WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! 001011. Staff sergeant promotion list due out July 19 RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) -- The Air Force plans to release the list of its newest staff sergeant promotees July 19 (July 20 for those units across the international dateline). This year's release comes almost a month earlier than last year's staff sergeant promotion list. Air Force Personnel Center officials cite several reasons for this year's earlier release. Many will recall that last year the Air Force was in the midst of Operation ALLIED FORCE, and had numerous airmen deployed. "The late August release date last year accommodated those who were deployed and gave many of them an opportunity to return and test," center officials said. "We have also pledged to our customers worldwide that we will continue to strive for sooner promotion releases rather than later." This year, partly because of reduced testing windows, AFPC was able to get most of the tests for staff sergeant eligibles processed and scored sooner. There are approximately 40,000 eligibles this year. The promotion quota has not been determined yet, so the exact promotion percentage is not known at this time. "We are confident that percentages for all ranks, including staff sergeant will remain at or above TOPCAP objectives for the foreseeable future," center officials added. (Courtesy of AFPC News Service) 001009. Pentagon honors Recruiters of the Year by Rudi Williams American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- Twelve military recruiters, six family members, top Pentagon officials and guests listened during a special ceremony June 29 as Deputy Defense Secretary Rudy de Leon praised the Recruiters of the Year for excelling in "one of our greatest military challenges." "The men and women we honor today face the toughest of tasks every day -- providing our nation with soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen to protect America's interests and ideals around the world," said de Leon. He noted that the mission of America's armed forces, from Kosovo to Korea, and the peace, security and prosperity of the nation, would be impossible without the hard work of America's outstanding corps of recruiters. De Leon said the military needs quality recruits because of the military's increasing reliance on sophisticated technologies, and because service members are asked to be warriors, diplomats and engineers. De Leon said recruiting is "one of the most challenging missions in the armed forces today." He said the mission becomes harder with every drop in unemployment and every rise in wages in America's "red hot economy." "But despite the enormity of the challenge of recruiting nearly 30,000 young people every month, America's recruiters have demonstrated that they're up to this job," de Leon said. "That's why we are supporting our recruiters with increased enlistment bonuses and educational benefits and by a major rise in recruiting advertising over the last year." De Leon said the 12 recruiters the Pentagon honored this year "are the best of the best" in their daily labor of keeping America's armed forces robust and ready. "They stand for the more than 20,000 active duty, National Guard and reserve recruiters who deliver the message of military service opportunities to the American people every day," he noted. "Representing each service ... these men and women were chosen because they have excelled beyond their peers in a very tough and challenging business," de Leon said. This year's Recruiters of the Year were: Air Force Master Sgt. David C. Anderson, Aiea, Hawaii Air Force Master Sgt. Rowena Reitan, San Antonio Air National Guard Master Sgt. Karen Y. Hunter, Oklahoma City Army Staff Sgt. Feliece Y. Cortez, Anderson, Ind. Army Sgt. 1st Class Elizabeth Green, Los Angeles Army National Guard Sgt. 1st Class David M. Fulkerson, Evansville, Ind. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Alain Reyes, Dupage, Ill. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darrell Holmes, Seal Beach, Calif. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Martin Colon, Elizabeth, N.J. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Larry M. Lipson, Milwaukee Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Isabel S. Caporale, Newark, N.J. Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Gregory J. Satchwell, Tampa, Fla. Before the recognition ceremony, the 12 recruiters and a spouse representative participated in an hour-long round-table discussion on issues affecting recruiting. Led by de Leon, the roundtable discussion included Charles L. Cragin, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs; Alphonso Maldon Jr., assistant secretary of defense for force management policy; Navy Vice Adm. Patricia A. Tracey, deputy assistant secretary of defense for military personnel policy; and service secretaries or their representatives. 001012. DOD, VA streamline disability claims process WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- A jointly sponsored Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs initiative is helping service members to file for and receive VA service-connected disability compensation benefits more quickly than in the past. The VA's Pre-Discharge Project, which began with a test in 1995, was established to provide transition assistance and continuity of care to service members who are retiring or being medically separated from the military. Military personnel can now complete claims development and physical examinations prior to discharge and reduce the average number of days necessary to process a claim. "We wanted to assist these members by getting them examined prior to discharge, and also have those examinations conducted under the VA disability examination protocols," said Bill Lanson, pre-discharge program project manager at the Veterans Benefits Administration here. "In this way, the servicemember isn't lost between the two systems." Prior to 1995, all military personnel had to deal with the system's inefficiencies as they transitioned from the military to civilian life. The VA accepted an individual's claim after they left the service. It often took months to secure records from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, and then additional months to rate their claim. "Many times treatment was interrupted because records were lost transitioning from one organization to another," said Michael Kilpatrick, M.D., deputy director of medical outreach and issues in the Defense Department's special assistant's office for Gulf War illnesses. "The new program is really a major step forward in the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs relationship," said Kilpatrick. "They are now focusing on the individual with the single purpose of making it easy to receive the proper attention, counseling and advice at a very stressful time in a servicemember's life." Although the Navy and the Marine Corps mandated a separation exam prior to the new initiative, there were problems with matching VA requirements for disability evaluations. Lanson said he conducted a study in 1994 of the Navy and Marine Corps' separation exams and found that while they met the services' needs for a separation physical, 75 percent of the exams' findings were insufficient for the purpose of disability ratings. Often the diagnosis or findings were not in line with the requirements of the VA rating schedule, he said. Lanson explained that the VA needed an exam that followed the findings of the rating schedule so that the veterans didn't need to be called back after discharge. The examinations are conducted either by VA medical centers, DOD examiners, or VA contract medical examiners. "The goal of the new pre-discharge program is to adjudicate claims within 30 days of the date of discharge," said Lanson. "If we find that someone is disabled, the proposed rating can be provided to the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment staff, which can initiate the appropriate services in a timely manner." Efforts to simplify the system began in 1994 when the Veterans Benefits Administration, the Veterans Health Administration and the U.S. Army jointly initiated separation examination pilot tests at Fort Lewis, Wash.; Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Knox, Ky. Results indicated that the VA and the Army could successfully perform a combined physical examination that would be useful to both the VA and the Department of Defense purposes. The VA and the DOD finalized a memorandum of understanding in May 1998 for the completion of a single separation physical examination that would improve program efficiencies and service. Today, there are 31 VA regional offices in 28 states and there are 70 military installations actively participating in the pre-discharge program, including 17 Army, 24 Navy, 22 Air Force, three Marine and four Coast Guard sites. Lanson said there are several ways a servicemember may become aware of the program. Notification is often provided through military publications and the Transition Assistance Program where a servicemember -- at a period of time prior to discharge from the service -- is briefed about his or her VA benefits and other services available to smooth the transition to civilian life. Each of the service branches has issued instructions for separating servicemembers to complete a DD Form 2697 and to indicate if they have a desire, to claim VA benefits, he said. The pre-discharge claims development, examinations and ratings initiative is organized locally through negotiations and memorandums of understanding between VA regional benefits offices, VA medical centers and DOD facilities. At 25 of the 70 military locations, VA personnel are located at or near the military installation to register claims and perform the rating work. "There has to be leeway for local circumstances," said Lanson. "That's why much of the program has been developed at the local level through agreements that fit the local circumstances for both the VA and DOD." In fiscal year 1999, approximately 10,000 pre-discharge claims were finalized. This is out of the annual average number of original claims of 120,000 and the 80,000 claims normally received during the first year after separation from active duty. During the three-month period between January and March 2000, nearly 4,000 pre-discharge claims were finalized. Of that number, there were only 13 known appeals, or "notices of disagreement," filed. The regional offices involved in the program report that veterans have been very satisfied with the improved service and note the low appeal rate. The VA has plans for future expansion. Since the program's initiation, facilities from all service branches have worked with VA regional offices to develop additional pre-discharge cooperation. These proposals are now under consideration. The agency's field operations office is also currently considering pre-discharge claims processing for those service members stationed overseas. Last year, staff members conducted a pilot test of 100 examinations performed by contract physicians to servicemembers stationed in Germany. The test was to determine the feasibility of providing the program to servicemembers living in Germany, South Korea and Japan, which is under consideration. Lanson believes the pre-discharge program is one of the most successful examples of joint cooperation between the VA and the DOD. "For many years the VA and the DOD were really at arm's length with each other. The more we cooperate and become aware of our processes the better off the servicemember is," Lanson said. (Courtesy of the Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses Public Affairs) 001010. EELV program saves billions, honored with top award by 1st Lt. Tonya Summerall Space and Missile Systems Center Public Affairs LOS ANGELES AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFPN) -- The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Program Office recently received a top-level award for its efforts in saving the Air Force $5 to $7 billion. EELV's innovative payload-to-launch vehicle integration design and standardization of booster cores earned the program office the 1999 Defense Standardization Program National Honorary Award. The driving force behind the EELV program is the effort to make space launch more affordable for the nation by using a family of unmanned, expendable space launch vehicles that have evolved from existing systems. These will comprise the Department of Defense's sole source of expendable medium and heavy-lift transportation to orbit. EELV has joined with Lockheed Martin Astronautics Corporation and the Boeing Company to develop a national launch capability that satisfies the government's forecasted launch requirements and reduces the cost of space launch by at least 25 percent, said Lt. Col Jim Knauf, EELV and Delta IV program manager. EELV is the first program designed to use a standard specification for government payloads that will use the same mechanical and electrical interface to the launch vehicle and will employ a standardized booster core. This new design will facilitate manufacturing, assembly, payload integration and launch operation process. "EELV improves on the current Delta II, Atlas and Titan launch systems by providing, for the first time, standard mechanical, electrical and environmental payload-to-booster interfaces," said Knauf. "This means we can more readily switch payloads from one EELV booster to the other. This flexibility is a first for the Air Force and is very important to the war fighter and (Air Force) Space Command." The Delta IV and Atlas V families of the EELV booster use the same standard booster core, said Knauf. The largest vehicle in each family basically uses the same core as the smallest vehicle The EELV development program is about 75 percent complete. Production of flight vehicles for the first EELV launches are well underway, and the first government flight is scheduled to take place in May 2002. The current list of participants in the pre-discharge program can be found on the Web at http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/news/station_list_2jun00.html/. --------------------------------------------------------------------- *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! ****************************************************************************** ******************* A vote for Bush or Gore is a vote to continue Clinton policies! 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