More Pacific airmen to be asked to deploy

[unhappycamper]

More Pacific airmen to be asked to deploy
By Jennifer H. Svan, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Thursday, November 29, 2007

As the U.S. Air Force is asked to provide more support to the Army and the Marine Corps in Iraq, more Pacific Air Forces airmen can expect to deploy downrange and for longer periods, according to military officials.

This year, PACAF deployed nearly 6,000 airmen to more than 100 locations worldwide, and the number is expected to increase, according to Lt. Col. Eric Armstrong, chief of the Air and Space Expeditionary Force Matters Branch at PACAF headquarters in Hawaii.

“Deployments have been on the rise recently due to deployed commanders requesting more troops to accomplish the mission they’ve been assigned,” Armstrong said in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes. “PACAF Airmen do serve In-Lieu-Of missions (positions normally served by the Army) and those have been increasing.”

Armstrong said PACAF deploys about 1,800 to 2,000 airmen per four-month AEF, or air expeditionary force, rotation. The number of airmen tasked to deploy for each rotation is expected to increase 5 percent to 10 percent per period for the near term, according to Armstrong.

For the current AEF cycle, about 2,000 PACAF members are deployed, according to Armstrong.

~snip~

Approximately half of airmen who deploy Air Force-wide go to locations in Iraq, Armstrong noted.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50569