The Air Force has changed dramatically over the last 15 years: It's 40 percent smaller than it was at the end of the Cold War, yet operational deployments are up- way up. Many airmen now on active duty went through the turbulent time of the drawdown in the early 1990s. Now Air Force members face another upheaval as service leaders trim the force by some 16,000 personnel and reshape it to correct current manning and skill imbalances. The new cuts will be the largest the Air Force has made in years and come at a time when the service remains stressed. Even before the surge in operations generated by the Global War on Terror (GWOT), the pace of long-standing deployments and pop-up crises had caused serious problems. Some officials estimated at the time that the Air Force should boost its end strength by at least 10,000 active duty personnel.
展开▼
