Air
Force Space Command will be deploying civilian logistician Michele Kantak—at her request—to Southwest Asia in January to serve as a base-level planner. It’s not the first time AFSPC has sent a civilian volunteer—David King served 133 days in SWA earlier this year—but sending a civilian is not entirely up to the civilian. Each unit has to be able to fund overtime pay for a minimum of 32 hours per week. “Right now, most units can’t fund the [civilian] request because it’s just too large of a bill,” says Kantak.
A congressional plan to replace the special operations aircraft destroyed during the rescue of a downed F-15E aviator in Iran would take all the money the Pentagon had planned to spend on another special ops plane, the OA-1K Skyraider II.