AEF Airmen ensure mission continues at Soto Cano

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  • By 1st Lt. Megan A. Schafer
  • Air Force Print News
SOTO CANO AIR BASE, Honduras --  For more than 20 years, Airmen have been rotating in and out of this Central American base filling short-tour requirements. Now, Airmen can deploy here.

“Soto Cano is one of our permanent party bases in which Airmen are also going to fill (Air and Space Expeditionary) requirements,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen L. Hoog, AEF Center commander. “This month marked the first 120-day deployment.”

Though AEF deployments have become routine, these assignments are not typical. Airmen are taking over positions where Soldiers were assigned, but which the Army has been unable to fill.

“The Army is stretched thin enough now they just can’t man the positions down here,” said Lt. Col. Jim Hetherington, commander of the 612th Air Base Squadron and Air Force Forces for Joint Task Force-Bravo at Soto Cano. “They’re sending more (Soldiers), as they should, over to the Middle East, leaving us with severe shortfalls.”

In total, Airmen have filled 43 of the 158 unfilled slots. Soldiers have another 81 and Sailors have five. All remaining slots will remain empty.

“They’re doing a great service for us, coming in to fill holes that we’ve had for a long time,” said Army Col. Rick Bassett, Joint Task Force-Bravo commander here. “We’re looking forward to the Air Force and Navy folks coming in to help us out on these rotations.”

But transitioning Army positions into skills levels for the other services was no easy task.

“When this began, we got all the skill levels and sent them to U.S. Southern Command, and we helped them come up with a matrix that listed the equivalent skills for the Navy and the Air Force,” said Maj. Sean Jones, task force personnel director.

So far, the transition has been seamless. Army Sgt. Paul Strecker, noncommissioned officer in charge of medical operations for the task force’s medical element, said he is benefiting greatly as a result of the new people on station. His unit will receive most of the AEF Airmen, a change from the past two decades when there were no spots for Air Force medics here.

One such individual taking advantage of the opportunity is Tech. Sgt. Racleo Capili, an emergency medical technician from Travis Air Force Base, Calif. Although he has only been here for a week, he said he has already felt the effect of his presence on the unit.

“I think there were only a few EMTs left (on station), so it’s definitely nice to be here to help out so other folks don’t have to work longer hours,” he said.

But while this is a great thing, there are challenges. For the units receiving AEF Airmen, they must now deal with a more frequent rotation cycle.

The Army tour length is 179 days, where the Air Force is 120 days,” Major Jones said. “The most important thing is we’re on one team. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether the person is Army, Air Force, Navy or Marine, as long as the mission gets accomplished.”

Not only does it ensure mission success for the task force, but the Air Force as a whole.

“It shows our capability to continuously support commanders in order to meet our global mission: supporting all geographic requirements with mission-capable warfighters,” said General Hoog said.