Airmen Fill the Gaps in Wartime
WASHINGTON — Straining to find ground troops to maintain its force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has begun deploying thousands of Air Force personnel to combat zones in new jobs as interrogators, prison sentries and gunners on supply trucks.
The Air Force years ago banked its future on state-of-the-art fighter jets and billion-dollar satellites. Yet the service that has long avoided being pulled into ground operations is now finding that its people -- rather than its weapons -- are what the Pentagon needs most as it wages a prolonged war against a low-tech, insurgent enemy.
Individual branches have spent decades carving out unique roles within the U.S. military, and Air Force officials insist that the redeployment of its personnel is temporary. Nonetheless, the reassignments come as another sign that the Pentagon is struggling to meet the demands of what military officials have begun calling "the long war."
As part of the effort, more than 3,000 Air Force personnel are being assigned new roles. And they are being dispatched to combat zones for longer tours of duty -- as much as 12 months rather than four.
The changes within the Air Force, even if temporary, run counter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's overall vision of the military as a lighter, faster and more lethal force that relies on technology and efficiency to accomplish national security goals more quickly.
The situation also represents a reversal of sorts for the Air Force, which had played a dominant role in recent conflicts, including the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the war to expel Serbian troops from Kosovo.
"At that point the Air Force looked to be the dominant service," said Steve Kosiak, a military analyst at the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
"That has changed."
In the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Kosiak said, the Army has been the dominant branch.
"It's been the Army, and the Air Force has played a supporting role," Kosiak said.
Air Force officials said they are expecting to commit another 1,000 airmen to missions such as guarding prisons and driving trucks over the next few years, but they don't plan to make these jobs "core competencies" within the Air Force.
