LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. –
Front Line Warrior: Capt. Joshua Childers
Deployed Unit: NATO Training Mission Afghanistan Headquarters, CJ1 Directorate
Duty Title: Officer in charge, Strength Management and Accountability
Home Unit: Air Combat Command Protocol
Hometown: Shelby, N.C.
Time in Service: Active-duty Air Force five years
Describe your deployed duty and the tools you use to accomplish it: I'm in charge of manning documents for NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan which compromises more than 6,000 U.S. military, Coalition Forces, and civilians supporting the Afghan National Army and Afghan Security Forces training programs. I'm responsible for all accountability of U.S. and Coalition forces within the command, tracking physical location of all assigned personnel in the command for the commanding general at 76 locations throughout Afghanistan. I also serve as a Casualty Representative for the command.
What do you bring to the fight? Force support career field prepared me for the complexity of the job to include the manpower, accountability and casualty aspects of the duties I perform.
What are you overall thoughts and opinions about your mission there? It has been an eye opener on how difficult it can be to build a military and police force from the ground up. We as Westerners have a mindset that things should just happen and be a certain way, but in reality it will take a very long time to build a sustainable military and security force that is based on more than just simple statistics of how large the force is, such as how educated, diverse and effective they are on their own accord.
Supervisor Comments: Captain Childers hit the ground running. Shortly after arriving at Langley in August 2010, he was tasked to deploy and immediately began preparing. He had a great attitude about it and was willing to do whatever the Air Force called him to do. He is doing great things in the AOR and we look forward to having him back at Langley in May to join our team and get him fully acclimated and trained as a Protocol Officer in ACC Protocol.