Military News
Guam star reaching higher: IIAAG champ Gadsden wants Far East title
Boeing to convert old F-16s to targets
The Air Force has begun replacing its dwindling supply of QF-4 target drones with QF-16s, according to a Boeing announcement made Tuesday.
With the supply of venerable F-4 airframes running low after years of use as target drones, the air service has given Boeing a $69 million contract to convert up to 126 of the service’s oldest F-16s in storage at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., into aerial targets, according to the announcement.
Design work on the drones will be done at Boeing’s St. Louis facility while production will be done in Jacksonville, Fla.
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:00:48 -0500 Staff writer NewsDevelopmental education program deadline set
Air Force officers and civilians who want to pursue intermediate or senior developmental education this year must submit their applications by April 5, personnel officials announced Monday.
The applications will then be considered by a selection board.
Officers can apply using a Web-based application; civilians must submit a hard copy application to the Air Force Personnel Center Civilian Development Education and Training Branch.
Line officers, chaplains and medical service officers may apply for up to five intermediate or senior developmental education programs — including Air Command and Staff College and Air War College — using the Air Force’s 3849 form, available March 8 through April 5 on the AFPC secure applications Web site.
Officers must be nominated by their senior raters to compete at the functional developmental team and Developmental Education Designation Board levels. Nominees’ Airman Development Plan also must be current.
The Civilian Developmental Education Program includes opportunities for employees in pay bands 1 through 3 and GS-7 through 15 or equivalent grades.
Civilians are nominated by their local leadership through their chains of command.
Developmental team review boards take place from May to August. The Air Force Academy board convenes in August, and the small programs board meets in September.
Military and civilian applicants chosen for the programs will be announced in October.
For more information on available education opportunities, visit the AFPC personnel services Web site, formerly the “Ask” Web site, at https://gum.afpc.randolph.af.mil, and select the link for “Continued Education” in the Officer category or search for “2010 IDE/SDE.” Civilians can view a list of their programs under the Civilian category or search for “CDE.”
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:53:32 -0500 Careers and EducationPlan would expand leave for some families
Military family members who are ineligible for family and medical leave still could get time off for deployment-related issues under potentially controversial legislation pending before two congressional committees.
The Military Family Leave Act would provide up to two weeks of leave — unpaid if an employer chooses — to people not covered by the military leave provisions of the existing FMLA.
Under current law, employees can be excluded if they have not worked for a year or longer for their current employer, have not worked a minimum of 1,250 hours for their current employer in the last 12 months, or work for a business that has fewer than 50 employees in a 75-mile radius.
The two weeks off under the pending bill would be available to spouses, children or parents of anyone deployed on a contingency operation or mobilized in support of a contingency operation.
While endorsed by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and Veterans of Foreign Wars, the proposal is not supported by the Military Coalition, a group of more than 30 military-related organizations.
“We worry that forcing small businesses [to grant the time off] could be a disincentive to hiring that would work against families,” said a coalition member who works on family issues and asked not to be named.
“There was good reason that the original Family and Medical Leave Act is established the way it is, with small businesses exempt. Having even a few employees away can hurt a small business far more than a large one,” the family policy expert said.
The effect on businesses was not mentioned during a Feb. 25 hearing of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s economic opportunity panel when the House version of the bill, HR 3247, was discussed.
Bill sponsor Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said he is trying to extend to people exempt from the FMLA some of the benefits provided last year, when military provisions were approved that grant up to 26 weeks of unpaid leave for families of deployed or seriously injured troops, and up to 12 weeks for other deployment-related issues.
“A significant number of military spouses work for small businesses, work part time ... or have less than one year with a company due to recent moves or reassignments,” Smith said.
The Senate version of the bill, S 1441, sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., was referred to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has taken no action. That is one of the panels responsible for the Family and Medical Leave Act, and it pays close attention to the concerns of businesses.
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:32:03 -0500 Staff writerAir Force warrant officers: What do you think?
The Marine Corps, Navy and Army all have warrant officer positions for technical specialists or experts in a career field.
The Air Force, however, stopped appointing warrant officers in 1959 when it introduced the ranks of master sergeant and chief master sergeant.
Today, some feel that it’s time to bring the warrant officer back to the Air Force.
Air Force Times wants to know your thoughts. Would reviving the rank of warrant officer be a good idea, or are things fine the way they are? Send your comments to mtan@atpco.com.
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:02:45 -0500 NewsWyo. Guard grounds annual air show
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The Wyoming Air National Guard won’t host its annual air show this July because of deployments, construction at the airfield and other issues, but the performance by the Air Force Thunderbirds will go on as planned July 28.
Both shows usually run during Cheyenne Frontier Days.
“It was a tough decision, but we would not have been able to provide the top-notch air show the community deserves this year,” Col. Dennis Grunstad, commander of the 153rd Airlift Wing, said in a press release. “We decided to not lower the bar.”
Other factors cited in the decision to cancel were several major inspections of the field this year and less money available because of military assistance in Haiti.
The guard air show draws thousands of people and typically features displays of modern and vintage military aircraft, stunt flying and parachute drops.
“It’s fully understandable,” said Rod Hottle, general chairman for Cheyenne Frontier Days.
Hottle said that while the National Guard show is an excellent event that adds to Frontier Days, the big draw is the Thunderbirds, which regularly attracts tens of thousands of spectators. The Thunderbirds have performed at the event since 1953.
So Frontier Days ticket sales and tourism in general should be unaffected, officials said.
Dale Steenbergen, president and chief executive of the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce, said there are benefits to the air show not being held.
“From my point of view, we really like having all of that construction at the base,” Steenbergen said.
Work on the Wyoming Air Guard base at the west end of the Cheyenne Regional Airport brings jobs, he said.
Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:24:17 -0500 Guard and ReserveUtah base dealing with rash of suicides
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s Hill Air Force Base has hired a psychologist to deal with a rash of suicides, mostly among civilians complaining of harsh working conditions.
Nearly 75 percent of the people at the base are civilian employees or contractors, and they make up 21 or 22 of at least 25 confirmed suicides since 2006, according to its senior ranking officer, Maj. Gen. Andrew Busch, commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Center.
Two civilians and one airman committed suicide so far this year.
“We have a suicide trend that we need to address, and we are taking action on it,” Busch said Monday.
It wasn’t clear if 25 suicides since 2006 among a population of 22,000 people at the base was statistically significant. Some media reports have said that figure is several times the rate for Utah’s broader population, but Busch said he wasn’t familiar with the analysis.
Nor could Busch explain why suicides among civilians were more prevalent at Hill than for servicemen. Hill’s airmen don’t seem affected by suicide as much as soldiers, who killed themselves in war zones of Iraq or Afghanistan at the highest rate on record during 2008, according to the Army. The Pentagon said it would be months before the 2009 figures for suicides in the military were available.
Busch said Hill’s civilian jobs — largely maintaining fleets of fighter jets — were demanding, but that many factors appear to contribute to the civilian suicides, including family and substance abuse problems that can be hard to decipher even after the fact.
“From what we’ve seen, there is no single cause,” he said.
The Air Force has stepped up prevention efforts. Last week, the 309th Maintenance Wing “stood down” as supervisors addressed the suicide problem with employees for three hours, he said. Employees of the 309th account for a majority of Hill’s suicides.
The base installed 13 “Wingman advocates” starting in 2007 to steer troubled Hill personnel to help. It also employs chaplains, provides an employee assistance program and hired a psychologist a few months ago to address the problem at an institutional level.
Superiors also are trying to improve employee morale.
“Our approach has been broad,” he said.
Bonnie Carroll, a military widow who founded the advocacy group Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, said suicides also have been a problem at Fort Campbell, an Army base straddling Kentucky and Tennessee.
Early in 2009, Fort Campbell was reporting more suicides than any other U.S. base. Complete numbers weren’t immediately available Monday.
The Defense Department has added thousands of mental health professionals to the ranks of the military because of a greater awareness of the suicide problem and pressures of recent wars, Carroll said.
“These are people in very demanding positions or jobs,” Carroll said. “The amount of people seeking behavioral health support has gone up tremendously. The amount of people who understand care is available has gone up. There’s layer upon layer of behavior health providers. They’re really trying to get ahead of this, instead of dealing with it after-the-fact.”
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:08:28 -0500 The Associated Press NewsNorthrop won’t bid on Air Force tanker
Northrop Grumman today confirmed that it will not bid for the Air Force’s $35 billion KC-X contest, saying the solicitation favors rival Boeing’s smaller 767-based offering.
“Northrop Grumman has determined that it will not submit a bid to the Department of Defense for the KC-X program,” Northrop president Wes Bush said in a late afternoon statement. “We reached this conclusion based on the structure of the source selection methodology defined in the [request for proposals], which clearly favors Boeing’s smaller refueling tanker and does not provide adequate value recognition of the added capability of a larger tanker, precluding us from any competitive opportunity.”
Key Northrop backer Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., quickly slammed the Air Force for its cost-focused request for proposals.
“The Air Force had a chance to deliver the most capable tanker possible to our war fighters and blew it,” the senator said in his own late-afternoon statement. “This so-called competition was not structured to produce the best outcome for our men and women in uniform; it was structured to produce the best outcome for Boeing.”
EADS North America Chairman Ralph Crosby echoed these statements.
“The source selection methodology clearly signals a preference for a smaller aircraft,” Crosby said.
He said the RfP “ignores the added combat capability that could be provided to our military and, for the first time, ensures that our allies will operate with superior capability in this vital mission area.”
Crosby was referring to several U.S. allies that are flying variants of the A330-based tanker.
Northrop’s move comes after months of wrangling between the defense giant and the Pentagon over the structure of the KC-X RfPs that the Defense Department unveiled last fall.
In a Dec. 1 letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Bush threatened to drop out of the competition unless the final RfP was considerably changed.
Bush argued that the cost-focused RfP did not give enough credit for the better performance of the newer, larger Airbus A330-based bid over the smaller, cheaper 767-based jet.
The final RfP, released two weeks ago, was little changed from the draft.
Shelby said, “The Air Force’s refusal to make substantive changes to level the playing field shows that once again, politics trumps the needs of our military.”
No protest
Bush said the company will not protest the Pentagon’s decision.
“We have decided that Northrop Grumman will not protest,” he said in his statement. “While we feel we have substantial grounds to support a [Government Accountability Office] or court ruling to overturn this revised source selection process, America’s service men and women have been forced to wait too long for new tankers.”
Bush took a parting shot at Boeing, which is almost guaranteed to be the sole bidder in the contest.
The Air Force should pay “much less” per airplane than the roughly $184 million apiece it would pay for the first 68 Northrop jets in the 2008 offer.
“We call on the Department to keep in mind the economic conclusions of the prior round of bidding as it takes actions to protect the taxpayer when defining the sole-source procurement contract,” his statement said. “With the Department’s decision to procure a much smaller, less-capable design, the taxpayer should certainly expect the bill to be much less.”
Northrop’s jet won the 2008 round of the KC-X competition. That victory was dashed, however, when Boeing filed a GAO-sustained protest arguing that the service wasn’t clear enough about what it wanted from the two jets in that round of competition.
Air Force officials did not respond to request for comment at press time.
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:32:02 -0500 Staff writerForeign language bonuses open to all airmen
Bolehkah anda bercakap Bahasa Melayu? ¿Hablas español? Khun phûut phaasãa thai ben mãi?
If you know — or want to learn — Malay, Spanish, Thai or one of more than 100 other foreign languages, the Air Force has some cash to throw your way.
The service is offering its foreign language proficiency bonus to all airmen, not just those in jobs that require them to speak a foreign language.
“Before, you had to be in a position that required you to use that language skill,” said Lt. Col. Paul Valenzuela, chief of the Air Force’s language and culture program office, which oversees the bonus program.
“Now if you have a language that is on our list at a [particular] skill level, then you’re eligible for the bonus,” he said. “It really opens the aperture of eligible airmen for the bonus.”
The monthly amount depends on the language and an airman’s aptitude, but top dollar is $1,000 for anyone proficient in two foreign languages.
Right now, about 4,300 airmen receive the language bonus — most of them get about $500 a month, Valenzuela said. He expects as many as 13,000 more could be eligible, based on the number who have qualified in the past.
To qualify, an airman has to take the Defense Language Proficiency Test, which is administered by his base education office. The test is divided into listening, reading and speaking, and the airman must pass two of the categories. If the airman demonstrates proficiency, the base education office then initiates the bonus payments, Valenzuela said.
Airmen must pass the test every year to keep receiving the bonus, he said.
Many of the airmen receiving the bonus know French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish; more, however, are speaking Chinese, Arabic and Pashto, Valenzuela said.
Airmen who don’t speak a foreign language have ways to learn one, he said. New officers can volunteer for language training through the Language Enabled Airman Program, and the Air Force Culture and Language Center at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., provides all levels of training.
The Air Force is also offering a new $3,000-a-year bonus for its ROTC cadets who take language courses or who study abroad to improve their language skills, Valenzuela said. About 1,100 cadets are expected to participate in the coming fall semester, he said.
“This is big bonus bucks for languages and there are airmen out there right now cashing in on the bonus, and we certainly want everyone to be aware of it and to take advantage of it,” Valenzuela said.
The bonus programs, though, are about more than just money, he said.
“We’re talking about the human aspect of the mission,” Valenzuela said. “In order to be successful at the human aspect, being able to understand the culture and speak the language is vital.”
SPEAKING OF CASH
Airmen can draw monthly bonuses of about $500 for speaking a foreign language in the following three categories.
Critical languages
Arabic: Modern Standard Arabic, Algerian, Egyptian, Gulf, Iraqi, and Levantine dialects only.
Chinese: Mandarin, Cantonese, Gan and Wu only.
French*
Languages of India: Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam and Kanarese only.
Languages of Indonesia: Indonesian and Javanese only.
Japanese
Korean
Pashto (Pushtu): includes Pashto-Afghan
Persian: Afghan (Dari) and Iranian (Farsi) dialects only.
Portuguese: includes Continental (European) and Brazilian.
Russian*
Spanish*
Turkic languages: Turkish and Turkmen only.
Urdu
Languages needed for crises, potential threats
Bengali
Cambodian
Czech
Georgian
Hebrew
Languages of Africa: Hausa, Igbo, Somali, Swahili and Yoruba only.
Kurdi (Kurdish): Kurmanji and Sorani only.
Malay
Serbo-Croatian
Languages of the Philippines: Cebuano, Chavacano, Ilocano, Maguindanao, Tagalog* and Tausug (Moro) only.
Thai
Turkic languages: Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Uzbek only.
Vietnamese
Other languages
Afrikaans
Albanian
Amharic
Armenian
Assyrian
Baluchi
Belorussian
Berber
Bulgarian
Burmese
Chechen
Danish
Dutch
Estonian
Finnish
Flemish
German*
Greek
Gujarati
Haitian-Creole
Hiligaynon
Hungarian
Icelandic
Italian*
Kashmiri
Kikongo
Kirghiz
Lao
Latvian
Lithuanian
Luganda
Macedonian
Mandintio-Bambara
Marathi
Mongolian
Nepalese
Norwegian
Polish
Quechaua
Romanian
Sindhi
Singhalese
Slovak
Slovenian
Swedish
Tadjik (Tajik)
Tigrinya
Uighur
Ukrainian
Wolof
Zulu-Zul
*Languages considered dominant by foreign language proficiency bonus program.
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:11:10 -0500 Staff writerMore want combat element in fitness test
Run a mile and a half. Do as many push-ups as you can in a minute. Ditto for sit-ups. And have your waist measured.
Now, compare the Air Force physical training test to the Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test: Sprint 880 yards, a half-mile. Lift a 30-pound ammo can from your chest over your head as many times as you can in two minutes. And, finally, navigate a 300-yard obstacle course that includes crawling, carrying a “casualty” and throwing a grenade.
All done decked out in your utility uniform and boots.
For seven airmen at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., who took the CFT at the invitation of the leathernecks assigned with them to the 33rd Fighter Wing, there is no comparison to the Air Force’s PT test. The CFT is no walk in the park, but it can be done, the airmen say. They passed, after all.
“I could barely feel my legs when I was done,” said Staff Sgt. Simon Delacruz, assigned to the 96th Security Forces Squadron. “The cans are the killers.”
The airmen’s respectable performance is encouraging a small but growing movement inside the Air Force that wants the service to institute its own CFT.
Perhaps the most vocal advocates are airmen who have served on the battlefield, such as joint terminal attack controllers. Their calls haven’t gone unheard — three airmen have developed CFT programs on their own, and the Air Force exercise physiologist responsible for the new PT scoring standards that go into effect July 1 is looking at how the service could incorporate a combat fitness element.
Even airmen who aren’t wild about a CFT are embracing the training. Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., just opened its fourth center for CrossFit, a strength and conditioning methodology used widely by other services and law enforcement agencies. At least seven other bases are also offering CrossFit classes.
Semper Fi fit
The Marines unveiled their CFT nearly 18 months ago on orders from the commandant himself. Gen. James Conway gave the directive after hearing from deployed Marines about the need for a different measure of fitness.
Today, Marines must take two tests — the CFT once a year and the PT test twice a year. On Jan. 1, airmen began taking their PT test twice a year as well as having the test administered by civilian fitness experts.
Air Force officials expect to see the PT failure rate jump from about 2 percent servicewide to 15 percent or even higher when test scorers begin using the tougher standards and minimum scores. About 10 percent of Marines failed the CFT during the phase-in period, which ended last March. So far, according to Corps officials, only 5 percent of Marines have achieved the perfect score — 300 points.
The Air Force is closely monitoring the Marines’ performance while it continues its research. Exercise physiologist Neil Baumgartner, who overhauled the Air Force’s PT test in 2004 and in 2009, wants to customize the CFT for various career fields. For example, a pilot and a personnelist would take different versions of the test.
“Doing that takes time,” Baumgartner said. “Right now the idea is still conceptual. It’s not set in stone.” He added that the earliest that airmen could see a CFT is three to five years.
The airmen at Eglin impressed the Marines with their dry run.
“They did very well,” said Marine Sgt. Maj. Bonnie Skinner with Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501, who proposed the joint effort. “If the Air Force [had the test], seeing at least the airmen that joined with us, I don’t see them having a problem whatsoever.”
Marines — for the most part — like the CFT because it adds variety to their fitness program and helps prepare them for deployments, Skinner said.
“You are going to do a lot more things in a combat situation that are a lot closer to the Combat Fitness Test than what you are going to do for the normal PT test,” she said. “It’s positive reinforcement.”
A tug of war
The momentum for the Air Force to add a combat fitness test has come mostly from airmen returning from deployments.
“Being an old Desert Storm airman and being on five deployments — three to Saudi Arabia and two to Iraq — not once did a situation come up where you had to run a mile and a half. And no one could care less if you had a 32-inch waist,” Tech. Sgt. James Geiss wrote in an e-mail to Air Force Times, referring to the run and waist measurement components of the current PT test.
“When those rocket/mortar attacks hit the base, what mattered was that you get your butt to safety,” wrote Geiss, who is assigned to McChord Air Force Base, Wash.
Staff Sgt. Jermain Morrow prepares security forces airmen for deployment as an instructor with the 96th Ground Combat Training Squadron at Eglin and wants to see the Air Force adopt a CFT.
“It shows you what type of condition you are in to head overseas,” Morrow said.
Like Morrow, Master Sgt. Jerry Wright with the 96th Logistical Readiness Squadron took the test and thinks airmen would benefit from taking it. He knows, however, that not everyone would give the CFT a thumbs-up.
“You have a pretty big divide between the administrative Air Force and the flight line,” Wright said. “The administrative side isn’t going to be so receptive. The flight-line side that deploys where you have to take cover or you are getting shelled will like it.”
Master Sgt. Kevin Palumbo, with the 28th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., is a CFT detractor.
“It burns me that people who can shut down and go to the gym three times a week are the ones saying it would be great to do more testing,” Palumba said. “I wish to God I had the people and skill levels to support having an eight- to nine-hour workday and being able to include going to the gym during that period.”
For Maj. Shannon Smith, the discussion shouldn’t be an either/or debate about the CFT and the PT test.
“I agree combat fitness is important. However, it is not the only reason we should take a periodic fitness test,” said Smith, commander of the 790th Missile Security Forces Squadron at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo.
“First, our health care is paid for by American taxpayers, not just during our time on active duty, but for many years beyond our time in uniform. … If we make a concerted effort to eat right and remain physically fit while serving in uniform, the less problems we’ll have in the future, thus becoming good stewards of our tax dollars. Second, it is our duty and responsibility to present and maintain a professional military image to those same taxpayers.”
A trio of studies
Three airmen did their own research on combat fitness.
Capt. Thomas Worden started thinking about combat readiness on a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan. Too many times, Worden said, he found many airmen who could not even run for cover and he wondered whether the Air Force’s fitness test was part of the reason.
When Worden returned in April 2007, the civil engineer went off to the Air Force Institute of Technology, the service’s graduate school of engineering and management, where he set out to come up with a test to accurately measure an airman’s combat fitness.
Worden’s discovery: the half-mile run, 30-pound dumbbell lift and push-ups do the best job of determining an airman’s combat fitness.
Though Worden believes more research is needed, he also is convinced the Air Force — like the Marine Corps — must include combat fitness in its fitness program.
The PT test “is good at measuring general health and if an airman is going to rack up medical bills in the future,” he said. “But it’s not very good at measuring if you will be good at combat.”
In his “USAF Concept for Functional Fitness,” F-22 pilot and certified personal trainer Maj. Jeremy Gordon outlines a six-event CFT: an 800-meter run, a 50-repetition press of a 30-pound object, a 400-meter run, a 50-pound object carried 100 feet, 50 full sit-ups and five pull-ups.
Airmen’s scores would be scaled for age and gender and be based on how fast they could complete the course.
Gordon concedes his test would be “significantly more challenging” than the PT test but would force airmen to focus on “stamina, flexibility, strength, power, speed, coordination, balance, accuracy and agility.”
The PT test, according to Gordon, focuses too much on both the waist measurement and the 1.5-mile run, and neglects “total fitness.” It doesn’t prepare airmen for combat or their day-to-day jobs, he said.
“Rarely does an airman’s job call for long-duration exertions [like a 1.5-mile run] without any weight or external objects to move,” the report states.
An Air Force doctor has also weighed in with a fitness program, although he doesn’t call it combat fitness.
Lt. Col. Daniel Kulund, chief of the medical staff at the 319th Medical Group at Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., has designed the Virtual Military Obstacle Course. Airmen do the circuit-training program with a 10-pound plastic pipe — called a “fighting stick” — meant to simulate the size, weight and balance of an M16.
Kulund came up with the idea after observing how military obstacle courses require “maximum effort, and oftentimes an awkward position, so you could get hurt,” he said. “It’s really not a practical way of regular physical training.”
Kulund, who at 68 is the service’s oldest active-duty airman, has lobbied Air Force leaders to adopt his program servicewide. Former Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper showed interest; the chiefs of staff since Jumper have been less enthusiastic.
Like Gordon, Kulund thinks the Air Force should place a higher priority on total fitness and preparing airmen for the physical challenges of both their jobs and deployments.
“Air Force physical training is like the cross-country team with some push-ups and sit-ups put in,” he said.
Related reading
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 08:42:55 -0500 Staff writerReport details mistakes that cost airman legs
Airman 1st Class Colton Read went to David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., to have his gallbladder removed.
He was a healthy 20-year-old man who wanted to get the routine surgery so he could deploy and serve his country.
But something went terribly wrong in the operating room that day, July 9, 2009. By the time Air Force doctors had finished with Read, he had lost about two-thirds of his blood. A day later, both of his legs had to be amputated to save his life.
Air Force Times obtained a copy of Air Force investigators’ report on Airman Read through a Freedom of Information Act request.
To read the complete story of how Air Force doctors botched a routine surgery, allowed Colton Read to bleed on the operating table while they debated for hours over what to do, cost an airman his legs and nearly killed him, pick up a copy of the March 15 edition of Air Force Times, on newsstands Monday.
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:01:00 -0500 NewsVA to automate payment system for Agent Orange claims
