It turns out a prediction made three months ago by some witty US Air Force Academy cadets was correct. The cadets noted the historic nature of USAFA finally authorizing its cadet wing to have a civilian internet network — after decades of a lone military network that brought monitoring and limitations with it:
USAFA cadets got Read more
USAFA Survival Meal
Every summer US Air Force Academy and select ROTC cadets trudge through the forests west of USAFA conducting Combat Survival Training (CST). They’re taught basic survival skills as well as navigation and night travel, as might occur if they were on the ground in hostile territory.
As part of this training, cadets are expected to kill and eat — or “thump and muck,” as the trainers sometimes say — rabbits, which are provided by the school for that purpose [emphasis added]:
The academy program has been around since the 1960s and trains cadets how to live in the wilderness and evade enemy forces. It stems from an older Air Force Survival, Escape, Resistance and Evasion program that’s has been used to train flight crews since World War II.
As part of the program, cadets are trained to kill and cook their own food under primitive conditions.
It turns out PETA doesn’t like that [emphasis added]: Read more
The US Air Force Academy will be the final military academy to hear President Barack Obama speak at its graduation:
The White House confirmed April 14 that President Barack Obama is scheduled to be the commencement speaker for the Air Force Academy’s Class of 2016 graduation ceremony, June 2 at Falcon Stadium.
The President traditionally rotates each year among the military service academies. Read more
US Air Force Academy superintendent LtGen Michelle Johnson recently announced that the USAFA cadet chapel — one of the most popular manmade attractions in the state of Colorado — will be closed in 2018 for two years of repairs:
The building badly needs to be repaired after 53-years of Read more
Bruce Fleming, a civilian English professor at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, has filed a lawsuit claiming he was denied a pay raise due to an unjust reprimand he received in 2014:
Attorneys for Bruce Fleming said Thursday that the professor was denied merit pay and $7,000 in summer funding based on a 2014 reprimand. It stemmed from a 2013 classroom discussion, when Fleming prompted his students to consider the academy’s sexual assault program and the potentially one-sided burdens it put on men, at a time when the academy was part of the national debate over how to stop sexual assault in the military.
Fleming asserts his words were protected under the Constitution. For its part, Annapolis Read more
In a relatively recent tradition, each class of US Air Force Academy cadets since 2000 has chosen an “exemplar” representing the character and fortitude to which they would like to aspire. Exemplars have included airpower giants like Mitchell and Doolittle, famous fighter pilots like Olds, and Major David Brodeur, USAFA Class of 1999, who was killed in Afghanistan.
The USAFA Class of 2018 recently chose as its exemplar Capt Louis Zamperini, Army Air Corps bombardier, POW, and outspoken Christian:
Cadet 3rd Class J. Benson Anderson, Jr., an Exemplar Committee official, said Zamperini was selected because he demonstrated the character and conviction the Class of 2018 strives to maintain.
“His loyalty in Read more
Tim Prudente of the Capital Gazette wrote a short piece on the traditional hat toss that accompanies the graduation of each of the US service academies:
In the seats, children fidgeted because where else can an 8-year-old boy score $20 and a military hat, maybe as many as he can carry…?
Many midshipmen tucked $20 and 15 cents for the Class of 2015.
This and other traditions have been noted here before, including the veritable plethora of traditions from a single photo during an Air Force Academy graduation in 2010.
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After the earlier article noting the tradition of the Silver Dollar Salute, in which a newly commissioned officer gives a silver dollar to the first enlisted troop to salute him, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Read more