Saying it is “tough to argue with results,” Col. Todd Harmer, vice commander of the active 388th Fighter Wing at Hill AFB, Utah, says the integration of the 388th and the Air Force Reserve Command 419th FW works and the proof is in the active and Reserve airmen deployed now to Iraq, where the Total Force team of pilots and maintainers are “doing exactly what the combatant commander needs them to do.” SSgt. Matthew Rosine reports that the two wings, as of July, are in Phase III of their Total Force Integration effort, and Col. Buck Sams, 419th vice commander, said, “We are demonstrating success on a daily basis, but there is never going to be an end-state to this [because] it is always going to … continue to develop and mature itself.”
In the small world of Air Force weather specialists, combat weather specialists are a niche unto themselves, deploying with Army ground units to provide forecasts and, if need be, fight alongside those Soldiers. For Staff Sgt. Francisco Estrada, the hardest part of the job isn’t the possibility of ground combat,…
