The Air Force has awarded Bronze Star medals to Lt. Col. Marc Cherry and Capt. Richard Glade for their actions while deployed to Southwest Asia. During a year-long deployment, Cherry served as deputy director of the combat operations division of the 609th Air and Space Operations Center, where he helped synchronize over Iraq and Afghanistan more than 74,000 sorties, including employing 48 aircraft to resolve a 64-hour troops-in-contact engagement in Afghanistan. During a six-month deployment to Iraq, Glade served as a Joint Task Force information operations cell intelligence officer. Lt. Gen. Glenn Spears, commander of 12th Air Force, presented the medals to both officers earlier this month. (12th AF photo release by SrA. Jacqueline Romero)
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.