Air Education and Training Command has issued a draft environmental impact statement on the three proposed locations for USAF’s new common battlefield airmen training center. AETC plans to consolidate similar training for all manner of battlefield airmen, those airmen whose primary duties put them on the ground, often with land or special operations forces, into a single schoolhouse it expects to open in 2011. The command has scheduled public hearings for the three locations: Arnold AFB, Tenn. (July 10), Barksdale AFB, La. (June 26), and Moody AFB, Ga. (July 12). You can find the addresses for the meetings and the 572-page draft EIS here.
As an Air Force Academy cadet in the late 1980s, future United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby became aware he would never fly for the Air Force when he was asked by an instructor to close his eyes and fly straight and level in an F-4 over the Gulf of Mexico.…