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Service members next year will be paying more for prescriptions bought off base, getting less of a housing subsidy and a picking up a smaller pay raise under an agreement reached between Senate and House lawmakers.
The deal between the Senate and House armed services committees on the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act is bound to draw criticism from military associations and veterans' service groups, which lobby Congress on behalf of service members' pay and benefits.
An atheist airman at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada was denied reenlistment last month for refusing to take an oath containing “so help me God,” the American Humanist Association said Thursday.
And in a Sept. 2 letter to the inspectors general for the Air Force and Creech, Monica Miller, an attorney with the AHA’s Apignani Humanist Legal Center, said the airman should be allowed to reenlist without having to swear to a deity, and instead given a secular oath. Miller said the AHA is prepared to sue if the airman is not allowed to reenlist.
The “help wanted” sign is out for airmen facing the prospect of losing their active-duty jobs in the Air Force — or whose nerves are so frayed after surviving this year’s aggressive round of force cuts that they’ve decided it’s time to call it quits.
The Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard are looking to fill some of their most critically needed jobs with experienced airmen, and they’ve sweetened the deal for airmen who might not be ready to walk away from military life for good.
Among the incentives:
Long but good
WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- Air Force officials announced a series of sweeping changes to the Enlisted Evaluation System and Weighted Airman Promotion System July 31.
The changes are intended to ensure the Air Force truly makes job performance the driving factor and will be implemented incrementally beginning in August 2014 and continuing through early 2016. Additional information and in-depth articles will be made available for each of the major program changes, prior to implementation, ensuring Airmen are knowledgeable of and ready for the changes.
“What gets measured gets done,” said Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James. “We want to make sure performance is the most important thing in every aspect of an Airman’s career, so the evaluation process is going to measure performance, and the promotion system is going to emphasize performance.”
Promotion test answer sheets for 99 airmen at Pope Field in North Carolina were lost in the mail and were unable to be used in the most recent staff sergeant testing cycle, the Air Force Personnel Center said Thursday.
“A significant majority” of those 99 affected airmen tested for staff sergeant, AFPC said in response to an Air Force Times inquiry. It is unclear whether those airmen were passed over as a result of the missing tests.
In its statement, AFPC pledged to resolve the situation for affected airmen.
(Reuters) - China told the United States on Tuesday to stay out of disputes over the South China Sea and leave countries in the region to resolve problems themselves, after Washington said it wanted a freeze on stoking tension.
Michael Fuchs, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Strategy and Multilateral Affairs, said no country was solely responsible for escalating tension in the region. But he reiterated the U.S. view that "provocative and unilateral" behaviour by China had raised questions about its willingness to abide by international law.
The Air Force’s first enlisted retention boards are two weeks away from convening — and they could end the careers of roughly 4,000 airmen.
Nearly 14,600 airmen — senior airmen through senior master sergeants in certain career fields — are likely to be considered by the retention boards that will begin June 16, according to the Air Force’s latest eligibility matrix, dated May 19. About 28 percent of them could be told to separate or retire.
Congress approved funding last week for the Pentagon’s advanced hypersonic missile program and expressed concerns over China’s recent test of an ultra high-speed strike vehicle designed to deliver nuclear warheads through U.S. missile defenses.
The House fiscal year 2015 defense authorization bill approved $70.7 million for the Army’s hypersonic missile as part of the Pentagon’s conventional prompt strike program.
The Senate, in its version of the fiscal year 2015 defense bill, also authorized $70.7 million for hypersonic weapons.
Washington (AFP) - The United States warned China Thursday against sparking tensions in international airspace after Japan accused Beijing of "dangerous maneuvers" above disputed seas.
"We do not accept China's declaration of an ADIZ (Air Defense Identification Zone) over the East China Sea and urge China not to implement it," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.