, it’s patently unfair and should be repealed immediately.

The new policy eliminates a 12-month deployment exemption for about 1,600 airmen who are pulling yearlong tours in Iraq and Afghanistan because their skills are in such high demand there.

Now they will be guaranteed only six months at home before they can be deployed. The result is that some could spend as many as 24 out of 30 months deployed.

The problem is that the Air Force’s outdated air expeditionary force rotations don’t match up with yearlong tours. Exempting any airmen from deployment rotations for a full year puts an extra burden on others, who might find themselves doing more, shorter tours as a result.

Air Force leaders are calling that unfair. They’re wrong. This is what’s called sharing the burden.

By eliminating the 12-month exemptions, they are instead heaping more of a burden on those who have already sacrificed the most, deploying twice as long as the typical Air Force deployment.

This new policy is a mistake that can still be reversed. Wise leadership — somewhere in the chain of command — must see to it that it is. And fast.

[Gigglendorf]

As this particular enlisted warm-body understands things, 365-day deployments exist so that we can have the consistency of presence provided by people on a short tour, without going through the process of politcally acknowledging that we are assigning people to these locations as permanent duty stations.

Those who fill 365-day deployments receive all the benefits that someone on an 1-year isolated tour would receive, plus more, if I understand things correctly.

This new policy change provides those returning from a 365-day deployment with exactly the same deployment protections as those who return from an 1-year isolated remote tour.

If you want to take the position that the change should have been to extend the protection provided to those returning from an 1-year tour, that would make sense when discussing fairness, and is a position that can reasonably be argued.

If you want to say that changing to a single rules set so that everyone who has just spent 1-year away from their families gets the exact same benefit protecting their time at home is not making things more fair than having two different rules sets that provide different levels of protection has been, then I have to say that your logic has failed.

Did the USAF have to choose the lesser benefit as the new standard? Nope. Then again, the USAF has the right to choose no protection as the standard instead.

Your blatant attempt to create discontent is a disservice to your customer base.

[Sgt HULK]

Like I said before, another knee jerk reaction to the failure that is AEF.

If / when this gets implemented I cannot wait to see the retention rates plummet harder then the economy last yr. Or watch Divorce rates rocket faster then the unemployment mark.

There is no way you can justify to a family man that in the next 30 months he will Only see his family 4-6 months. If that. I for one won't. I'll take the red eye out of here. Call it selfish, call it what you will. I don't know how many family ties are strong enough for that type of tempo for very long.

Its bad enough to witness 5 divorces that came from 1 yr tour to Korea. Now do that twice as long

Wanna see a disaster, Implement Tempo Band F for F&*Ked lol

[WarBird]

Originally Posted by Sgt HULK

If / when this gets implemented I cannot wait to see the retention rates plummet harder then the economy last yr. Or watch Divorce rates rocket faster then the unemployment mark.

I can't agree with this more.

To be 100% honest, I'd rather spend a year in prison for disobeying a direct order to deploy for one year, come home for 6, then leave again for another year. At least my family could come visit me on the weekends. And once my "debt to society" was fulfilled, my family and I could move on.

Air Force be damned. My family is 1000 times more important than you.

[air1986]

Originally Posted by WarBird

I can't agree with this more.

To be 100% honest, I'd rather spend a year in prison for disobeying a direct order to deploy for one year, come home for 6, then leave again for another year. At least my family could come visit me on the weekends. And once my "debt to society" was fulfilled, my family and I could move on.

Air Force be damned. My family is 1000 times more important than you.

Hey bubba is your friend well Sgt Bubba. Yea i'm in Korea right now for a 1 yr i hit 5 months just last week. Time is flying. Going on mid-tour for a month also so i will have 5 months when i return. But the more scuttlebutt i read the more iam calling it quits in 2011 cause i can't do another year away from everything that soon.

[blacksheep1208]

Originally Posted by air1986

Hey bubba is your friend well Sgt Bubba. Yea i'm in Korea right now for a 1 yr i hit 5 months just last week. Time is flying. Going on mid-tour for a month also so i will have 5 months when i return. But the more scuttlebutt i read the more iam calling it quits in 2011 cause i can't do another year away from everything that soon.

Even under the old system you were still deployable 6 months after returning from Korea.

[air1986]

Originally Posted by blacksheep1208

Even under the old system you were still deployable 6 months after returning from Korea.

I know But when i get back to the states and after the 6 months i will have 6 remaining and won't have retainability nor will try and get it so this should be my last go round outside the states unless ww3 breaks out and they stop loss but then my ass is getting paid for it . Plus i am a firefighter we are still AEF anyways. Its all part of being armynized

[blacksheep1208]

Originally Posted by air1986

I know But when i get back to the states and after the 6 months i will have 6 remaining and won't have retainability nor will try and get it so this should be my last go round outside the states unless ww3 breaks out and they stop loss but then my ass is getting paid for it . Plus i am a firefighter we are still AEF anyways. Its all part of being armynized

Keep talking, maybe they will just stop loss you.

[JYONDER]

This is only a symptom of the larger problem -- unsustainable steady-state PERSTEMPO policies, esp. for folks in Tempo Bands D and E. The Army is working exceptionally hard at giving people 12 or even 24 months dwell time between deployments and still they acknowledge in Congress and other forums that a year at home is not enough for soldiers and their families. Expecting airmen and their families to have 6 or fewer months together between deployments (since no credit is given for time served at combat skills training) over the course of 5, 10 or even a 20 year AF career is unrealistic. Either the airman is going to leave the AF or the family is going to leave the airman. "The Year of the Air Force Family" is just 7 hollow words to a lot of people. It is critical that this be fixed.

[Ruckus]

I have a hard time buying that an SF troop pulling a 365 as part of a Police Transition Team should be subject to the same policies as the SF troop pulling a year in Korea, living it up, drinking to excess and banging out the local chicks. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but that's my take on it. This cookie-cutter horse-shit has got to stop.

Now if you went to the Deid for a year, I say put that on the Korea level, you're deploying in 6 months, fuck you very much.