Came across this while surfing around....

http://www.charleston.af.mil/n...ory.asp?id=123124811

Anybody have an inside info on it.....how many bases are doing it? What are officers like?

Pros and cons?

Lots in AMC, some in AETC. Others are/will follow/following. The theory is that all of the contract guards would be converted to DoD civilian guards or police. If more funds are found more police (vice guards) would be bought.

Since we can't grow the military force the idea is to grow the civilian force to free the military force to do the purely military missions leaving someone behind to do the garrison mission.

For whatever its worth there are some standards associated with hiring both guards and police...they both have to pass initial an annual physical fitness tests. Not a high bar...but a bar nevertheless. Oddly that keeps a lot of folks from even bothering to apply. The other thing that keeps them from applying is the pay...its awful. Basically you either have to live in a low cost of living area, high unemployment area or have a second income from somewhere to take one of these jobs.

Pros and cons. I guess it depends on who you are and where you sit. At the strategic level great idea. At the tactical level, maybe not so much so.

Having said all of the above, we've been down this path before so there's nothing new here. As early as the early 80s, some Logistics Command bases were still heavily civilian operations. Prior to that they were almost 100% civilian but for a handful of military. That all changed in the mid to late 80s.

I am at Charleston and honestly, most our flights are Air Provosts and Reservists ARCv's. These guys augment us and help us out a lot, they have the same standards we do but gety leeway because they are civilians. Every flight has a military and Air Provost Flight Chief.

We just transitioned from civilian contracts to DoD. Thus far, the civilian contracted agencies were better hands down. We have mostly DoD guards, but we hired several DoD Police positions. However, all but one of them quit because our squadron won't let them off the gate to perform police duties.