Korean War veterans, members of the renowned ‘Mosquitoes,’ to tour Scott AFB

Korean War veterans assigned to the 6147th Tactical Control Group, known as Mosquitoes, will tour Scott Air Force Base on Friday. The tour will begin at the historic airpark outside of the Shiloh gate and proceed to the Wing Headquarters building. Then there will be a windshield tour of the base.

The 6147th TCG used airborne and ground-based Forward Air Control systems. An overview on the National Museum of the Air Force primary FAC missions were to direct strike aircraft against enemy targets and conduct visual reconnaissance. Since the U.S. Air Force did not have any airborne FAC units at the beginning of the war, pilots flew the first missions with borrowed Army liaison aircraft. To perform these missions, Mosquito FACs flew “low and slow” over enemy positions so they could spot and mark targets, a practice that left them particularly vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.

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The Pentagon says it worries a terrorist could slip right through its front door. But Congress isn't buying it yet, according to Politico.

The Defense Department has quietly asked Congress this year for $12 million to build a new employee screening facility at what it calls the Pentagon's "most heavily used and vulnerable entrance,” above the Washington Metro subway. Security procedures there are "antiquated, inadequate and substandard," the department says — and pose undue risk to employees and security officers from an attempted incursion.

But Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, long known for stymieing even relatively small military expenditures, says the Pentagon has not made a compelling case for the project, which would begin next year and be completed in 2019. And the Arizona Republican has persuaded the Senate to withhold funding for the project.

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The New York Times Magazine is reporting that a little more than four years after the United States withdrew all its military forces from Iraq, and not quite two years after a smaller number of American troops began returning to the country to help fight the Islamic State, the open sale of such an M4 was part of Iraq’s day-to-day arms-trafficking routine. Mahyawi’s carbine was another data point attesting to an extraordinary and dangerous failure of American arms-trafficking and public accountability and to a departure from a modern military’s most basic practice: keeping track of the guns.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States has handed out a vast but persistently uncountable quantity of military firearms to its many battlefield partners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today the Pentagon has only a partial idea of how many weapons it issued, much less where these weapons are. Meanwhile, the effectively bottomless abundance of black-market weapons from American sources is one reason Iraq will not recover from its post-invasion woes anytime soon.

In all, according to the story, the Pentagon provided more than 1.45 million firearms to various security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, including more than 978,000 assault rifles, 266,000 pistols and almost 112,000 machine guns. These transfers formed a collage of firearms of mixed vintage and type: Kalashnikov assault rifles left over from the Cold War; recently manufactured NATO-standard M16s and M4s from American factories; machine guns of Russian and Western lineage; and sniper rifles, shotguns and pistols of varied provenance and caliber, including a large order of Glock semiautomatic pistols, a type of weapon also regularly offered for sale online in Iraq.

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Veterans with mental disorders that prevent them from leaving their homes or moving around may qualify for a service dog under a new Veterans Affairs program introduced this month, according to Military Times.

VA officials said Tuesday that a Service Dog Benefits pilot will cover the veterinary costs of a service dog for a veteran with a mental health condition that limits their mobility.

This would include patients whose medical teams believe their lives would be improved by a dog that can help get them out of bed each morning, go outside, shop or go to social functions.

While VA already covers veterinary care for service dogs that assist blind or deaf veterans and those with mobility restrictions caused by a physical disability, the pilot marks the first time the benefit is being extended to veterans whose primary diagnosis is a mental health disorder, said Dr. Harold Kudler, chief medical consultant for the Veterans Health Administration.

This story was originally published August 25, 2016 at 1:43 PM with the headline "Korean War veterans, members of the renowned ‘Mosquitoes,’ to tour Scott AFB."