Who Are Those Guys?

Gen. Michael Moseley, addressing AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium on Thursday, declared that, even today, the Air Force needs to become “more expeditionary.” The past 15 years have been a period of near-constant combat operations, he said, and that has sharpened up the force a great deal. However, said the Chief of Staff, USAF is still “heavy” in command (read: non-combat) personnel. If you start counting from the start of combat operations in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, the Air Force has already been at war for a period of time that is seven months longer than World War II, the US portion of which last 45 months. Moseley declared: “Remember, we’ve been fighting in Afghanistan longer than World War II,” he said. “If we’ve got folks in the Air Force who haven’t deployed, when we’ve been fighting longer than World War II, who are they?”