The Air Force will maintain a small airlift and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance presence in Afghanistan into 2015 and possibly beyond, said Maj. Gen. Jake Polumbo, the top Air Force general in Afghanistan, on Tuesday. “The types of airmen that we’ll have besides the advise-and-assist airmen will be primarily airlift—people that assist in regards to any of the drawdown that might not yet be done and assisting with the aerial ports of demarcation for our retrograde ops,” Polumbo told Pentagon reporters on April 23 from his location in Kabul via a satellite-enabled video connection. “Some manned ISR” also will remain in theater, he said. He noted that this footprint “would be small.” He said the United States would also be able to maintain its ISR capability “with very few people forward” following the 2014 withdrawal because most remotely piloted aircraft flying over Afghanistan are operated from stateside locations like Creech AFB, Nev., or Holloman AFB, N.M. Defense Department and State Department officials have been saying the United States would continue to provide support in Afghanistan following the 2014 withdrawal of US combat troops, but haven’t provided the details of what the footprint would look like. (Polumbo transcript)
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.