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thedrifter
12-05-06, 07:40 AM
December 04, 2006
By the numbers: Who’s fighting
Deployed airmen are older, higher ranking than comrades in arms

By Erik Holmes and Michelle Tan
Staff writers


Airmen deployed for operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom are cut from slightly different cloth than their comrades from the other services, according to data obtained from the Defense Department.


Related: Detailed deployment data from the Defense Department

On average, the 287,632 airmen who have deployed to the war zones since September 2001 are older, higher ranking, more likely to be married, have been in the service for longer and are more likely to have completed multiple deployments than soldiers, Marines and sailors with whom they serve.

The Air Force also has the most women deployed, as a percentage of its total deployed force, of any of the services.

The data, covering all military personnel who have deployed for OEF and OIF from Sept. 1, 2001, through Sept. 30, 2006, provide a glimpse of who has been fighting America’s wars.

Across the Defense Department, 1.4 million airmen, soldiers, sailors and Marines have served in direct support of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, or both, according to the data. More than 420,800 service members, or 30 percent of those who have deployed, have served multiple tours.

In all, service members have completed more than 2 million deployments, and 273,878 are currently deployed.

Airmen have completed 506,746 deployments, or about 1¾ deployments per airman.

Included in the number of those deployed are members in Title 10 status, including National Guard and Reserve troops preparing to deploy.

The numbers underscore the strain placed on the services as they continue combat operations amid a raging national debate about whether to begin bringing troops home from Iraq, surge more into the country or take some other course.

What the numbers do not show, but is implicit, is the toll the wars are taking on Air Force equipment, and the ever-tightening budget with which the service must repair and replace it.

“We are draining our money out of the Navy and the Air Force,” said retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, former commander of U.S. Southern Command. “We’re imperiling modernization programs in the Air Force and Navy.”

A profile of deployed airmen

There were 24,833 airmen deployed as of Sept. 30, including 20,531 active duty, 2,582 guardsmen and 1,720 reservists.

They represent 6 percent of Air Force active-duty personnel and 9 percent of American forces deployed.

The active-duty airman most frequently found in the deserts of Iraq or the mountains of Afghanistan is a white male staff sergeant between the ages of 20 and 24 who works in an electrical or mechanical maintenance field.

He is a high school graduate who has been in the Air Force for one to four years and most likely has a wife back home.

There is a more than 40 percent chance that he has deployed at least once before.

The bulk of active-duty airmen currently deployed — 61 percent — are airmen first class, senior airmen and staff sergeants. Those ranks are the three most common, making up 16 percent, 22 percent and 23 percent of the force, respectively.

More than 99 percent of deployed airmen have a high school diploma or equivalent, slightly higher than the other services.

Among officers, captain is the most common rank, accounting for 7 percent of deployed airmen and 41 percent of the officer corps.

Increasingly, airmen are serving tours longer than the standard four months. According to numbers provided by Central Command Air Forces, 16 percent of deployed airmen are serving tours of six months or a year, filling positions typically filled by soldiers or Marines.

This is a change for airmen, but it reflects the reality of a war effort that has taxed Army and Marine manpower, said Col. David Zeh, director of manpower and personnel for 9th Air Force and Central Command Air Forces at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., in a Nov. 10 interview.

“This is a different world,” he said, “and our dynamics of our mission have changed [and] our secretaries of defense and Air Force have told us that. Leadership is on board with the changing dynamic of our military, and we need to adapt to that.”

But deployed airmen are different from the soldiers, Marines and sailors with whom they serve, and the differences extend beyond uniform.

Fifty-eight percent of active-duty airmen who have deployed have been in the service for five or more years, compared to only 40 percent in the other services.

Consequently, the airmen tend to have higher ranks. E-5 is the most common grade for airmen, with 23 percent of those deployed, while E-4 is the most common grade for the other services.

Airmen are more likely than their counterparts to be married. Fifty-eight percent of deployed active-duty airmen are married, compared to only 48 percent of soldiers, Marines and sailors.

The Air Force also has a higher proportion of women deployed. Sixteen percent of active-duty airmen who have deployed are women, compared to 10 percent of the other services’ personnel.

And airmen are much more likely than those in the other services to complete multiple tours: 42 percent of airmen have done so, compared to 25 percent of the other services. However, soldiers serve year-long tours and Marines go for seven months, compared to the Air Force’s standard four-month tour, once in every 20 months.

Compared to the whole service

There are also differences between the active-duty Air Force as a whole and those who have deployed for OEF and OIF.

Deployments of enlisted airmen are slightly out of proportion to the service as a whole. Eighty percent of all airmen are enlisted, but they make up 83 percent of those deployed.

This discrepancy is most pronounced in grades E-3 through E-5, which account for 50 percent of the active-duty force but 60 percent of those deployed.

The Air Force is also sending a force that is significantly less experienced than the service as whole. Only 30 percent of all active-duty airmen have been in the service less than five years, but those less-experienced airmen make up 43 percent of the deployed active-duty force.

A smaller proportion of women deployed than in the force as a whole. Women make up 20 percent of the active-duty force but account for 16 percent of airmen deployed since 2001 and 14 percent of the currently deployed force.

The reserve components

The Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve account for 29 percent of airmen who have deployed since 2001.

The number includes 52,603 guardsmen and 29,467 reservists.

Currently, 4 percent of guardsmen are deployed. The percentage of reservists currently deployed was not available.

Deployed guardsmen and reservists are much older than their active-duty counterparts. Thirty-eight percent of deployed guardsmen and 46 percent of deployed reservists are at least 40 years old, compared to only 11 percent of deployed active-duty airmen.

Reservists have typically been in the service longer than deployed active-duty airmen. Only 58 percent of deployed active-duty airmen have been in the service for five years or longer, compared to 74 percent of reservists.

Deployed guardsmen are almost as green as active-duty airmen: 39 percent have served four years or fewer.

Nearly half — 48 percent — of guardsmen who have deployed have done so more than once.

Under current Defense Department policy, guardsmen may not be activated for more than 24 cumulative months, and many are approaching that limit. Without a change in the law, the Air Force will have to depend on Guard members to volunteer for duty beyond the legal limit, and may run short on a resource that has provided nearly 20 percent of its deployed airmen.

Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard, has said that the decision on how often Guard troops can deploy is not his to make.

“The responsibility I have is to make sure the decision makers clearly know that the members of the Army and Air National Guard are willing to serve and meet the nation’s call whenever it’s required,” Blum said in a Nov. 16 interview. “If we have to go again, the sense that I am getting from the field is that they will go again if needed, but they want to go as units and they want the greatest amount of advanced notice they can get.”

The Guard can sustain its current operational tempo, but guardsmen would not get the five or six years at home targeted by the Army Force Generation model, said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Koper, president of the National Guard Association of the United States.

“Can we keep a sufficient force in place in Iraq and Afghanistan? Sure, but all bets would be off,” he said.

The president could authorize a move from the current partial mobilization to full mobilization, which would allow for the deployment of as many Guard and Reserve troops are needed for as long as they are needed, Koper said.

“There are other steps that could be taken,” he said. “Whether those steps are politically palatable or not, I would think probably not.”

Ellie