Air Force adjusting AEF system to meet deployment tempo

[unhappycamper]

Air Force adjusting AEF system to meet deployment tempo
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, May 15, 2008

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Air Force is changing its Air and Space Expeditionary Force policy to provide increased predictability for the nearly half of deployed airmen whose deployments aren’t working out the way the system was designed.

The improvements to the AEF system won’t make the deployments shorter or less frequent, according to Col. J.R. Reid, director of the Air Force’s War and Mobilization Planning Policy Division, which oversees AEF policy.

Instead, according to one of Reid’s deputies, Maj. Leslie Higer, the changes are designed to eliminate the nagging question airmen ask themselves when they are home: " ‘I knew they came early for me last time, and I know they’ll come early for me this time — but when?’ "

~snip~

The AEF works on a 20-month cycle, and divides the active Air Force into 12 "buckets." At any one time, two of these buckets are either vulnerable to deploy, or actually rotated into theater for 120 days. Then they come home and are not vulnerable to deploy again for 16 months.

But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have busted that cycle for thousands of airmen in high-demand jobs, who are getting pulled out of their AEF buckets long before they are supposed to be deployable, Reid said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54810




uhc comment: I suspect repeated deployments are the reason for the falling active duty retention rates --> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=259x14825