Members of the House want to establish a badge honoring airmen who have served as part of combat medical evacuation missions over the past six decades. Language they have included in H.R. 5136, the House’s version of the Fiscal 2011 defense authorization bill, would authorize the Air Force Secretary to issue this badge to airmen who have served as “a pilot or crewmember of a helicopter medical evacuation ambulance” in combat on or after June 25, 1950. The language leaves it up to the SECAF to prescribe the requirements for the badge. The House lawmakers also included language for similar badges for Army, Marine Corps, and Navy combat medevac personnel. The House passed H.R 5136 in May. The Senate has not yet passed its version of the bill, which, coming out of the Senate Armed Services Committee, did not include similar language.
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…