Returning Airmen Are Healthy, For the Most Part: According to follow-up health assessments of some 12,500 airmen taken within 90 to 180 days after they return from an overseas deployment, most of them are healthy. DOD mandates an immediate health survey and a later one, called the post-deployment health reassessment survey, which personnel can complete online within about 15 minutes. Air Force officials say that about 40 percent of the 12,500 airmen have said they have a health problem—mostly minor ones.
A three-month continuing resolution that ended in December inflicted less pain on the Department of the Air Force than it had expected, as procurement and construction continue in the new year. The federal government operated under a stopgap spending measure that stretched from the beginning of the fiscal year on…