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CENTAF commander meets with U.S. troops in Afghanistan

  • Published
  • By Capt. Michael Meridith
  • 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan --  The commander of U.S. Central Command Air Forces visited with 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Airmen here and at Kandahar Airfield Oct. 8. 

Lt. Gen. Gary North also used the visit to Afghanistan to view the newest addition to the Air Force's close air support inventory--the MQ-9 Reaper. 

The Reaper is a medium-to-high altitude, long-endurance, remotely-piloted, armed aircraft system designed to go after time-sensitive targets with persistence and precision, and destroy or disable those targets. It is larger, more powerful and carries more munitions than the MQ-1 Predator but is deployed in a similar fashion, with launch, recovery and maintenance at deployed locations, while being remotely operated from Creech Air Force Base, Nev. 

"It is a tremendous increase in our capability," said General North. "As the air
component commander I can employ the aircraft as an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform, or as an attack platform to complement the manned ones we already operate." 

In addition to seeing the Reaper up close, the General also took time to speak to Airmen both at Kandahar and Bagram and address some of their concerns, especially on the future of Air Force deployment lengths and "in lieu of" taskings. 

"The question I get at every Airman's call I do is 'are we going to change the length of our deployments because other services are?' The answer is no," said General North. "We present forces the best way we believe we can present the air, space and cyberspace capability of our Air Force. It's working well. I couldn't be more pleased with the professionalism of our Airmen." 

General North also addressed the future of "in lieu of" taskings, where Airmen perform in non-traditional roles as temporary augmentation, primarily for the U.S. Army. 

"When I assumed command 18 months ago, we had about 80 percent of our Airmen filling taskings in the "in lieu of " bucket, outside of their career field," he said. "Now I'm happy to report that 80% of our Airmen who are filling "in lieu of" taskings are doing them inside their career field and are doing what they've been professionally trained to do. We are continuing to whittle away at that other 20 percent so that we can put the best qualified Airman into each particular requirement." 

Addressing concerns that U.S. accomplishments in Afghanistan were being overshadowed by events in Iraq, General North noted that the efforts of Airmen had led to tremendous, positive changes for the country. 

"I was just in Kabul and driving up the road and saw children going to school, laughing, slapping each other on the back and playing. It was just one of those small indications of just how resilient the people of Afghanistan can be and how they are preparing their children for the future," said General North. 

"I think the biggest takeaway is that our Airmen are incredibly professional, effective and we couldn't be prouder of them. They have an extremely hard mission and it's tough being away from family. But, our Airmen are doing absolutely incredible work and, I am here to salute them and thank them for a job well done," he added.