Gates backs 3-year tours to Korea

[unhappycamper]

Senior Airman Natalie Huntington, left, and Senior Airman Thomas Newell of Osan Air Base, South Korea, work with Airman 1st Class Stephanie Nelson, of Aviano Air Base, Italy, during a combat ammunition production exercise at Kunsan Air Base. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said June 2 that three-year, accompanied tours to South Korea are overdue.


Gates backs 3-year tours to Korea
By Lolita C. Baldor - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Jun 5, 2008 6:10:40 EDT

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it’s time to stop the one-year, unaccompanied tours that forces currently serve in Korea.

“As a matter of principle, I think it’s past time” to extend the tours to three years and allow troops to bring their families with them, Gates told reporters traveling with him on the plane to Seoul. “It communicates that ... our view of the reality here is that the Republic of Korea is literally safe enough for our families to be present.”

But Gates may be talking only about the Army. Back in March, when the idea was first floated to extend soldier’s tours in South Korea, the Air Force said it could not follow suit because it did not have the infrastructure to support three-year tours for airmen.

Though the number of accompanied tours at Osan Air Base will increase slightly during the next three years – from 5 percent to 10 percent – the Air Force is not moving toward “normalized” tours on the Korean peninsula, Capt. John Ross, a spokesman for the 51st Fighter Wing at Osan, told Air Force Times in March.

And Kunsan Air Base will remain at 100 percent one-year, unaccompanied tours, Ross said in an e-mail.


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/06/ap_gateskorea_060208af/