My husband has been removed from the deployment list for next month.
His Operations Superintendent looked at his deployment and TDY history for the past year and a half:
We got here after spending a year apart whilst he did a Remote Assignment. We'd been here three months when we learned that he was on the next rotation to the desert. Five months after we got here, he got sent away for 2 weeks to desert warfare refresher training. He was back for roughly three weeks, then got sent to the desert for a 6 month tour. I had to have surgery so he got pulled from the team and sent home after 4 months. They tried to send him to the NCO academy in late August, despite my physician saying that he needed to be home to help me for at least three months so I could heal properly. We had to raise some hell to prevent that from happening....and as soon as I had got the all clear to take my brace off, they sent him away to the Academy for 6 1/2 weeks. He had been back less than three WEEKS when he intercepted an email about the rotation leaving next month and saw his name on it.
The Superintendent figured that it just wasn't right, what he was being told to do. It just wasn't right to send him off again, especially given the amount of time he's spent away from home in the past 2 years.
So, he's not going. For now, that is. I'm not going to believe it until I see the team get on the plane and Dave NOT being part of it.
You know, this career field is spread too damn thin. AF Security Forces are basically infantry; they deploy a lot like the Army does - except more frequently and for shorter periods of time (for now, anyway. That's all going to change soon). Right now, we're so short manned that people are dropping retirement or separation paperwork left right and center. People who had planned on making the AF a career, on staying in until retirement are getting out because they simply can't handle the frequency and duration of the deployments. Others who had planned to stay in for the maximum amount of time their rank allows are retiring early because of the deployments. Retainability is dropping, and that means that the people that are left behind are going to have to deploy more often.
Something's going to give. Somewhere, somehow, something's going to give. I'm not the only one saying it:Link
A Pentagon sponsored study has come to the same conclusion. It concludes that the Army is near breaking point, that it's overextended and that the decision to begin reducing the force in Iraq this year was driven by the realization that the forces are spread too thin.
From where I'm standing, the study is right. The squadron my husband belongs to is starting to implement a zero tolerance policy for people who come up with excuses as to why they can't deploy. They're being given one year to get their issues fixed....and if they can't, they're being told to cross train or separate. Basically, if they're not deployable, the squadron has no use for them.
It's a decision I applaud. I see people who haven't deployed in years; who come up with excuse after excuse as to why they can't go. They sit back and let other people carry their weight for them and don't think anything of it. I used to see them at the pool last summer, splashing around with their kids. One of them actually apologized to me for my husband being gone, then went back to swimming with his kids. Hehehe....that person should be scared right now. Very scared. Pretty soon, he'll have to deploy....and if he comes up with yet another reason why he can't, he's going to be asked to leave (the squadron, that is).
'Either deploy, or work elsewhere' is the message that's being sent. It's about darn time.