No plans to extend Guard, Reserve Published Sept. 12, 2003 By Master Sgt. Scott Elliott Air Force Print News WASHINGTON -- Air Force officials do not plan to extend the involuntary deployment of Reserve and Air National Guard airmen to Iraq.About 4,700 ANG and Reserve airmen are deployed supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to a senior Air Force official, about 12,000 deployed Air Reserve Component airmen have already returned home.“The (Air Force’s) position all along has been that ARC personnel will be released when they’ve completed what they set out to do,” said Col. Richard M. Stedding, senior military adviser to the deputy secretary of the Air Force for Reserve affairs.“The importance of returning our citizen airmen to their families and civilian jobs is well-known, and we continue to strive toward that,” he said.The Air Force is following a standing policy of doing what it can to avoid extending deployments, Stedding said.“Combatant commanders have been (asked) to make sure ARC personnel are released … in sufficient time to return to their home units, reconstitute, take needed leave and process off active duty,” Stedding said.Army officials extended their Reserve soldiers on active duty based on mission requirements, the colonel said.“Many provisions have been made to rotate personnel in order to maintain the health of the force and to meet the needs of the mission,” Stedding said.The Air Force is in the first of two 120-day transitional air and space expeditionary forces that are designed to bring the service’s deployment rotation schedule back on track by March. AEF Blue airmen deployed in July, and airmen of AEF Silver are scheduled to replace them in November.“Everything is on track to resume the new steady state rotations of the AEF,” Stedding said. “That’s not to say that there won’t still be some ARC members mobilized in March, but the numbers should be small and the rationale great.”