- Details
- Hits: 629
San Antonio, Texas. (July 22, 2024): A continuing challenge for the Air Force is how to be welcoming to the public while protecting military bases against all manner of modern threats. In this photo by Brian Boisvert, Senior Airman Jackson Morrow, a patrolman with the 802nd Security Forces Squadron, verifies a visitor’s base-access pass at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland. The base receives and scans base-access authorizations for approximately 36,000 vehicles and pedestrians each day and turns away approximately 51,000 unauthorized visitors annually. Air Force officials must strike a careful balance between granting greater access to the public and the risk of attacks on facilities and personnel.
This delicate task is performed daily by Air Force Security units like the 802nd who ensure the safety of people and property. They guard against terrorist attacks and infiltration by bad actors while maintaining essential law enforcement services. These include many of the functions of civilian police agencies like conducting criminal investigations, interviewing witnesses, and arresting suspects. They also patrol the base around the clock ready to respond to any emergency. Unlike their civilian counterparts, military security must guard heavy weaponry, including nuclear sites, and America’s most sensitive installations.
To become an Air Force Security Specialist, candidates must have a clean criminal record and no history of personality disorders. They must also qualify to receive a Secret security clearance, be of high moral character, and have respect for the law. Airmen must pass 7.5 weeks of Basic training followed by an additional sixty-five days of advanced coursework at the Air Force Security Forces Academy at Lackland, Texas.
Read more: AF Police Strike A Balance: Openness Versus Security
- Details
- Hits: 492
Los Angeles, California. (July 24, 2024): There is no dispute that the United States Marines are the finest, and fiercest, sea-borne infantry in the world. Which begs the question, “what does it take to lead these warfighters?” In this photo by Corporal Fred Garcia, officer candidate Joshua McConnell gets pinned to the rank of second lieutenant during a commissioning ceremony aboard the USS Iowa. His gaze reflects the pride and determination that steadied him during the extremely arduous tasks it took to achieve this honor.
While a small percentage of Marine officers attend the U.S. Naval Academy, most are commissioned after they complete four years of college via the Marines Officer Candidate Course. This physically brutal ten-week commissioning program at Quantico, Virginia is for college seniors interested in earning the title of Marine Officer. Upon completion, the newly commissioned officer will attend the Basic School as a second lieutenant.
The Basic School is a six-month course of combat conditioning, close order drill, leadership, and academic classes to prepare these young lieutenants to assume the duties of a junior officer. They are evaluated in three categories: academics, leadership, and physical fitness. The curriculum includes an endurance course, a land navigation maneuver at night, rifle and pistol qualifications, and various decision-making exercises. In the field, students engage in realistic live fire exercises at the squad and platoon level.
- Details
- Hits: 560
Colorado Springs, Colorado. (July 24, 2024): Every military service member wonders “Who was the sadistic mind that designed the first obstacle course and all its mental and physical torture”? In this photo by Dylan Smith, an Air Force basic trainee completes an assault course during cadet training at the U.S. Air Force Academy. This dubious honor of establishing the first course goes to Lieutenant Colonel William A. Hoge, a West Point graduate (1916) who earned a Distinguished Service Cross and a Silver Star during World War I. As the Army expanded after the war, Colonel Hoge was charged with training hundreds of thousands of out of shape civilians with little time or space to make it happen.
Hoge questioned how the Germans managed preparing raw recruits and was told they were using specially designed fields with a variety of trenches, climbing obstacles, crawling, swinging, and jumping like they would do in combat. Hoge drew up plans for the Army’s first “confidence course” that included running, jumping over ditches, walking on logs, and crossing streams. The goal was to evaluate the progress of individual soldiers and any weaknesses in the unit as a team.
- Details
- Hits: 522
Groton, Connecticut. (July 27, 2024): Being trapped hundreds of feet below the waves must be the darkest nightmare for every submariner. In this photo by Lauren Laughlin, students participate in surface survival training at the Navy Surface Survival Naval Submarine School. The course uses a pressurized submarine escape training facility to teach students how to survive a worst-case scenario where they perform an emergency escape from a submarine. The training teaches everything from medical physiology involved, how to surface safely, and even the proper way to man lifeboats on the surface.
The first goal is to understand human physiology and what happens to a body as it surfaces from deep water. The concern is pulmonary overinflation syndrome, a condition caused by gas-filled spaces in the lung expanding as a person surfaces. Sailors are taught to never hold their breath but instead slowly release air in short bubble bursts as they rise to the surface. Students practice this technique in a real-time setting via a pressurized dive chamber that simulates being sixty feet below the surface. The 84,000-gallon tank is heated to ninety degrees and pressure is increased until it reaches “escape depth” or six hundred feet.
- Details
- Hits: 481
MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. (July 20, 2024): The Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker is famous for its role as a “flying gas station” that extends America’s reach worldwide. Less celebrated is the role the KC-135 plays as a “flying ambulance” used to transport litter and ambulatory patients during aeromedical evacuations. In this photo by Senior Airman Lauren Cobin, Captain Jake Koehnke, a pilot assigned to the 91st Air Refueling Squadron, performs preflight checks on a KC-135 Stratotanker as it prepares for a training mission. This giant airplane has provided the core refueling capability for the Air Force, Marines, Army, and Navy aircraft for more than sixty years.
The first recorded instance of using aircraft for evacuating patients took place in 1910 when two Army medical officers used their own money to design the first air ambulance. The program had a shaky start, however, as the plane travelled only five hundred yards before it crashed. During World War II, the Army established mobile hospitals (MASH) units near the front lines to improve survival rates. During the Vietnam War, it took an average of 45 days to return severe casualties to the United States and the survival rate was 75 percent. By the time of Operation Desert Storm, in 1991, getting wounded patients home averaged 10 days, but their survival remained stubbornly at 75 percent.
- Details
- Hits: 543
Federated States of Micronesia. (July 15, 2024): Most Americans are unaware of the special relationship we enjoy with this island country in the Pacific. In this photo by Gunnery Sergeant Sean Arnold, Marines and sailors provide humanitarian disaster relief preparation by offloading bags of rice during exercise Koa Moana 24 held here this week.
The Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) is a country spread across the western Pacific Ocean comprising more than six hundred islands and is made up of four separate states, Pohnpei, Kosrae, Chuuk, and Yap. The island chain is in the “Ring of Fire,” an area characterized by active volcanos and frequent earthquakes. In addition to the threats of earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, the FSM is also vulnerable to typhoons, droughts, and landslides. To make matters worse, climate change is driving up sea levels resulting in shortages of drinking water and food insecurity. With most of its population living on the coast, the FSM is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels.
This is where America’s special relationship comes in.
In 1986, the United States signed a Compact of Free Association with the FSM that provides for financial assistance, a pledge to defend the FSM's territorial integrity, and uninhibited travel for FSM citizens to the U.S. In return, the FSM provides the United States with unlimited and exclusive access to its land and waterways for strategic purposes. Each year, hundreds of FSM citizens serve in all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces and further their education in the United States. The FSM also uses the U.S. dollar as its currency.