Last Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order (EO) amending President George W. Bush’s Executive Order 13223, originally issued on Sept. 14, 2001. In short, the amendment allows military service secretaries (the secretaries of the Air Force, Army, and Navy), subject to regulation by the secretary of defense, to recall retired service members to active duty. ... Though the language of the amendment is broad, Navy Cmdr. Gary Ross, a Pentagon spokesman, released a statement the same day explaining that the order primarily seeks to enable the Air Force to address a critical shortage of fighter pilots by recalling “up to 1,000 retired pilots for up to three years.” On Sunday, Ann Stefanek, chief of Air Force media operations, said the Air Force does not “currently intend to recall retired pilots.”Mull that over for a minute: Mr. "4F for Bone Spurs" is considering drafting people.
There are a couple of things that aren't mentioned. It's probably highly unlikely that those who have been out for more than five or ten years would be recalled. The entire premises of a recall is to get people that won't require a lot of training; the longer one is out, the more training would be needed. They're not talking about recalling pilots who flew trash-haulers, who might be expected to have jobs doing that in civilian life.
Still, the optics of a president who leveraged one draft deferment after another so he could keep his precious pink bod from having to be defiled by wearing an Army (or Marine Corps) uniform now ordering people to serve on an involuntary basis is pretty bad.
Maybe he read that conspiracy theory over on BadTux's.
ReplyDeleteIDK, they are flying the shit outta the KC-135's, so some of those very attractive to the airlines pilots might get recalled.
ReplyDeleteThey fly KC-10s out of Travis; are the -135s still in service?
ReplyDelete3383, yep, they are. I expect that they'll outlast most of us.
ReplyDeleteA KC-135 flew over yesterday, hadn't see one for years.
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