Air Force Continues to Steal Headlines

Thursday afternoon, the official Web site of the Air Force trumpeted the arrival of "offices in the air," placing this story as the lead on the 7-million-visitors-per-week page.

Air Force officials buy 'offices in the air'

WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- Air Force officials recently approved the purchase of pallets that will provide work and rest areas for senior leaders traveling aboard mobility aircraft. The service is purchasing two types of removable mobile command workspaces for use by military and senior civilian leaders who are required to use military aircraft for travel. One is the Senior Leaders In-transit Conference Capsule, or SLICC, and the other is the SLIP, or Senior Leaders In-transit Pallet.

"Typical Air Force," I thought to myself. Only my service would celebrate this airborne luxury while our fighting men and women (to include numerous brave Airmen, both enlisted and junior officer) are in the sh!t, fighting.

Thankfully, the Washington Post thought the same thing, and covered the story on A01:

Terrorism Funds May Let Brass Fly in Style
The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend
counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

In a true, Profiles in Courage moment, the Air Force ripped down the story from http://www.af.mil/. Go ahead, I dare you to find it on the site or via the site search function. Fortunately, this is the same service that kept pictures of everyone's favorite colonel up well into his headline-stealing court martial. And don't worry, I saved a copy of the page.

This is incredible. Let's put this in perspective: someone in SAF/PA actually thought that this was noteworthy enough to lead the official Air Force Web page, and spawned an A01 Post story that causes the AF to pull the piece. That's a HUGE swing and miss. The last thing the AF needs is this kind of press.

More from today's Post:

A military officer familiar with the program, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about it, likewise said that its extravagance has provoked widespread contempt among lower-ranking Air Force personnel. "This whole program is an embarrassment," the officer said, particularly because transport seating for troops en route to the battlefield is in his view generally shoddy.

It' s no secret what I think about certain Air Force leadership, so this is only par for the course. You grow to expect this after a while.

As one of my former fellow Airmen recently wrote,

"I have to admit, when I heard about those to jack-asses getting the boot,
I had to chuckle a little. They f-d everything up when they started
cutting good people to buy a couple more jets. Now we're knee deep in a
war that requires leaders, not planes, and they are undermanned."

I also think that this is the tip of the iceberg. While I was on active duty, rumor had it that while at Scott AFB, Gen. McNabb gutted his C-21 (executive transport/military Lear Jet) and retrofitted it with various outlandish upgrades (leather interior, there was word of an in-flight bar). If true, there's much more here. Hopefully, the Post has only scratched the surface and continues to pursue reporting on unnecessary excesses.

Good Things DO Happen!

You know how some times in life the worst people always seem to get over? (Sec. Gates, you're doing so well, why this???)  You know what I'm talking about?  For some reason, the Air Force really hammered this possibility home.  Multiple times.  Over and over again.  To the point it was almost insulting (Not as insulting as how fabricated that story is, UGH-Ed.)

Thankfully, my faith in humanity is restored as the first female Thunderbird pilot, Maj. Nicole "FiFi" Malachowski (Hell of a story behind that call sign), earned a White House fellowship!

As an aside, the White House Fellowship is as big as it gets.  My Air Force idol, Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, was a fellow after he was a Rhodes Scholar.  My State Department idol, Colin Powell, was also a Fellow.  The program is truly a murder's row of leaders.

I had the pleasure of taking Nicole and her fellow Thunderbirds to an Albuquerque Isotopes ball game when they came out to Kirtland for the 2006 Air Show.  She was first class, a beauty outside and in, as she gracefully answered all my questions asinine ("Would you get fired if you flew your F-16 through the Gateway Arch?")  



She had a touching story about an old friend from Long Island that passed away too young, and was incredibly down to Earth for such a groundbreaking woman and officer.

Way to go, FiFi!  You keep making your nation proud.