During testimony on the 2007 budget, Air Force leaders have been using the term “Total Force” with an add-on “Integration.” It is the term for the service’s initiative to “provide America with a smaller, more capable, more affordable Air Force through new organizational constructs and a focus on Total Force across every emerging mission,” the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, Gen. John Corley, said at the first hearing of the new Commission on the Guard and Reserves. Corley explained that the Air Force had “perfected” the collaboration of its active, Guard, and Reserve components over the course of the 25-year existence of the phrase “Total Force.” Now, he said, the service is ready to “take it to the next level”—through TFI.
Clearing jungle and laying asphalt in tropical heat may not sound like fun to most people, but it’s a way of life for Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers (RED HORSE) Airmen, who have spent the past year or so restoring World War II-era airfields on the Pacific…