From: CMSgt Mike Bergman <bergman@afnews.pa.af.mil>
Subject: AF News Svc 08/03/92
Organization: Hq Air Force News Agency/SCC
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 20:27:28 GMT


From CMSgt Mike Bergman <bergman@afnews.pa.af.mil>




From CMSgt Mike Bergman <bergman@afnews.pa.af.mil>


612.  Combat exclusion
613.  Two-level maintenance
614.  Flying safety award
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612.  Combat exclusion
by TSgt. Sarah L. Hood
Air Force News Service
     WASHINGTON -- Despite some opinions that gender discrimination in the
services will not be resolved until the combat exclusion law is eliminated,
the Air Force chief of staff maintains he is reluctant to order women into
combat where they would have to kill other people.
     "I'm afraid that, even though logic tells us that women can do that as
well as men, I have a very traditional attitude about wives and mothers and
daughters being ordered to kill people," Gen. Merrill A. McPeak told the House
Armed Services Committee Policy Panel and Personnel Subcommittee.
     The Air Force chief of staff and the other service chiefs went before
Congress July 30 to describe how each service handles sexual harassment and
other forms of discrimination against women.
     The Air Force had 304 complaints of sexual harassment in 1989, 311 in
1990 and 361 in 1991.  This year, 193 complaints have been filed.
     On an average, 70 percent of those complaints are confirmed, McPeak said.
 Confirmed complaints resulted in six courts-martial in 1989, 14 in 1990 and
21 so far this year.
     Also, there were 21 Articles 15 in 1990 and 66 in 1991.
     Although there is a bumper crop of sexual harassment problems throughout
the military, McPeak would still prefer not to send women into combat.
     He does, however, believe the combat exclusion law discriminates against
women and is not advantageous to their careers.
     "Of course, the mission of the armed forces is not to provide excellent
career opportunities; our mission is national security."  Career opportunities
are a by-product of supporting the mission, he said.
     Questioning whether the services were doing enough in the battle against
sexual harassment, Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo., asked the service chiefs
for the bottom line, "Do you think you could do without women?"  The unanimous
response was no.
     The Air Force currently has about 71,000 women in the ranks, and could
not operate without them, McPeak said.
     "I guess we could start over again," he said.  Ten years ago 2 percent of
the Air Force were women.
     But the Air Force could not accomplish the mission without the
participation and active contributions of its women members, he said.
     Performing the mission depends on the contributions of both women and
men.  Activities that get between the people and the mission will not be
tolerated, McPeak said.
     Consequently, the Air Force policy toward sexual harassment is zero
tolerance.  People are trained and educated to abide by that policy and,
historically, proven violators face stern action.
     In April, an Air Force captain pleaded guilty to charges of sexual
harassment after one of his victims filed an equal opportunity treatment
complaint through the local social actions office.
     At his trial, the captain, assigned to Hill AFB, Utah, admitted that he
sexually harassed four women who worked for him, and the wife of another Air
Force person.  The incidents took place over five years and involved indecent
language, assaults, and threats.
     The captain was given a jail sentence, forfeitures of $1,000 a month for
six months and a dismissal from the Air Force.  A dismissal for an officer is
equal to a bad conduct discharge for an enlisted person.
     While McPeak doesn't much care for the rising trend in sexual harassment
complaints indicated by the statistics, he said it proves the system is
working.
     And it proves that "Air Force members may be more comfortable reporting
these offenses today than they have been in the past."
     Committee chairman Rep. Les Aspin, D-Wis., questioned the need for more
than one method of reporting incidents.
     "We have about 10 times as many complaints handled through EEO channels
as we do through what I call standards of conduct channels," McPeak said.
     Other avenues for reporting complaints are the inspector general,
security police, chaplains, commanders or first sergeants.
     In place for several years, the equal opportunity system is staffed by
full-time, trained specialists at every Air Force installation.
     By and large the EEO channel works, McPeak said, but he favors keeping a
choice of systems because "we don't want to close down any avenue for dealing
with crime."


613.  Two-level maintenance
by TSgt. David P. Masko
Air Force News Service
     WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio -- The Air Force is testing a new maintenance
program that will eventually eliminate the need for some base-level repair of
aircraft parts and equipment, affecting all Air Force flying organizations.
     The program, called two-level maintenance, focuses on flightline and
depot maintenance as the only levels of support when repairing an aircraft.
Its aim is to improve the current three-level maintenance system which
involves a costly intermediate level that operates out of base maintenance
squadrons.
     "Two levels of maintenance is cheaper," said Maj. Gen. Richard D. Smith,
deputy chief of staff for logistics, headquarters Air Force Materiel Command.
     "It's primarily cheaper because the civilian labor is cheaper than
military labor."
     AFMC depots are primarily manned by Air Force civilians, as opposed to
intermediate base-level maintenance squadrons, which have mostly Air Force
military workers.  The switch to depot-level maintenance also simplifies the
aircraft repair process by eliminating extensive base-level repairs.
     "Two-level maintenance will involve the entire Air Force," Smith told Air
Force News Service last month.  "I think this program is part of the big Air
Force reaction to change: changed threat, changed concept, changed size.
Smaller, leaner, meaner."
     As AFMC's director for depot maintenance, Smith is also well aware of the
emphasis today for improved, competitive logistics centers.
     "In the old Air Force we thought we were always going to fight in place,
but the new Air Force says we probably will fight anywhere that you have to
deploy forward.  So, you want to cut down that amount of baggage you carry to
war," Smith said.
     Two-level maintenance cuts down the baggage you carry to war
"substantially," thus simplifying a unit's ability to deploy, he said.
     "As you cut down intermediate shops, you cut down the number of troops
you have to deploy in situations like Desert Storm... you cut down the number
of meals you have to send over there, you don't have to send so many cots,
that whole infrastructure disappears."
     During Desert Storm, the majority of the people the Air Force had in the
Middle East were maintenance people who carried some intermediate shop baggage
with them.  Two-level maintenance will help to reduce the support network that
must deploy with a unit, Smith said.
     Desert Storm also showed the need for improved logistics automation.
With programs like "Desert Express," the Air Force was able to process
thousands of repair parts requisitions coming out of the Persian Gulf each
day.  Desert Express used a network of communications and logistic centers
that rapidly expressed parts in-country from the United States and Europe on
Military Airlift Command, now Air Mobility Command, cargo aircraft.
     "MAC basically used a queen bee that brought all the reparables back on
their aircraft.  So I think we saw that it (two-level maintenance) can work in
Desert Storm," Smith said.
     "I think one of the lessons we learned in Desert Storm is that the next
thug might not be dumb enough to give us enough time to get us fully there.
And so anything that we can do to cut down that foot print on the base that we
have to deploy makes it easier for us to get into place."
     The search for process improvements, under two-level maintenance, has
already proved successful under the Coronet Deuce program, where intermediate-
level avionics is performed at AFMC's Ogden Air Logistics Center, Hill AFB,
Utah.
     For Coronet Deuce, broken avionics components involving F-16s from Hill's
388th Tactical Fighter Wing are sent directly to the depot for repairs, thus
eliminating the repair of parts at the intermediate base-level shop.
     One of AFMC's goals is to ensure that repair parts and equipment items
are continuously improved in quality and availability to operational users.
Programs like two-level maintenance are designed to eliminate the three levels
of maintenance that currently exist in the repair process of all Air Force
aircraft.
     Smith also pointed out that two-level maintenance will improve quality by
cutting intermediate repairs and sending parts to the depots which have a
greater range of capabilities.  In turn, this will help crew chiefs, "who
already do a great job," because the depots have created a new technology
repair process where none previously existed.
     Although the test program calls for changes to intermediate base-level
maintenance, "we are not cutting out intermediate," he said.
     "We are taking some parts of intermediate that will come to the depot,
and the rest of it will be put in the organizational or wing level."
     The initial two-level maintenance test program began July 1, and involves
avionics and engine maintenance, which currently affects a high percentage of
manpower and equipment at the intermediate level.
     Smith sees two-level maintenance programs starting sometime in 1994, and
being used in support of existing and future Air Force aircraft.  However, he
said most flightline activities are not going to change.
     Two-level maintenance will remove some of the "back shop things which are
a little more technically difficult," and lead in developing alternatives for
the repair of today's sophisticated fleet of Air Force aircraft, Smith said.
     "We are going to do everything we can to make our airplanes more
maintainable."


614.  Flying safety award
     ROBINS AFB, Ga. (AFNS) -- The Air Force Reserve is the winner of the Air
Force chief of staff special achievement award for flying safety in 1991.
     Two Reserve associate units were also awarded special achievement honors
with active-duty organizations.  They are the 916th Air Refueling Group,
Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C., and the 445th Airlift Wing, Norton AFB, Calif.
     Reserve units won the award in 1980, 1983 and 1984. (Courtesy of Air
Force Reserve News Service.)
--

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    |            Air Force News Agency (AFNEWS)                        | 
    |           Kelly Air Force Base, Texas, USA                       | 
    |               bergman@afpan.pa.af.mil                            |  
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