Air Force closing logistics support unit

Published June 27, 2008
By Brandice Armstrong
72nd Air Base Wing Public Affairs

TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- Big changes are in store for the 654th Combat Logistics Support Squadron and its members.

Air Force officials will inactivate the squadron July 2. Most squadron members will transfer to other Tinker AFB units or other Air Force bases, or they will retire. The 25 remaining members will regroup under the 76th Aircraft Maintenance Group, in a new flight designated the Expeditionary Depot Maintenance Flight.

"With the way the Air Force executes the fight today, we haven't had the severe aircraft battle damage that we had in the past during the Vietnam War and the Korean War when the CLSS was originally thought up," said Maj. Robert Copes, 654th CLSS commander, who will transfer to the 552nd Maintenance Squadron. "Air Force Materiel Command officials basically determined as a manpower savings, it would be beneficial to close the squadron down and transfer the workload to the depot repair lines within the 76th (Aircraft Maintenance Group)."

Major Copes said the dismantling of the 654th CLSS will change the way the Air Force processes requests for aircraft battle damage repairs for B-52s, B-1s and KC-135s.

"Rather than come directly to us, they will first go through the aircraft maintenance squadrons assigned to the 76th AMXG for them to accept the workload," the major explained. "If they can't accept the workload, then it will come to us."

Workloads that arrive for training purposes will go to the expeditionary maintenance flight, a unit made up of 25 military members, led by a senior master sergeant. The flight will consist of bomber and tanker crew chiefs, and aircraft structural technicians.

"Those 25 folks will perform the depot field-level repairs as required or do the aircraft battle damage repair mission if the need arises in hotspots like in Afghanistan or in Iraq," Major Copes said.

"The mission that the professional Airmen perform within the combat logistics support squadron today is still going to be around at Tinker but it's just going to be accomplished in a different workcenter," the major said. "The work the squadron has done since 1967 should be honored and hallowed, because great accomplishments have happened. But, people can rest assured the combat logistics support squadron legacy will live on and be carried forward by those who remain in the expeditionary depot maintenance flight."

Master Sgt. Marty Job, 654th CLSS Logistics Support Flight chief and acting first sergeant, is one of the members of the new flight.

"We're going to be doing the same things we're doing now, fixing the airplanes a way that no one else can," Sergeant Job said.

Others, such as Staff Sgt. Mark Wolf, 654th CLSS Unit Deployment manager, will transfer. Sergeant Wolf received orders to report to Robins AFB following the deactivation ceremony here. He said the squadron's inactivation will be beneficial to the Air Force, because aircraft battle damage repair is performed less and less, but to eliminate the depot capability is a loss.

Combat logistics support squadrons at Robins AFB, Ga., and Hill AFB, Utah, will inactivate in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

Combat logistics squadrons were first activated in the late 1960s, during the Vietnam War. The mission of the squadrons was to supply mobile logistics support including maintenance, resources and transportation, to air forces throughout the world.