Active duty C-17 Globemaster III units from Travis Air Force Base and Joint Base Charleston, South Carolina, will receive over $1.8 million in rebates and awards as part of the Mission Execution Excellence Program, a new incentive program led by Air Force Operational Energy to enhance mission execution through more frequent use of operational “best practices.”
Working directly with aircrew, the Mission Execution Excellence Program helps to streamline sorties and increase aircraft range and capability by incentivizing optimized flying through
monetary rebates and awards provided directly to participating wings.
During a ceremony Oct. 27 at the Airlift Tanker Association Symposium in Denver, the 60th Air Mobility Wing from Travis Air Force Base received the Most Efficient award, with a cash rebate of $370,000 and award of $500,000. The 437th Airlift Wing from Joint Base Charleston received the Most Improved award, with a cash rebate of $448,000 and award of $500,000.
Gen. Mike Minihan, commander of Air Mobility Command, and Roberto Guerrero, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Air Force Operational Energy,
presented the awards to Col. Derek M. Salmi, commander of the 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis Air Force Base, and Col. Robert V. Lankford, commander of the
437th Airlift Wing at Joint Base Charleston, who were integral to the success of the program.
The wings participated in the pilot-year of the Mission
Execution Excellence Program from May to October 2022. The program coordinators worked onsite with aircrew and operations
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U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Montarius Williams oversees firefighters from the San Francisco Fire Department Airport Division during training at Travis Air Force Base, Jan. 10. Senior Airman Alexander Merchak/U.S. Air Force
Senior Airman Alexander Merchak/U.S. Air Force photos
U.S.
Rohrs is participating in the reserve Seasoning Training Program that helps reservists meet their initial mobilization requirement and skill level. Airmen removed fallen debris as part of a storm aftermath fallen trees clearing project after Travis AFB experienced extreme weather conditions.
Staff Sgt. Jessica Vadnais, 60th Civil Engineer Squadron pavements and heavy equipment supervisor, supervises debris removal Jan. 12.
ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. — As Air Force Reserve Command’s social media manager, Senior Airman Erica Webster is constantly on the lookout for bogus accounts claiming affiliation with Air Force Reserve Command.
Unfortunately, she usually doesn’t have to look too hard to find a fake page or two.
“Just within the last month, we’ve had four bogus Facebook pages claiming to be the official page of Lt. Gen. Healy,” Webster said, referring to Lt. Gen. John Healy, the commander of Air Force Reserve Command and chief of the Air Force Reserve. “Senior Air Force leaders are a prime target for social media scammers.”
When Webster spots a fake account, she immediately reports it to the social media company to have the page taken down.
Occasionally, the social media company will freeze a legitimate page while it sorts out the fakes.
“That’s what happened with Lt. Gen. Healy’s Facebook page in December,” Webster said. “There were so many fake Healy pages out there that Facebook temporarily locked our legitimate account while it handled all of the bogus accounts.”
Fake social media pages are a global problem. In the second quarter of 2022 alone, Facebook reported taking action on 1.4 billion bogus accounts. Fake social media accounts can promote phony products, spread scams and even share lies and misinformation. It’s important to spot a phony account right away before engaging with a page’s content.
“If you aren’t sure where to start, there are numerous ways to quickly identify if a profile is legitimate or not,” Webster said. She offered these tips for quickly spotting a fake page:
n Check the URL. The address
bar is largely ignored when it comes to identifying a fake social media account, but it can be one of the quickest ways to spot one. Legitimate accounts will be registered and have a vanity or personalized URL created for their page, which will match the profile name or something closely related. Unlike fake accounts, these
won’t contain any numbers.
n See if there are there a lack of followers, mentions or engagements. Official pages will have hundreds, if not thousands, of followers, along with mentions or comments. Fake profiles of senior leaders will have very few followers and little to no engagement on the page.
n Look for subtle differences of the account name. For example, “Lt. Gen. John Healy” and “Lt Gen John Healy” look identical at first glance, but only the former is an official page. Fake accounts may include or remove letters and punctuation when impersonating a legitimate one,
ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) —
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III on Jan. 10 rescinded the Aug. 24, 2021, memorandum mandating that members of the Armed Forces under Department of Defense authority be
vaccinated against Covid-19, and the memorandum of Nov. 30, 2021, pertaining to the vaccination of National Guard and Reserve personnel.
This rescission requirement was established by the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023.
The health and readiness of the armed forces is crucial to the department’s ability to defend the nation. Austin continues to encourage all service members, civilian employees and contractor personnel to get vaccinated and boosted against Covid-19 to ensure total force readiness.
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE — Service members and their families at Travis can kick-start their fitness goals in 2023 with the latest fitness apparel, accessories and gear from the Army & Air Force Exchange Service.
The Travis Exchange features a Be Fit 360 concept shop that has the look and feel of major
sporting goods stores, making it easy for shoppers to find the right products to meet their fitness resolutions.
Shoppers can pick up athletic apparel and footwear; digital fitness accessories; watches and wearable technology with fitnesstracking capability; and hydration accessories at military-exclusive prices, tax-free.
“The new year is a great time to begin a new fitness program,” Travis Exchange General Manager Phonda Bishop said in a press release. “The Exchange has a wide assortment of Be Fit 360 essential gear to support the Travis community and keep
service members ready and resilient all year long.”
Active-duty service members and their families, retirees, service-connected disabled veterans, and Department of Defense and Coast Guard civilians can shop for essential Be Fit 360 gear in-store. Honorably discharged veterans can shop the assortment at ShopMyExchange.com. Veterans can visit ShopMyExchange. com/Vets to learn more about the shopping benefit.
Travis Exchange shoppers can also visit the Be Fit 360 page on the Exchange’s online hub at https://publicaffairs-sme.com/ Community/befit/.
making it difficult to spot on first glance.
Here are a few additional tips from the Better Business Bureau on how to identify a fake social media account:
n Look closely at the content. Scammers and spreaders of false information often fill their feeds with stock images, memes or other recycled images that are not original. They may use profile pictures that are not of an actual person, or simply an avatar. Be wary of accounts with no original images. Also outdated/old images or ones of poor quality tend to be frequent on fake pages. Posts that contain no written content at all, or written content with many spelling or grammatical errors, could be signs of a fake account as well.
n Analyze account transparency. Ask yourself, who runs this account? If an account profile is little more than generic phrases, quotes or introductions, with no specifics about a person’s name, occupation or background, you may have stumbled across a fake account.
n Inspect the quality of engagement.
Some fake social media accounts purchase engagement. This means that, at first glance, their account appears to have many real followers. However, these purchased fans and followers typically leave comments unrelated to the post, comments that are just emojis and multiple
comments from a single individual that aren’t part of a conversation. Even real accounts inevitably gather a few fake followers, but if the bulk of the engagement looks fake, steer clear.
n Take advantage of verification indicators. Not every average Joe will have a
verification indicator by their name, but if you want to follow someone who is famous or influential, make sure they have a legitimate, verified badge on their profile. Check the FAQ section of each social media network separately to know what the verification badge should look like and where it should be in the account. Accounts without verification are potentially owned by imposters.
n Beware of polarized political opinions. Accounts designed to spread misinformation or sway political opinions often promote one-sided viewpoints that border on extremism. If an account posts only one-sided political theories and ideals, never revealing information about the person posting, you may be dealing with a troll.
n Be wary of scams. Fake social media accounts are also a favorite tool of scammers. If a social media account repeatedly shares the same link in a short period of time or if the account shares a link with incorrect information about where it leads, it’s probably a scam. Only click links you trust, otherwise you could fall victim to a phishing scam and download malware onto your device.
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Tasked with having to know about hundreds of types of drugs and their interactions, equipment, and much more, pharmacists are vital in keeping warfighters healthy and ensuring that the U.S. military maintains a medically ready force.
For deployed pharmacists, they face unique challenges, as they don’t work in a traditional brick and mortar setting. Rather, deployed pharmacists can be on a ship in the middle of the ocean, or in a makeshift building in the Middle East or Africa. The deployed pharmacy workforce may have to take care of warfighters in abnormal situations or locations.
A deployed pharmacist is, “a pharmacist forward, in a hostile environment, supporting a broad range of contingency operations in support of our nation’s objectives,” said U.S. Army Maj. Lance R. Murphy, chief of ambulatory care pharmacy services at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Typically, it’s the pharmacist’s
job to screen, package, and distribute medication to patients, ensuring they are prescribed the correct dosage to treat their ailment. Yet while on deployment, it can be much more than that.
“A deployed pharmacist is the primary drug/medication expert for the management, storage, and acquisition of pharmaceuticals. Many times, you are
the only pharmacist within your area of operation and will expected to be always available,” said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Norman Tuala, deputy chief of the department of pharmacy at Tripler Army Medical Center.
Tuala went on to explain that there are four positions for a deployed pharmacist: field hospital pharmacist, division pharmacist, medical logistics pharmacist, and theater pharmacy consultant.
He said, “You need to be
support personnel to implement a range of best practices, tools and techniques during operations, such as precision fuel planning, operational process improvements and adherence to the Mission Execution Excellence Program’s proven practices to reduce fuel demand, mitigate energy risk and improve combat effectiveness.
Operational fuel data from each wing was closely tracked and compared against historical baselines to measure total efficiency gains, which then determined unit rebate amounts.
During the five-month period, Charleston reduced their average shutdown fuel by 13,000 pounds per sortie and Travis reduced by 11,000 pounds per sortie. Together, they are projected to save over 1 million gallons of fuel each year, or roughly $4 million based on today’s fuel prices.
“Our energy demands are extraordinary and come with a lot of operational risk to the warfighter. We found that many of our aircraft were landing with 10,000 pounds over what was required to complete the mission – including divert fuel,” said Lt Col Austin Street, 21st Airlift Squadron commander at Travis Air Force Base. “By optimizing fuel planning and safely decreasing landing weights among our heaviest aircraft, we can now reduce unnecessary fuel use and redirect those cost savings to the wing’s high priority initiatives. This means during peacetime we’re avoiding waste and
reinvesting in our wings. During wartime, these tactics will be critical to mitigate risk to our energy supply chains and allow for extended range and fuel offload capability.”
As the program grows, Air Force Operational Energy intends to expand funding to additional readiness and capability efforts as part of the Operational Energy Savings Account, which implements congressional authority to reinvest energy cost savings into programs that accelerate innovation in the Air Force.
During the kickoff year of the program, the Mission Execution Excellence Program directly funded expansion of Air Mobility Command’s competency-based virtual and augmented reality training capability for aircraft maintenance and career enlisted aviator communities, as part of its Integrated Technology Platform initiative.
The program is expanding in 2023 to all C-17 and C-5 Galaxy active-duty strategic airlift units at Travis Air Force Base, Joint Base Charleston, Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, as well as Air Force Reserve Command wings at Travis and Charleston.
If implemented across the entire mobility fleet, the Mission Execution Excellence Program is projected to save 3% of total mobility fuel consumption, or approximately $80 million annually.
To learn more about the program and see how your wing can get involved, contact Air Force Operational Energy at https:// www.safie.hq.af.mil/Contact-Us/.
proficient as an outpatient and inpatient pharmacist; however, you’ll need to be more familiar with logistics such as different ordering platforms, forward logistic elements.”
Logistics and supply management can be one of the biggest challenges a deployed pharmacist may face, Tuala said.
“My biggest concerns were supply availability, controlled substance accountability, and management of refrigerated items. I didn’t always have what I needed, but I was able to pursue available logistics contacts to request what I needed,” Tuala said. “You cannot operate as you do while you are back in garrison and expect most pharmaceutical orders to arrive next day.”
Yet the conditions are manageable if the pharmacist plans ahead.
He also mentioned, “manpower, logistics, formulary changes, and varying missions,” as some of the biggest challenges while on deployment.
He recalled a time when he was deployed where logistics played a key factor.
“There was an outbreak of a gastro-intestinal parasite in Kuwait. I was responsible for ordering the medications to treat the infection and side effects. I was able to verify treatment and get the medications, as well as prevention medication, shipped out within two hours and delivered on site within 24 hours,” Murphy said.
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