“ Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. Its not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; its when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it” Margaret Thatcher
Last week I had the honor of representing Kansas in Washington D.C. at the National Conference of State Legislatures Spring Forum. I am co-chairman of the Military and Veterans Affairs Executive Committee Task Force and our group spent the day with VA and DOD officials receiving briefings and discussing issues that impact Veterans and Active Duty Military.
The V.A. updated us on the Veterans Hospital operations; they have 20,000employees and a budget of over $50 billion. They currently service 3.1 million veterans nation-wide. 25% of those served have some type of service-connected disability; hearing loss is the 5th largest problem.
There are 153 VA hospitals, 951 outpatient facilities, 134 community living centers and 232 Veteran centers. They provide a multitude of medical services and include transforming care, homeless outreach, expanding the rural initiatives, Tele-health Internet and telephone services and home health monitoring.
The numbers were a bit staggering in that they reported around 225 million WW 2 era Veterans and that they are dying at the rate of over 1,000 a day. Representative Gary Banz of Oklahoma reported on a civilian volunteer program that takes WW2 veterans to Washington for a day to allow them to visit the nations capitol and view the various memorials. See details at www.honorflightnetwork.net.
It was interesting to note the changes facing our VA services for example to address the 490,000 women that are currently receiving VA treatment. The growing number of women has created a need for OB-Gyn services that were relatively unheard of 20 years ago. Other services provided all veterans include: general health care, routine physicals, hospital and surgical treatment, psychiatric counseling, suicide prevention, and pharmacy services.
The DOD officials briefed us on the pre and post deployment services provided all troops as they come and go from various duty stations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Families are very important part of this service and are encouraged to participate. The families are instructed on the mission and what to look for as changes in behavior when a soldier returns from overseas.
I remember coming home from Viet Nam and experiencing the culture shock from being in that war zone one day, passing through out processing in Vietnam and then showing up in El Dorado 48 hours later. My processing included plane tickets and orders for my next duty station. Mainly most returning veterans had a similar experience and probably we all should have had some type of “de-programming”.
On the sustainability aspect of military base operations we are finding encroachment issues surround all of our bases. Typically the maneuver areas were always well away from the communities and the training sounds with heavy vehicles, aircraft and explosions were not considered a problem. Today community development and residential housing are surrounding many bases and military posts.
Night operations are severely hampered by “light pollution” from streetlights and parking lot illumination. We train to fight and own the darkness and the night vision devices are affected by too much artificial illumination. We have weapons systems that have a range greater than our ordinance impact area, so the full capability of our soldiers cannot be tested properly.
If we are to maintain a strong fighting force, they must be trained in the environment and under conditions in which they may encounter during actual combat. This training saves lives and defends our freedom. The Army Compatible Uses Buffer (ACUB) program is under constant pressure from community developers and local officials. They want growth but the Military was there first and the noise and dust issues are always going to be present.
In the area of compatible use we find that even our highly touted Wind Farm developments can be problematic. Putting wind farms in the areas used for low-level aircraft flights interferes with training and can have a very adverse affect on radio and radar frequency use. Some wind farms have been determined to drastically affect the radar image on the scopes of our civilian Air Traffic Controllers.
By drastic I mean loss of signal and reflection or a deflection of that signal that indicates a different location. In the civilian sector weather radars can pick up wind farms as false severe weather echoes. The expanded use of GPS tracking for farm operations during planting season has created an easier and more efficient way to plant fields of row crops.
However when the wind direction changes and the heads of the wind turbines rotate they also affect the signal used by the farmer and this deflection can cause the tracking of the planting to be moved several feet.
An additional item that affects our military training is sometimes caused by other federal agencies. A good example of this is the EPA and their issues with fuel, emissions, noise levels and etc. The FAA is having a huge impact on the training of the Remotely Piloted Vehicles and Unmanned Aerial Observation Platforms.
The FAA has a restriction of allowing only one RPV in any controlled airspace unless it has a chase plane or remains in visual contact with those on the ground. Their rationale is, the RPV has limited capability to take evasive action to avoid a mid air collision. Pretty good point! However this applies to desert areas too.
The Army currently has over 1300 such vehicles and the US Air Force reported they would train more RPV pilots in 2011 than they will train regular pilots. Airspace regulations need adjusted to allow for the proper training of this weapon and surveillance system.
The limited number of available radio frequency’s for use is going to get worse because our own FCC has decided there is a more profitable use of these frequencies for commercial use, think cell phones, TV and other commercial uses (reality=Fees and Taxes).
Reportedly the Air Force has been told they have to change their entire family of radios because the FCC is removing their current frequency spectrum and turning it over for civilian use (Fees and Taxes). I have a hard time believing this after-all we are on the same team are we not?
I would be remiss if I did not mention our friends at the Nature Conservancy and Sierra Group. They take umbrage at the troops running through fields and streams disrupting nesting owls and snail darter fish. We could cause irreparable damage to a white pine seedling or a streambed.
The reality is that when all the deployed troops return they have to have a place to go and train to maintain their proficiency and ability to protect this country from all her enemies that wish to do us harm.
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.” “The Crisis” by Thomas Paine Dec. 23, 1776
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