In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday, Gen. Michael Moseley, Air Force Chief of Staff, told lawmakers asking about the 7,700 airmen fulfilling “in lieu of” taskings for soldiers in such areas as detainee operations, explosive ordnance disposal, interrogation, and logistics, that the total number is “coming down,” since the Army has returned many of them. However, Moseley said that although a majority of the airmen performing ILO jobs have done so within their particular competency, the other 25 percent or so working outside their core competencies “concerns us.” It is those airmen that the Air Force must dedicate time and money to retrain in their USAF specialties.
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
