Square

I do know what you mean, as I'm aware of more than a few wings/groups/squadrons that once were flying units that now do not. I took what the historian was saying as to mean that now that we are our own squadron we could not somehow "combine" with the deactivated squadron. As it was I was thinking of more an "adoption" of lineage from a more touchy-feely standpoint. In any case, I'm going to try to work more through the wing historian than doing direct to Maxwell rather than call those dudes out.

So I emailed the AFHRA at Maxwell and our wing historian, and today I heard back from Maxwell. It turns out my assumption that we are a decendent of the 20th TASS was totally wrong. Our squadron was stood up from scratch in 1994, which would explain why I had trouble finding any squadron history prior to that point. I replied back asking if it was ever done that a squadron in our position would "adopt" the heritage of another deactivated squadron (the 20th TASS has a cool history, see the "FACing in the Bronco" thread) and quickly received a no. As we are not a flying squadron we can not assume the lineage of a flying squadron as it one day may be reactivated and reassume a flying mission. Just thought I'd fill you all in, thanks for the help you threw my way. Square

HiFlyer, thanks so much for the stories. What amazes me is that we sometimes it feels like we're doing something new with CAS and integrating with the Army. Instead we're just reinventing the wheel.

That's really cool you were able to get a hold of that info. It's great to be able to re-educate ourselves about the history and heritage of our units. Working with the Army I see daily they make an effort to tie what they're doing now to campaigns in past wars... I know there are exceptions but it seems like a lot of squadrons don't make as much of an effort.

I for sure agree with you... the timeline seems to line up very well. That being said, I have yet to see anything, including in internal squadron paperwork that substantites this idea. I was hoping that the AF historical agencies substantiated this belief. I'm going to take Brick's advice and send a letter and see what they come up with.

Thanks for the replies. I'm in the 20th Air Support Ops Squadron up at Fort Drum in NY. In doing my initial round of research I came across the 20th TASS (http://www.squawk-flash.org/20th_tass/20th_tass.htm) which given the current ASOS TACP mission I think it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility to be our predecessor. That being said I haven't found anything written to support that conjecture. Some of the other ASOS's in the 18th ASOG started life as Air Support Communications Squadrons, but I haven't seen anything about the 20th's history to support that either. What may be part of this issue is that we support the 10th Mountain Division, which had been deactivated for a good part of the second half of the twentieth century until the Reagan Presidency. I imagine the 20th ASOS was stood up at the same time to provide support to the division. Thanks much for any research advice. Square

I'm trying to do some research on the history of my squadron but I'm not having much luck. I've beeen to the AF Historical Research Agency (http://www.afhra.af.mil/) and of course Google, and it looks to me that perhaps my squadron was deactivated/reactivated in the Vietnam timeframe but I can't find much to confirm or deny. You guys have any solid resources for AF history research? Brick, any advice? Square

The bit in bold is really what I was getting at... and answers my question. I was hoping you'd say, "don't worry, those folks on staffs who don't know anything are not in any position to make any decisions or influence policy." It worries me that this is how business is done.

A PowerPoint brief from AFPC trickled down to us junior folks today regarding the number of rated officers in the AF and the various "bills" that AFPC needs to pay with our warm bodies. The bottom line of the brief was that going to staff was probably not going to be in the cards for the vast majority of folks as due to the number of other obligations (UAS, ALO, RAS, etc, etc) that take priority. I don't really have a dog in the fight as to what these priorities are, but I could help but wonder what happens to these staffs without the rated people. I assume (maybe incorrectly) that these are staffs that impact the employment of airpower... and the folks that do the employing aren't involved in the staff, and instead the seats will be filled with officers who may have no idea about how this stuff really works. This thought becomes even more disturbing when Ithink about joint staffs... it seems like we're not going to be sending out people with the right expertise to be advocates for the Air Force. I'm not trying to rehash the support vs ops or shoe vs not debate, but I'm honestly curious as to how this works. If all of the ops guys (and girls) are out flying, are the weather and intel and personnelists forming AF policy?

Lindsey was actually in my OTS class. Weird to see her on TV.

I'm dragging this old thread up... The sister in law found out today that she's going to be retained and will keep her scholarship, or get her scholarship back, rather, as I believe that it went away while she was in limbo. I know nobody actually cares about her personally, but some may find it interesting that such a thing is possible.

Hey all. My sister in law was just sent home from AFROTC field training for failure on the PT test. It's strange to me that she failed as she's a varsity athlete in an endurance sport, but I'm assuming something to do with the field training atmosphere had something to do with it. My question is: what are her options? She's getting some advice from her Det, but getting additional info to check against what's she's being told is never a bad thing. Is she effectively done altogether? There's some discussion of generating some kind of waiver to allow her to return to field training, but then she'd owe an additional year on her committment or somesuch... doesn't pass my smell test. I was an OTS guy (love that 13 week commissioning camp) so don't know much about the ROTC thing so I'm reluctant to give her any advice without first hand knowledge. Regards, Square

Hey dude. I was in exactly the same situation as you a year ago. Check out http://www.pricescope.com/idealbb/ It's the baseops.net of diamonds. I was going crazy with the whole process and balancing stone variables and cost--big thing that I learned was that size doesn't necessarily imply that the stone will look good. Cut and clarity is what makes the rock sparkle, and a "sparkly" stone looks bigger than it is.