CMSAF James Cody said he worries about the cost airmen are paying to achieve the mission set before them. “What I worry about every night is that email that is going to come in at 1:00 in the morning, that notification that we’ve lost an airman,” Cody told an audience at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando on Thursday. “I have never once, not one day that I’ve been in this position, worried about the mission getting done,” he added, saying he has no doubt airmen will get the job done. However, that ability to achieve the mission sometimes comes “at a cost that I think is too great,” he said, citing domestic violence incidents, suicide rates, and combat-related deaths as such examples. “But, they’re getting it done.”
The U.S. began extensive air and artillery strikes against Islamic State group targets in Syria on Dec. 19 in retaliation for the killing of three Americans on Dec. 13 by a gunman affiliated with ISIS, U.S. officials said.
