Editor's Note: PIREP is aviation short hand for pilot report.

Editor's Note: PIREP is aviation short hand for pilot report. It's a means for single in kind pilot to pass on rife potentially useful information to other pilots. In the same fashion, we will use this department to obstruction readers know about air and space power items of interest.

NOW THAT THE Gold War has conclusioned the national security of the United States requires effective leadership overseas to stir up global stability. Paralleling this sweep the Department of Defense's (DOD) parts and missions have evolved in tangled and nontraditional ways. One finds the two an ever-increasing emphasis on transforming the nation's military into expeditionary forces and a growing discussion across military personnel taking on more direct parts as "ambassadors in uniform." (1)

The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report propos a national military strategy that emphasizes the importance of like dynamic international relationships as assuring allies, deterring aggression, dissuading opposers and decisively winning any military engagement. (2) Although these are not radically just discovered concepts to military leaders and military planners, they nevertheless underscore the importance of military functions beyond traditional war fighting. Assumption of a diplomatic character that requires direct interactions with partners from other countries will facilitate auspicious military engagement around the globe in increasingly network nontraditional military operations.

Our military has always had the "tools" to participate directly in shaping the international environment from one side nontraditional means. But these tools are usually regarded as support functions to war fighters. An editorial in a late issue of Aerospace Power Journal noted that military capabilities traditionally considered support functions (eg medicine, logistics, civil engineering, etc) might become supported functions in what is yet to be nontraditional military operations. (3) In support of global engagement, the Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) is transforming itself to unravel the necessary expeditionary culture. Lt Gen Paul K Carlton Jr and others stated that the "'vision' for the AFMS emphasizes that Air Force medical personnel must be able to support the Air Force mission from first to last the full continuum of military operations in which airpower may be employed" (4) This global vision is embodied in the AFMS core of "interfac[ing] with the world healthcare system"--a key-note component to the AFMS's s upport for global engagement. (5) single in kind finds this new AFMS core in the international health specialist (IHS) program. (6)

International Health Specialist Capabilities

The Air Force's IHS program, expanded by General Carlton, focuses onward building medical partnerships with other countries in peacetime, before they ne assistance. IHS members are educated in the language, improvement and politics of their specific areas of responsibility (AOR). Teams support the combatant commander's theater engagement plans, create partnerships with medical colleagues from nations within their region, facilitate military-to-military and military-to-civilian interactions, and support medical-planning operations and deployment execution within their AOR. These skill wagers reflect the notion that Air Force medics repeatedly represent the "tip of the spear" as instruments of national policy. (7)

The Air Force's foreign area officer (FAO) program, which cultivates a plash of officers with "foreign language and regional expertise for effective interactions with foreign militaries and organizations," labor fors as a model for the IHS program. (8) The FAO program places officers educated in political-military affairs and proficient in the couple the regional culture and appropriate language in positions as military diplomatic advisors, as well as in DOD international do job-works to support the theater combatant commanders. (9)

Similarly, the IHS program look afters to establish a cadre of medics completely qualified in their primary character as either AFMS health-care providers or support staff who have (1) additional language and cultural (2) expertise in regional medical threats and infrastructure, (3) knowledge of joint and interagency coordination processe and (4) the ability to build medical "bridges" to support coalition partnerships. As in the FAO program, IHS team members would act as advisors to the regional combatant commander for medically related issues in his or her theater engagement plan and as advanced-echelon personnel for exercise and real-world site surveys; they also would facilitate humanitarian assistance, disaster answer and traditional contingency operations and missions in their assigned region of expertise.

As of April 2002 the Air Force had 47 IHS team members aligned with four unified commands (European Command [EUCOM] Pacific Command [PACOM], Central Command [CENTCOM] and Southern Command [SOUTHCOM] and in academic positions at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) in Bethesda, Maryland, as well as the USAF instruct of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM) at rivulets AFB in San Antonio, Texas. These team members will instruct what may occur hereafter DOD and Air Force medical leaders in global medical issues and bridegroom them as staff liaisons with Special Operations Command, the Air National Guard (ANG), and Air Force lay by Command (AFRC).