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AFPC commander pays visit to deployed air base

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Vincent Borden
  • 386th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA --  Maj. Gen. K.C. McClain, commander of the Air Force Personnel Center, visited Airmen and Soldiers here Aug. 25 during a tour to examine some of the personnel issues facing personnelists and servicemembers in the deployed environment.

More than 33,000 Airmen are deployed to contingencies around the world, 26,000 of which are serving in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.

As the commander of AFPC, General McClain is responsible for ensuring the personnel life cycle of military personnel, including aligning air expeditionary force taskings with the assignments process.

Her tour involved meeting deployed personnelists like Senior Airman Jenny Long, deployed to the 386th Expeditionary Force Support Squadron. Airman Long was one Airman in a team of personnelists that improved the base's Right Start program, an inprocessing information program, from 49 percent attendance to 95 percent in less than six months.

General McClain showed her appreciation for Airman Long's work with a coining.

"It was great meeting General McClain here in the deployed environment," said Airman Long. She is deployed from the 60th Force Support Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, Calif. "Her trip from Randolph shows concern for the troops in the [Personnel Support for Contingency Operations] career field, it was great having the opportunity to show her what we do here daily in the AOR."

General McClain also got a firsthand look at some of the processes in place for servicemembers taking emergency leave while deployed at the Individual Redeployment Theater Gateway Personnel Processing Center on Camp Morrell. There, amid Soldiers being scanned by metal detectors, loading their luggage into carts and processing through a number of processing stations, she was briefed by the vice commander of the theater gateway and specialists of each of the center's tracking systems.

Other organizations on her itinerary included the deployment control center, a vital base PERSCO function for moving servicemembers in and out of the AOR, and the 586th Air Expeditionary Group, whose squadron of combat truckers carries up to 1,500 tons of cargo on convoys throughout Iraq. General McClain focused on the operating details of each unit she met, as well as their biggest challenges.

General McClain also expressed pride and gratitude in the personnelists and what they are able to accomplish in the AOR. She thanked each of them personally for the service they provide, both for the personnel field and their country.

General McClain is scheduled to visit other sites throughout U.S. CENTCOM during her trip here, to get a firsthand feel of any personnel issues and as well as awareness of processes being employed in the area.

This is her first trip to the AOR since becoming commander of AFPC in January.