Tag: US Air Force

It sounds like this chaplain needs to find another line of work even if the IG finds he did nothing against regulations:

After initially denying an investigation, the Air Force said Friday that its inspector general’s office is reviewing complaints against reserve chaplain Capt. Sonny Hernandez, who proclaimed that Christian servicemembers are wrong to support the rights of other faiths to practice their religion, actions that he said will lead them to hell.

“I can confirm that the Air Force is reviewing IG complaints made against Chaplain Hernandez that were referred to the Air Force Inspector General’s office,” Air Force spokesman Col. Patrick Ryder said Friday. “At this time it would be inappropriate to comment on the nature of those complaints or speculate on potential outcomes.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest example of a senior military officer having a mid-life crisis:

An Air Force officer who engaged in an unprofessional relationship with an airman 20 years his junior while commanding a small expeditionary base in Africa will be forced out of the service following a general court-martial last week.

A military judge ruled late Friday that Lt. Col. Denis Paquette should be dismissed from the service, the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge for enlisted personnel. The dismissal means that Paquette, a C-17 pilot and married father with more than 18 years in the Air Force, won’t be eligible for retirement benefits.

Paquette chose to have his case decided by a military judge. He pleaded guilty to fraternization; violating a lawful general order on one occasion by drinking more than two alcoholic drinks at a deployed location in less than 24 hours; and to impeding an investigation.  [Stars & Stripes]

I recommend reading the whole thing at the link because this guy was running a base in Tunisa like a frat house while hitting on an 18-year old airman.  I recommend to people having a midlife crisis to buy the sports car instead because ruining a military career over something like this is not worth it.

I would not want to be the commander for the unit these idiots serve in that kept an underage prostitute in the on-post dormitories and fed her dining facility food:

Two enlisted airmen assigned to Dover Air Force Base are being held on federal charges they sexually abused a runaway teen girl.

The men, identified as Airman 1st Class Dalian Washington, 25, of Philadelphia, and Airman 1st Class Akeem Beazer, 21, of Pompano Beach, Fla., were arrested March 31, said Kimberlynn Reeves, spokeswoman for acting US Attorney David Weiss.

Both men are charged with sexual abuse of a minor, while Washington also faces a single count of sex trafficking of a child.

According to the criminal complaint against both men, the case came to light in March when the girl told a social worker that beginning when she was 15 years old and continuing after her 16th birthday, she had stayed at Dover AFB and had sexual relations with Air Force personnel while there.

This admission prompted an investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Delaware State Police.

The DSP detective was familiar with the girl, who allegedly had a troubled home life and often ran away from home.  [Dover Post]

You can read the rest at the link, but this girl was being pimped out of the DMV of all places.

This is a pretty interesting read by an Air Force Academy alumnus who recently saw the changes the academy has gone through to train officers for today’s Air Force:

None of this was happening. They were walking at rest, not greeting anyone. Actually, they were ignoring the upperclassmen walking by. I stopped one of them and asked him, “Cadet, are you recognized yet?”

“No, we are not,” was his response. He kept walking. There was no “sir” in his response. He obviously knew I was an alumnus and former military officer. The problem was that he simply didn’t care. He didn’t care because he had been taught not to care. Military bearing was absent. Completely gone. Removed.

And then, the shock continued.

As the time started to get close to the Noon Meal Formation, where the cadets form up and march into Mitchell Hall for lunch, I again realized nothing was happening. Cadets were nonchalantly walking to the huge cafeteria where they are served all at once during the school week for lunch. I subsequently found out the formation had been cancelled due to high winds. I laughed to myself.  There wasn’t even a breeze. Wow, things really have changed.

Inside the noon meal, all former military decorum and training at the lunch table had been vaporized. There was nothing. The freshman cadets didn’t even have the civilian decency to serve their alumni guests first, not to mention any military bearing. They just took the food and ignored everyone else at the table.

It gets worse: after lunch, my colleagues walked into the academic building. Before my eyes, where there used to be formal lecture halls, was a Dunkin’ Donuts. My jaw hit the floor and I actually took a picture– I was that amazed. This was no longer a military academy; it was UCLA in uniforms.  [Ops Lens]

Here is the most profound thing he realized from his visit to the US Air Force Academy:

Not once did I hear the word warrior. In a flash, I got it. The academy was no longer training cadets to be Air Force warriors. They were no longer training to fight for our country and win wars. They were being trained to function in the bureaucracy. The academy was all about competing with civilian institutions in a variety of ways.

You can read much more at the link, but I am curious if anyone agrees with this former cadet’s assessment of the current state of the US Air Force Academy.

North Korea has their typical provocation playbook and the US has its typical playbook in response with one of the plays being to fly a bomber from Guam over South Korea:

Two B-1B nuclear-capable strategic bombers of the U.S. Air Force flew over South Korea, Tuesday, in a show of force against North Korea that conducted its fifth nuclear test last week in defiance of global warnings.

The B-1B Lancers conducted a low-altitude flight over Osan Air Base, south of Seoul, around 10:00 a.m. after having flown from the Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The aircraft is capable of carrying the largest payload of both guided and unguided weapons of any current American bombers.

One B-1B was escorted by four F-15Ks from South Korean Air Force, while the other was escorted by four F-16s from the U.S. Air Force during the flight. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

I believe there has to be more to this story because why is this allegation coming to light now when this guy has been retired since 2009?:

The Air Force is investigating a sexual-assault report against a retired four-star general who was on active duty at the time of the alleged incident, service officials said Friday.

Details about the case are scant, but Col. Patrick Ryder, an Air Force spokesman, said the service will conduct a thorough investigation of Gen. Arthur J. Lichte, who retired as head of Air Mobility Command in 2009. Ryder declined to provide additional details, saying it would be inappropriate to do so.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but like I have always said people who have been victims of sexual assault need to immediately report the crime because as time goes by the more difficult it will be to prosecute.  It will be interesting to see how this case proceeds.

You would think the adultery charges this guy is facing would be the least of his troubles considering he is charged with rape as well:

Lawyers for a Schriever Air Force Base colonel argued Monday that a half-dozen adultery charges against him should be thrown out because the military’s law banning extramarital sex discriminates against heterosexuals.

Col. Eugene Marcus Caughey is headed for an August court-martial on charges of rape, assault, taking a dirty selfie and the adultery counts. He was in court Monday for a formal reading of the charges and to argue pretrial motions.

Maj. Keith Meister, one of three attorneys defending Caughey, told Air Force judge Col. Wes Moore that the military’s definition of adultery as sex between a man and a woman hasn’t keep place with its definition of marriage, which now includes same-sex couples. That’s because the military’s adultery law requires “sexual intercourse” as an element of guilt, which the Pentagon defines as an act between a man and a woman.

“A homosexual man or woman couldn’t commit adultery as defined,” Meister argued.

Caughey’s defense team maintains that because gay people get a pass, the charges violate the colonel’s rights under the 14th Amendment, which mandates equal protection under law.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read much more at the link, but one way to look at this is that the defense lawyer thinks the rape charge is weak and needs to get the adultery charges dropped because that is what the Air Force could use to really crush this guy.  It will be interesting to see how this case turns out because it could lead to an entire redefinition of what is adultery in the US military.

That is what the popular Air Force blog JQ Public believes:

Last year, commanders at Osan Air Base in Korea decided to install high-definition, 24/7 surveillance cameras in the common areas of dormitories housing some 3,000 airmen. The rationale stated at the time was, generically, the safety of those airmen. Not litigated at the time was whether the cost of the new capability would be offset by the marginal gain in safety, but such debates are rarely entertained in such an authoritarian system. Ideas are presumed valid, good, and lawful the instant they gain command sponsorship.

Fast forward a year and the system has predictably loosed from its “safety” moorings and morphed into a tool for the control and criminalization of the base’s junior airmen. Over the past few weeks, we’ve received several reports that commanders are not using video footage merely to aid in criminal investigations after a report of wrongdoing, but are proactively reviewing all footage to scan for unreported wrongdoing.

For many, the new policy feels like pre-emptive criminalization — demonstrating that the chain of command is not genuinely concerned about safety or well-being so much as it cares about nailing airmen for innocuous or minor transgressions that would normally fall well below the threshold of official notice.  [JQ Public Blog]

You can read much more at the link and it is an interesting debate.  However, overall I like the cameras in regards to being a tool that can be used to collect evidence if a crime in the dorms was to occur.  However, I don’t think the cameras should be used as a substitute for leadership presence in the dorms.  Instead reviewing hours of video tape leaders should instead be walking in the dorms and communicating with their troops instead.

Alicia Watkins who has more than received her 15 minutes of fame over the past few years claiming to be a wounded warrior from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  However, she has now been officially outed as having lied about her background.  The Air Force Times was able to get a copy of her DD-214 that shows she was not a recipient of the Purple Heart and never deployed to Iraq:

Official military records contradict several claims made by an Air Force veteran whose story of surviving the 9/11 terror attacks and battling severe combat injuries gained her access to prestigious events and captivated  celebrities, most recently Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump.

Alicia Watkins, who retired from the Air Force in 2008 for undisclosed medical reasons, has since appeared on multiple mainstream news and TV programs, including “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and the TLC reality series “Say Yes to the Dress,” to discuss her struggles after sustaining a career-ending back injury from an improvised explosive attack in Afghanistan. However, there is nothing in the list of awards and decorations contained in Watkins’ military personnel file indicating she was ever involved in an enemy attack. A spokesman for the Air Force Personnel Center in San Antonio, Texas, Mike Dickerson, provided Air Force Times with Watkins’ decorations, awards and deployments, as noted on her DD-214 discharge form.  [Air Force Times]

I recommend reading the entire article at the link, but the Air Force Times piece has still left some questions unanswered.  For example she was assigned to the Pentagon during the timeframe of the 9/11 attack.  However, was she there the day the attack happened like she claims?  The fact she was not awarded a Purple Heart directly contradicts the claim she has made that she was injured during the attack.  This also proves she was not wounded by an IED in Afghanistan as well.  The other part of her narrative that has yet to be resolved is if she really knew the Army soldier who died during the 9/11 attack that she supposedly started a charity for.

Then her personnel records show she was only awarded 8 awards, but she has been seen wearing 19 awards to include the Purple Heart.  Then there is the fact that she was not awarded an Afghanistan Campaign Medal. The Air Force Times says she deployed to Afghanistan, but if she did not receive the campaign medal that means she was not in theater long enough to receive it.  Personnel receive the medal after 30 consecutive days in theater or 60 non-consecutive.  So she may not have even been in Afghanistan longer than 30 days.  I am also amazed that after nearly 10 years in the Air Force she did not receive an Air Force Achievement Medal.  This really makes me wonder about her performance if as an E-5 she did not receive at least an achievement medal.

Anyway this should close the book on her, but I am sure she will defend herself by saying the Air Force screwed up her records like many other people caught inflating their service tend to do.  It will be interesting to see if any legal action is pursued because she has profited from her wartime injury claims which is against the law.

You can read more about the DD-214 findings over at Guardians of Valor as well as John Q. Public.

For those that haven’t read about this read I recommend going over to the John Q. Public blog and read about the curious case of Air Force veteran Alicia Watkins.  She was the woman that for yet to be determined reasons was given media credentials at a Donald Trump event and given the opportunity to ask a question.  Trump then invited her to come up on stage and made her a job offer.  The whole scene was strange, but when people began digging into Alicia Watkins backstory things got even stranger.

If you take everything she says at face value she is a 9/11 survivor from the Pentagon attack who had a close friend die who she started a charity for.  She then deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq where she saw combat action, suicide bombers, was seriously wounded and was awarded the Purple Heart.  She was also a military sexual assault survivor, has a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress.  She was then medically discharged from the Air Force and proceeded to become a homeless veteran.  While homeless she did video diaries that eventually landed her a spot on the Oprah Winfrey show.  She then went on to attend Harvard, become a beauty queen, reality television personality and gets the VIP treatment at Super Bowl 50.  I probably missed a few things, but that is the best I could do in a paragraph.

So what has been verified about Watkins?  As far the media company she claimed to be working for that got her press credentials according to CNN it does not exist.  We also know that she was an executive assistant for Major General Durbin at Camp Eggers in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2006.  I have seen nothing yet to show she deployed to Iraq.  We also know that she is claiming to be at two places at the same time.  This 2007 Air Force article has her addressing airmen that had recently returned from an Iraq deployment.  Her speech was about how being at Ground Zero during 9/11 motivated her to join the Air Force which is different from her other accounts of being assigned to the Pentagon during the 9/11 attack.  The Washington Post was able to confirm that her enlistment date was in 1998 which means that the 9/11 attacks could not have motivated her to enlist.

It is also unclear if she had to be homeless because if she was medically retired she should have been receiving a stipend and disability each month.  As far as attending Harvard this was a stretching of the truth because she enrolled in the Harvard Extension School which is an online offering of courses which anyone can sign up for.  There has yet to be any evidence that she was actually hit by any IED or seen any combat action.  I also could not find any evidence of the charity she supposedly started for her friend killed during the Pentagon attack.

Really a DD214 would pretty much clear a lot of this up because it would show whether she has a Purple Heart or not.  It would also show her assignments to see if she was actually assigned to the Pentagon on 9/11.  It would also show her deployment history.  There are already a lot of holes in this story, but hopefully the Stolen Valor folks can get a copy of her DD214 to put the remaining questions to rest.