There are many changes afoot for the US Air Force and nearly all of them good. The Air Force has extended basic training, and adds language training for NCO’s. there are many new initiatives to get them out of the Air Base and working in the field. Here’s a great story about USAF folks, of all kinds, working with the Afghan National Army Air Corps. Here’s a story about USAF Security Forces personnel training Afghan cops.
But of course, there are some who don’t feel all of this so called “in lieu of” stuff is a positive development with detractors to this idea that Airman should be doing anything besides, well, airplane stuff. From this article last November we hear another view:
“It’s a problem, because I’m spending money to train my troops in skills I don’t maintain in the U.S. Air Force,” Gen. Ronald Keys, commander, Air Combat Command based at Langley Air Force Base, Va., told reporters at a Washington breakfast meeting. Keys was referring to a phenomenon the military calls “in-lieu-of,” or ILO, taskings, which are duties servicemembers are assigned that fall outside their normal service specialties. First in a trickle, then in larger numbers, both the Air Force and Navy have been sending ILO personnel to assist the Army. Because the Air Force does not “maintain the core competencies to drive convoys with 50-caliber gun trucks to defend third-country nationals,” the service has had to add special training programs in order to provide adequately prepared airmen, Keys said.
More from this article “We are fine with doing that in order to give the Army the opportunity to reset their force,” Keys said. “They are in a situation where they are trying to modularize their Army in the midst of a fairly huge war …. They need to break loose some headroom.” But it has been four years now, and there is no end in sight to the use of airmen in such unconventional roles, Keys said. “We ought to discuss it, and decide where we’re going to draw the lines, so we can allocate that precious budget we have in the right places and not duplicate,” Keys said. 
USAF TSGT Drayton Denson teaches Afghan National Police, USAF photographer unknown
Of course, not only are there issues with Air Force personnel doing non-Air Force type stuff but there has been an ongoing debate on who should defend air bases that goes back decades. The Air Force has always defended from the fence in but who is responsible for the bad guy 10 feet outside the fence? Or 2 miles? Within the US Air Force, who defends the air base was a major issue in Vietnam.
There is a wonderful but hard to get book called “Air Base Defense in the Republic of Vietnam, 1961 – 1973” by Roger Fox (from the Office of Air Force History). Very few know that our air bases were under siege during Vietnam with many successful attacks from stand off rocket attacks to infiltration by highly skilled and very brave sappers. This book lists over 475 attacks destroying 100 US and South Vietnam aircraft, damaging over 900, killing 304 and wounding over 2200. In response, the Air Force established Operation Safe Side and stood up the 1041st Security Police Squadron (Test) for defending bases in Vietnam. And of course, in the vain of “let’s recreate history because it has been decades since we’ve done that” we find a modern Operation Safe Side established in Iraq in this excellent article by Rebecca Grant in AFA Magazine.
In the book cited above, there is a little known quote by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and despite it’s length and for any modern airman that could use this as a reference, I reprint it in it’s entirety (not in the original Fox book) From The Grand Alliance (his Second World War series) Churchill wrote lengthy and very detailed memos for his aides and looking through a few of them, I was struck that this was surely Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s inspiration for his infamous “Snowflakes,” the final Snowflake discussed here WAPO article.
June of 1941, Telegram from Prime Minister to Secretary of State and Chief of the Air Staff:
Further to my minute of June 20, about the responsibility of the air force for the local and static defence of aerodromes. Every man in air force uniform ought to be armed with something – a rifle, a tommy gun, a pistol, a pike, or a mace; and everyone, without exception, should do at least one hour’s drill and practice every day. Every airman should have his place in the defense scheme. At least once a week an alarm should be given as an exercise (stated clearly beforehand in the signal that this is an exercise) and everyman should be at his post. Ninety per cent should be at their fighting stations in five minutes at the most, it would be understood by all ranks that they are expected to fight and die in the defence of their airfields. Every building which fits in the scheme of defence should be prepared, so that each has to be conquered one by one by the enemy’s parachute or glider troops. Each of these posts should have its leader appointed. In two or three hours the troops will arrive; meanwhile every post should resist and must be maintained—be it only a cottage or a mess – so that the enemy has to master each one. This is a slow and expensive process for him.
2. The enormous mass of non-combatant personnel who look after the very few heroic pilots, who alone in ordinary circumstance do all the fighting, is an inherent difficulty in the organization of the air force. Here is the chance for this great mass to add a fighting quality to the necessary service they perform. Every airfield should be a stronghold of fighting air-groundmen, and not the abode of uniformed civilians in the prime of their life protected by detachments of soldiers.
3. In the order that I might study this matter in detail, let me have the exact field state of Northolt Aerodrome, showing every class of airman, the work he does, the weapons he has, and his part in the scheme of defence. We cannot simply afford to have the best part of a half a million uniformed men, who have not got a definite fighting value apart from the indispensable services they perform for the pilots.
Now to conclude today’s lengthy diatribe, here are the opening and closing lines by a speech given by LtCol William Wise on the deactivation ceremony in 1969 for the unit that was created to defend Air Bases in Vietnam:
It is not often that a man has the opportunity to eulogize an event or an era while the era is still fresh in the minds of the people who live it. The passing of time tends to make "wise" men of us all. We find time to reflect and criticize, think of better ways that things could have been done, and glorify or rationalize specific times and events that stand out in our memory. However, the era of which I speak tonight is still with us, although rapidly passing. It is an era that saw the creation and operation of the most effective local ground defense program in the history of the United States Air Force. It is also an era characterized by disappointment, frustration, disillusion, and long days and nights of hard work and, often times, of danger. It has been an era of little material reward or recognition for many of those who lived it.
And now, in closing, if I may be allowed--A personal note! Some day perhaps the Air Force will once again find itself unprepared to protect its people and resources in a hostile environment. There may be another crash program to organize, train, equip, and deploy a unit such as "SAFESIDE." In spite of all I've said here tonight, the frustration, the complications, the separations and the hard "in-fighting" it takes to make such a program succeed, given the same group of men, I would be compelled to do it all again.
Thank you and God bless each of you.
Will we ever learn………………..