Unclear whether oil, objects found in sea linked to lost jet

SURABAYA, Indonesia — An Indonesian helicopter searching for the missing AirAsia jetliner saw two oily spots in the water Monday, and an Australian search plane spotted objects elsewhere in the Java Sea, but it was too early to know whether either was connected to the aircraft and its 162 passengers and crew.

In any case, officials saw little reason to believe AirAsia Flight 8501 met anything but a grim fate after it disappeared from radar Sunday morning over the Java Sea. Wary of bad weather, one of the pilots had asked to raise the plane's altitude just before it vanished, but was not allowed because another aircraft was in the way.

"Based on the coordinates that we know, the evaluation would be that any estimated crash position is in the sea, and that the hypothesis is the plane is at the bottom of the sea," Indonesia search and rescue chief Henry Bambang Soelistyo said.

The Airbus A320-200 vanished in airspace thick with storm clouds on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia, to Singapore.

Jakarta's Air Force base commander Rear Marshal Dwi Putranto said an Australian Orion aircraft had detected "suspicious" objects near Nangka island about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off central Kalimantan. That's about 700 miles (1,120 kilometers) from the location where the plane lost contact, but within Monday's greatly expanded search area.

"However, we cannot be sure whether it is part of the missing AirAsia plane," Putranto said. "We are now moving in that direction, which is in cloudy conditions."

Air Force spokesman Rear Marshal Hadi Tjahnanto told MetroTV that an Indonesian helicopter spotted two oily spots in the Java Sea east of Belitung island, much closer to where the plane lost contact than the objects viewed from the Australian plane. He said oil samples would be collected and analyzed to see if they are connected to the missing plane.

The last communication from the cockpit to air traffic control was a request by one of the pilots to increase altitude from 32,000 feet (9,754 meters) to 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) because of the rough weather. Air traffic control was not able to immediately grant the request because another plane was in the airspace, said Bambang Tjahjono, director of the state-owned company in charge of air-traffic control.

By the time clearance could be given, Flight 8501 had disappeared, Tjahjono said. The twin-engine, single-aisle plane, which never sent a distress signal, was last seen on radar four minutes after the last communication from the cockpit.

First Adm. Sigit Setiayana, the Naval Aviation Center commander at the Surabaya air force base, said 12 navy ships, five planes, three helicopters and a number of warships were taking part in the search, along with ships and planes from Singapore and Malaysia. The Australian Air Force also sent a search plane.

Many fishermen from Belitung island have joined in the search, and all vessels in that area of the sea have been alerted to be on the lookout for anything that could be linked to the plane.

The plane's disappearance and suspected crash caps an astonishingly tragic year for air travel in Southeast Asia, and Malaysia in particular. Malaysia-based AirAsia's loss comes on top of the still-unexplained disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in March with 239 people aboard, and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July over Ukraine, which killed all 298 passengers and crew.

"Until today, we have never lost a life," AirAsia group CEO Tony Fernandes, who founded the low-cost carrier in 2001, told reporters in Jakarta airport. "But I think that any airline CEO who says he can guarantee that his airline is 100 percent safe, is not accurate."

He refused to address compensation issues or any changes that may be made to the airline as a result of this incident.

"We have carried 220 million people up to this point," he said. "Of course, there's going to be some reaction, but we are confident in our ability to fly people, and we'll continue to be strong and continue to carry people who never could fly before."

Nearly all the passengers and crew are Indonesians, who are frequent visitors to Singapore, particularly on holidays.

Flight 8501 took off Sunday morning from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, and was about halfway to Singapore when it vanished from radar. The jet had been airborne for about 42 minutes.

Sunardi, a forecaster at Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, said dense storm clouds were detected up to 13,400 meters (44,000 feet) in the area at the time.

"There could have been turbulence, lightning and vertical as well as horizontal strong winds within such clouds," said Sunardi, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

The plane had an Indonesian captain, Iryanto, who uses one name, and a French co-pilot, five cabin crew members and 155 passengers, including 16 children and one infant, the airline said in a statement. Among the passengers were three South Koreans, a Malaysian, a British national and his 2-year-old Singaporean daughter. The rest were Indonesians.

AirAsia said the captain had more than 20,000 flying hours, of which 6,100 were with AirAsia on the Airbus 320. The first officer had 2,275 flying hours.

"Papa, come home, I still need you," Angela Anggi Ranastianis, the captain's 22-year-old daughter pleaded on her Path page late Sunday, which was widely quoted by Indonesian media. "Bring back my papa. Papa, please come home."

At Iryanto's house in the East Java town of Sidoarjo, neighbors, relatives and friends gathered Monday to pray and recite the Quran to support the distraught family. Their desperate cries were so loud, they could sometimes be heard outside where three LCD televisions had been set up to monitor search developments.

"He is a good man. That's why people here appointed him as our neighborhood chief for the last two years," said Bagianto Djoyonegoro, a friend and neighbor.

Many recalled him as an experienced Air Force pilot who flew F-16 fighter jets before becoming a commercial airline pilot.

The missing aircraft was delivered to AirAsia in October 2008, and the plane had accumulated about 23,000 flight hours during some 13,600 flights, Airbus said in a statement.

The aircraft had last undergone scheduled maintenance on Nov. 16, according to AirAsia.

The airline has dominated budget travel in Southeast Asia for years, highlighting its low fares with the slogan, "Now everyone can fly." It completes short routes of just a few hours, connecting the region's large cities. Recently, it has tried to expand into long-distance flying through sister airline AirAsia X.

The A320 family of jets, which includes the A319 and A321, has a good safety record, with just 0.14 fatal accidents per million takeoffs, according to a safety study published by Boeing in August.

___

Mason reported from Jakarta. Ali Kotarumalos, Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Joan Lowy in Austin, Texas, Scott Mayerowitz in New York and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.

Reform effort cuts key JPAC experts

A government-affiliated program that supplies dozens of scientists and other expertise to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command is being cut at the same time Congress is demanding more recoveries and identifications from the Hawaii-based organization.

JPAC, as the command is known, is one part of a larger Defense Department accounting effort that has come under intense congressional scrutiny and criticism in recent years for not making enough recoveries and identifications of Americans missing from past wars.

Now, the 50 Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education fellows assisting JPAC are being let go as the Pentagon's accounting effort undergoes a wholesale reorganization. Only about six current or new Oak Ridge fellows may be retained, according to the Pentagon.

As one way to produce more identifications, a total of 100 disinterments of Americans buried in Hawaii, the Philippines and Europe — many as "unknowns" — were proposed for this fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, according to JPAC. A total of 32 were disinterred last year.

"Almost all of these projected areas are assigned to ORISE research fellows, all of (whom) are subject to termination this FY (fiscal year)," JPAC said in a report.

Termination "means an immediate halt to all disinterment research," the report said.

"Thus, personnel factors risk grinding the disinterment project, and related identifications, to a halt," said JPAC, which investigates, recovers and identifies missing American service members from past conflicts.

JPAC's headquarters and main lab are at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

Carrie Brown, an Oak Ridge research fellow at JPAC's satellite lab at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, said she was given about a month's notice that her contract wouldn't be renewed on Dec. 1.

"We've been constantly told, ‘The decision hasn't been made, the decision hasn't been made'" about keeping the fellows, Brown said. "The decision has been made by inaction."

She said she and her husband, who is getting out of the Marine Corps, moved to Nebraska for the JPAC job and bought a house. Now their future is uncertain, the 32-year-old said.

"They are destroying a world-class workforce when their message is they want to retain a world-class workforce," Brown said.

A Pentagon group called the Personnel Accounting Consolidation Task Force is guiding the reorganization and making the Oak Ridge fellowship decisions.

Navy Cmdr. Amy Derrick-Frost, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in an email that the Defense Department is "reviewing the fellowship program."

"There has been no decision to eliminate or keep ORISE as the single fellowship source," she said. "We continue to explore a number of options to meet valid requirements, and any decision will be based on the government's requirements."

Why the Pentagon wants to cut the Oak Ridge program so severely is not clear. Of 87 identifications of formerly missing service members made in fiscal 2014, which ended in September, 48 were attributed to Oak Ridge involvement.

Derrick-Frost was asked about the claim that the loss of the Oak Ridge fellows would have a crippling effect on identifications, including a novel approach of comparing old chest X-rays with clavicle bones to identify Korean War veterans buried as "unknowns."

"The Department of Defense has a world-class staff of government scientists, researchers and fellows who will continue to support the agency's mission of the fullest possible accounting for missing personnel, including via exhumation and clavicle ID efforts," Derrick-Frost said.

No Oak Ridge contracts, which start on different dates over the calendar year, have been renewed this fiscal year, JPAC said.

THE CHANGE comes as the longtime scientific director of the Central Identification Laboratory within JPAC, Tom Holland, was removed. Most of the Oak Ridge fellows, who work as forensic anthropologists, historians, archivists, archaeologists and in other fields, work in the Hawaii lab.

"The lab is systematically being destroyed," said Frank Metersky, a former Marine and Korean War veteran who has been active in the MIA issue for 25 years.

Meanwhile, a new $85 million lab and headquarters for JPAC at Hickam that was supposed to be completed in late 2013 now won't be occupied until the summer of 2015 because "C4I" (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence) is still being installed, the Pentagon said.

Capt. Edward Reedy was selected as the first scientific director of the new Defense Department personnel accounting agency at Hickam "and he has assumed this responsibility," Derrick-Frost said.

Reedy previously was director of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System's DNA Registry, she said.

Asked what job Holland, the former scientific director, is being given, Derrick-Frost said the Pentagon does "not comment on the personnel matters of our individual employees."

She added, "However, it is important to note that there have been no official Department of Defense personnel announcements made pertaining to the personnel accounting reorganization or the new agency."

The Defense Department's efforts at accounting reform follow a series of embarrassing and damning revelations in reports and testimony before Congress concerning failures in the overall effort to identify missing war dead.

The POW/MIA effort, conducted by a handful of agencies around the country, was fragmented, overlapped and hampered by inter-agency disputes, a July 2013 Government Accountability Office report said.

"As of next year, Congress has mandated the department have the capacity to identify up to 200 sets of remains a year, but last year the (Defense Department) agencies only identified 70 sets," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in March in announcing an overhaul.

The Pentagon decided to establish a new agency that combines JPAC; the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office near Washington, D.C.; and some functions of the Air Force's Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory in Ohio.

Thirteen former JPAC lab anthropologists and other scientists previously lent their names to a letter to Hagel expressing "grave concerns" with the decision to remove Holland.

The JPAC lab "is the gold standard of scientific rigor and excellence that all other laboratories that undertake the identification of skeletonized human remains strive to achieve," the group said.

The Oak Ridge Institute said on its website that it became an official U.S. Department of Energy institute in 1992 and it supports a national agenda to advance science education and research programs.

But U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in 2013 that the fellowship program was "taking up significant resources" in the accounting effort.

McCaskill submitted a series of questions to JPAC commander Maj. Gen. Kelly McKeague about the program, and in answers provided Aug. 1, 2013, JPAC said it had 584 personnel in the command.

Of that number, 48, or 8 percent of the total workforce, were full-time Oak Ridge fellows, whose terms were reviewed annually but typically fulfilled an appointment of three years at JPAC, with five years being the maximum, the command said.

JPAC said the program grew from 23 full-time and four "short-term" fellows in 2008 with a total participant cost of $985,103, to 48 full-time and 29 short-term fellows in 2013 at a cost of $2.5 million.

"Prudent use of government resources … requires careful review by the (Defense) Department on how this program is used and the work the department funds," the Pentagon's Derrick-Frost said.

But even at the $2.5 million cost in 2013, defenders say the Oak Ridge scientists are a bargain. The institute charges up to 18 percent overhead in addition to salary as administrative costs while universities tack on 40 to 50 percent and the private sector sometimes charges more than that, officials said.

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©2014 The Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Bath Iron Works' shipyard's focus on cutting costs builds friction with unions

BATH — Walking through Bath Iron Works’ sprawling shipyard, it’s difficult to reconcile the sight of thousands of workers building five massive Navy destroyers with the talk about potentially huge job losses in the not-too-distant future.

Three destroyers – one nearly complete and in the water, one assembled, and one still in segments – dominate the outdoor yard. Inside a cavernous hall, welding and grinding sparks fly against a backdrop of clanging metal and the whir of heavy machinery as workers assemble sections of two more multibillion-dollar warships.

Hundreds of new hires have pushed BIW’s employment rolls to their highest levels in years. Yet leaner times may be just over the horizon at BIW, a manufacturing powerhouse on Maine’s tourism-dependent coastline.

Managers at the General Dynamics-owned shipyard are warning that less Navy work in the years ahead could eliminate as many as 1,200 jobs. The prospect has BIW feverishly looking for ways to cut costs, giving the yard a better chance of landing a “must win” contract to build Coast Guard cutters.

This fall, BIW President Fred Harris alarmed the leadership of the largest union by beginning the formal process to outsource fabrication of some ship components – electrical panels, lockers and tables, to name a few – that are now made by unionized BIW employees. Finding efficiencies, Harris insists, is critical to not only beating two leaner, nonunionized shipyards vying for the Coast Guard work but also to better position BIW for future Navy work.

“We are a shipbuilder. We know how to build a superstructure,” Harris said while seated in his office filled with depictions of the 500- to 600-foot destroyers built in Bath. “But there are many things that we build here in this shipyard that we probably would be better off having someone else build for us.”

To Harris, the very future of Bath Iron Works hinges on whether it can remain competitive in an era of tight federal budgets, a shrinking military force and perennial political discord in Washington. But while Harris has been praised for his willingness to listen to workers’ suggestions on work-flow efficiencies, his outsourcing proposal is causing friction with the largest union.

“We know we have to be cost-efficient. The union is 100 percent behind trying to reduce costs,” said Jay Wadleigh, president of the Local S6 chapter of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America. But as union officials review 1,250 pages of outsourcing documents and nearly 2,500 time studies provided by the company, Wadleigh sees a flaw in the proposal: “There is nowhere near the savings that the company thinks is there.”

According to Harris, the stakes go far beyond the 1,000 to 1,200 jobs that could be shed unless BIW’s cutter design bid – to be submitted in early 2016 – is accepted by the Coast Guard.

“There has probably not been a time in Bath’s past where it’s more critical for us to be more efficient than ever before,” Harris said. “I worry about the nation’s resolve to continue to build ships long after I’m gone (from BIW). So we have to set the foundation here that we’re the guys left to build those ships and not other shipyards in the U.S.”

Union leaders insist they are on the same page when it comes to lowering costs but say that giving laborers accurate designs and ensuring materials are on hand when needed, not outsourcing, are the solutions.

While union officials are still analyzing the proposals under the formal outsourcing process spelled out in the labor contract, Wadleigh said one reason the cost-savings are negligible is that BIW workers must often “rework” outsourced components in order to meet the shipyard’s higher standards, thereby eliminating any savings.

“We understand that the key to winning contracts, and the key to having a vibrant and healthy union, is to get the costs down,” Wadleigh said. “We just don’t agree with the way he is going about it.”

High stakes, unpredictable times

With just under 6,000 employees and a payroll of $360 million, BIW is one of Maine’s largest private employers with an economic impact that extends far beyond its location on the banks of the Kennebec River.

BIW spent $64 million with 345 companies located in 12 of Maine’s 16 counties in 2014. The bulk of that money – $40 million – flows to small businesses, according to figures provided by the company.

Yet this multibillion-dollar Maine company currently has only one buyer: the U.S. Navy. That’s a worrisome dynamic when the only thing predictable about federal budget levels is their unpredictability.

From 2013 to 2014, the Navy reduced the number of destroyers it anticipates purchasing over the next 30 years from 70 to 65. Of more immediate consequence, the Navy warns that it may be forced to cut another three destroyers by 2019 unless Congress lifts the spending caps established under the budget deal that gave rise to the recent “sequestration” budget cuts.

“It is tough for anybody to find money in Washington, and it is going to get tougher yet,” Harris said.

Navy destroyers take years to build and are contracted out to BIW and its competitor, the Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, years in advance.

That’s why BIW knows that after the third and final DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class “stealth” destroyer floats down the river sometime in 2018 or 2019, the shipyard is likely to receive one new destroyer contract per year for the foreseeable future, based on the Navy’s own plan.

And that’s where the Coast Guard contract comes in.

BIW is one of three shipyards competing to land a contract potentially worth $10 billion to build up to 11 offshore patrol cutters, or OPCs, for the Coast Guard. While BIW hasn’t built Coast Guard boats in generations, the cutters would be similar in size to the Navy guided missile frigates the shipyard churned out alongside destroyers for years.

The two Gulf Coast shipyards competing against Bath for the Coast Guard contract – Bollinger Shipyards in Lockport, Louisiana, and Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City, Florida – are smaller, more diversified, nonunion yards located in a lower-cost area of the country. In addition, Bollinger already builds fast-response cutters for the Coast Guard as part of a 34-ship contract.

“I think the Navy would tell you that BIW is the best builder of surface warships in the Western Hemisphere but it is not in an advantageous position for cost,” said Loren Thompson, a naval policy and acquisition expert with the Lexington Institute in Virginia. “It is up a river, in a cold climate and in a part of the country with a strong regulatory environment.”

The Coast Guard builds fewer ships and has a tighter budget than the Navy. Meanwhile, Gulf Coast shipyards have proven highly capable of producing cutters for the Coast Guard.

If either Bollinger or Eastern Shipbuilding can prove it can build the requisite quality ship at a lower price, Thompson added, “then the fact that Bath builds a better ship is probably not enough for BIW to win the competition.”

“It’s going to be tough,” said Guy Stitt, president of the naval analysis firm AMI International, when asked about the cutter deal.

“But Bath has been dealing with competition from the Gulf Coast for quite a while and I think what Bath has been able to do is demonstrate good quality” at a reasonable cost, Stitt said. “Bath is very good at the complex vessels. The challenge is: That scope of complexity is not required in the OPC.”

Robert Socha, executive vice president for marketing and sales at Bollinger Shipyards, declined to comment on the OPC competition but noted that his yard has been building Coast Guard cutters since the 1980s. Also, about one-half of Bollinger’s work is building tugs, barges and other vessels for the private commercial sector, which is more price-conscious than the military.

“One of our biggest attributes is our versatility with both government and commercial work,” Socha said.

Asked how Bath can compete against the other yards, Wadleigh, the Local S6 presdient, had a blunt response

“We’re better than them,” Wadleigh said. “You just have to be more efficient than them and you have to be more productive than them. There isn’t a shipyard out there that has the years of experience that we have.”

Bath's higher standards, costs

Shipbuilding began at BIW in the late 1880s as workers churned out wooden vessels both for the Navy and the private sector. During World War II, BIW produced more than 80 destroyers – a rate of one every two weeks.

The shipyard last built commercial vessels in the 1980s when the federal government helped subsidize commercial work at American yards. Some major Navy shipbuilders – including Huntington Ingalls and General Dynamics at its NASSCO yard in San Diego – also build commercial vessels. But the quality standards and complexity of Navy warships is so much higher that it is a challenge to meld the two.

Stitt gave the example of welders who may have to make three “passes” over a joint for a military ship but only two passes for a commercial vessel. Over the course of building a huge ship, that adds up to a lot of passes and man-hours, he said.

“They actually have to cut the yard in half and segregate the work,” Stitt said. “One side of the yard becomes very cost-conscious and one half is very quality-conscious.”

Harris, who helped bring more commercial work to NASSCO as that yard’s president, said BIW “would have to get much, much more efficient.”

For the time being, Harris is focused on reducing costs to become a Coast Guard yard as well as a Navy yard. Having the cutter contract, Harris said, means BIW would be able to reduce its overhead for the next round of DDG-51 destroyer contracts.

During the last round of DDG-51 bidding, BIW’s per-ship price was more than $50 million higher than Huntington Ingalls’ price, according to shipyard officials. The Navy awarded five destroyers outright to the Mississippi yard and four to BIW with the option for a fifth ship pending funding, which has since been authorized.

But according to BIW officials, the shipyard was a few percentage points away from losing that fifth ship to Huntington Ingalls altogether.

“On the last DDG-51 bid, we lost and we lost heavily or badly,” Harris said, referring to the price difference per ship between the Bath and Pascagoula shipyards. “And we have to be in a position to overcome that. We have to be in a position to offer the government a price that is competitive.”

A smaller, more complicated fleet

Today’s Navy fleet is roughly half the size of a few decades ago, but each new ship is vastly more technologically advanced – and expensive.

In 1987 at the tail end of the Cold War, the Navy had 568 “battle force” ships patrolling the oceans to counter the perceived global threat posed by the Soviet Union. As of August 2014, the U.S. fleet was down to 290 battle force ships, a reflection of both geopolitical changes and more advanced, precision weaponry. The Navy’s current 30-year plan envisions a fleet of 306 ships.

At the same time, today’s high-tech ships carry much higher price tags. The DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that have been the workhorse of the Navy for decades cost more than $1.5 billion apiece. The three Zumwalt-class “stealth” destroyers – the largest and most technologically advanced destroyers in history – are expected to set the Navy back roughly $4 billion each.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office paints a bleak picture for shipbuilders in a report that raises doubts about the Navy’s ability to achieve its long-term goal.

In a report to lawmakers this month, the CBO predicted the Navy would have to spend billions of dollars more per year than the Navy estimates to build all of the new ships and submarines it expects to need over the next three decades. Construction of a dozen Ohio-class submarines – a major component of the country’s nuclear strategy – is projected to cost between $79 billion and $92 billion alone.

An alternative build-out scenario compiled by the CBO forecasts the Navy could afford just 45 new destroyers rather than the 65 proposed in the 30-year plan.

“CBO’s estimate of $20.7 billion per year for the full cost of the Navy’s 2015 shipbuilding plan is 32 percent higher than the $15.7 billion the Navy has spent on average per year for all items in its shipbuilding accounts over the past 30 years,” the CBO report reads. “If the Navy’s future funding for shipbuilding is in line with its past funding, the Navy will need to reduce substantially its new-ship purchases relative to the number called for in its 2015 plan.”

Those prospects concern BIW’s Harris.

“So that worries me – that we might be in a position where there are fewer ships and the government decides that it is going to buy not 10 (destroyers) going forward but only five, or one a year, and then it is probably a winner-take-all competition,” Harris said. “We don’t want that to happen, but we better be in a position to win it.”

Of course, this is not the first time BIW has faced potentially massive job losses.

Exactly 10 years ago, the secretary of the Navy began exploring using only a single shipyard to build destroyers. Members of the Maine and Mississippi congressional delegations led the fight to defeat the proposal because of potential job losses in their home states. A year later, Hurricane Katrina severely damaged the Pascagoula shipyard, bolstering arguments for two facilities.

In fact, the threat of significant layoffs arises so often, said the Local S6 union president, that it can become a “boy who cries wolf” situation for longtime shipyard workers.

“We always have to pick up the pace and work a little harder because there is always some crisis just around the corner,” Wadleigh said. “Many of them have been real (crises) but never materialized. … But that sits in the back of your mind. ‘Oh, I’ve heard this before’ and people become numb to a degree. Not everybody, but some.”

Wadleigh said the current crisis could be the most real yet, however.

“They are saying it is a must-win,” Wadleigh said of the Coast Guard contract. “We have to take them at their word at this point. It would certainly be nice to win.”

Looking for a consensus

In the meantime, BIW management and union leaders are about halfway through the process of analyzing the company’s outsourcing proposals. The process, as laid out by the National Labor Relations Board, states that if the two sides reach an impasse, the issue will go to an “accelerated arbitration process” to decide whether the company’s cost-savings estimates justify outsourcing.

For months, rumors circulated that BIW planned to outsource some work to firms in Mexico. Harris insisted that won’t happen – an assurance he also made to U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who became involved at the behest of the unions.

“But we will try, in accordance with the agreement, to work with the union to outsource those things to other American companies that we can find that can do the work and do it affordably, much more affordably than we do,” Harris said.

Wadleigh credits Harris and other managers for encouraging more shipyard workers to offer their own efficiency proposals. Under a pilot project, the union has already identified some potential cost-saving measures by working with a manager who is well-respected by workers in the yard.

Part of the challenge, Wadleigh said, is that many veteran workers have suggested efficiency and cost-cutting improvements to management in the past only to see them ignored.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that the company will back off a lot of these (outsourcing) proposals when they see the cost savings are not there and that we can find another way to try to save money that would sit better with our membership and still get us where we need to be,” Wadleigh said.

©2014 the Portland Press Herald (Portland, Maine)

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Former Fort Bragg Gen. Dan McNeill helps bring his fallen brother home at last

A chilly rain bounced off the tarmac as former Fort Bragg Gen. Dan McNeill watched an honor guard unload his brother's flag-draped coffin from a 737.

Inside the terminal at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a mad rush of travelers - among them college students heading home for Thanksgiving - pressed up to the concourse windows to pay their solemn respects to an airman who died long before many of them were born.

Outside on the tarmac, an Air Force color guard stood steadfastly by, and members of the Patriot Guard Riders motorcycle club formed their traditional flag line, somehow managing to keep the votive candles they held lit despite the drizzle.

Passengers on the plane paid their respects, as well, exiting only after the coffin had been carried away.

Even for a man long accustomed to military protocol, the scene moved McNeill, former commander of Fort Bragg and the 18th Airborne Corps.

"Extraordinary,'' McNeill would say later. "Only in America.''

Dan McNeill had graduated from N.C. State's Army ROTC program and was in his second week of parachute school at Fort Benning, Georgia, when the word came in February 1969.

An EC-47 surveillance plane carrying his brother, Air Force Airman Clarence "Boone'' McNeill, and nine other crewmen had been shot down in Laos in Southeast Asia. Boone, who had enlisted in the Air Force in 1966 after a stint at East Carolina University, worked as a cryptologic linguist, someone who could understand the Vietnamese language and help with intelligence missions.

He was assigned to the 6994 Security Squadron at Pleiku Air Base in Vietnam when he and his crew mates set off on a surveillance mission along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Their plane was shot down in the jungle. Boone was 22 years old.

For months, he and his nine crew mates were categorized as missing in action.

"We kept expecting that Boone would walk out of that jungle,'' McNeill said.

But when the crash site was located in the fall of 1969, an analysis of the bones convinced Air Force officials that the entire crew had been killed in action. A granite headstone was engraved with 10 names, and the remains were buried together at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Missouri.

The McNeill family was tasked with moving on. And they did. As much as was possible.

"We figured my mother was this gentle soul and my father was the Rock of Gibraltar,'' Dan McNeill said. "But we had it backward. I'm convinced my dad died of a broken heart.''

For McNeill, the news of his brother's death was a pivotal moment. Certainly, there were other such moments in a distinguished military career that included being tapped as a four-star general in 2004. But no doubt, his brother's death and his mother's grace were deeply affecting.

"It was a lesson to me,'' he said. "I saw the profound effect it had on my mother and father. It made me realize that every soldier was some mother's son.''

Dan and Clarence McNeill, born just a week shy of a year apart, were so close in age and looked so much alike that people often thought they were twins. A friend of the family took to calling one Daniel Boone and the other Clarence Boone. Eventually, Boone was the name that stuck with the younger brother.

Dan and his siblings, including another brother, Walker, and a sister, Sally, enjoyed an idyllic childhood spent hunting and fishing and playing sports in the small farming town of Warsaw in Duplin County.

"We didn't always understand it at the time,'' Dan McNeill said. "But everything we wanted would fit inside a draftsman's compass circle around that town on a map.

"When we got older, no matter where we were, we were always looking forward to coming home.

"I've been all over the world, and I still look forward to getting back to the great state of North Carolina.''

The McNeills are a close-knit family. Despite time and tragedy, that closeness has endured.

Coming back home to Warsaw has always been a blessing.

It would take nearly 46 years to bring that blessing full circle for Boone McNeill.

In June 1969, Boone McNeill was posthumously promoted to sergeant and awarded the Purple Heart. In 1987, an auditorium at Misawa Air Base in Japan was named in his memory.

But his biggest honor came Nov. 28, 2014, the day after Thanksgiving.

With the backing of all 10 families of the crash victims, the Air Force in the summer of 2013 exhumed their remains from Jefferson Barracks and sent them for contemporary DNA analysis. Substantial amounts of remains of seven of the 10 crew members were positively identified. Boone McNeill was one of them.

The McNeill family made a decision. Boone McNeill would be brought home to Warsaw, the small town they all so loved.

Every year, the relatives make it back to McNeill Road and to the McNeill Brothers farm for Thanksgiving. This year, 65 turned out for the annual feast.

"An American Thanksgiving of the first order,'' McNeill said.

The next day, Dan McNeill and his wife, Maureen, along with their son Dan Jr., daughter-in-law Sarah and granddaughter Paige, joined a large gathering of friends and family at Devotional Gardens Cemetery to lay Sgt. Clarence "Boone'' McNeill to rest with full military honors.

Dan McNeill knew that the day after Thanksgiving is traditionally a holiday for servicemen.

So he called Mark Slocum, wing commander for Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. He wanted Slocum to let his men know why they were working on a holiday and how much he appreciated them giving up their day off.

Slocum was resolute.

"He told me, '' McNeill said, "that they were bringing an airman home.''

So it was that on Nov. 28, four F-15s took to the sky in a V shape over the tiny North Carolina town of Warsaw. One of the jets broke off to the side, leaving the others in the traditional missing man formation.

Sgt. Clarence "Boone'' McNeill, buried just a few feet from his parents, was home for good.

hastyk@fayobserver.com

©2014 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.)

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A year of change, a year of challenges for Fort Bragg

One of the first stories I wrote this year dealt with a then-upcoming deployment of Fort Bragg soldiers.

So it is only fitting that, as this year draws to a close, we've been pretty busy writing about Fort Bragg troops returning home from Afghanistan.

But while the war in Afghanistan has served as the bookends to 2014, there has been plenty of news in between.

Thousands of Fort Bragg soldiers were deployed, but the nation's largest military installation had a year full of change.

The 82nd Airborne Division shuffled its deck, saying goodbye to the 4th Brigade Combat Team and related units while welcoming the return of the Division Artillery and integrating former 4th Brigade units into other brigades.

And the 82nd's 18th Fires Brigade reinvented itself. It will now fire the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, better known as HiMARS .

All the while, the 82nd Airborne made terms such as "interdependency" and "interoperability" common as the division upped its training with foreign paratroopers and special operations forces.

The division also welcomed a new commander, Maj. Gen. Richard Clarke.

That was one of several key changes to Fort Bragg leadership.

Clarke took the place of Maj. Gen. John Nicholson.

Elsewhere on Fort Bragg, Maj. Gen. Kurt Stein handed over the reins of the 1st Theater Sustainment Command to Maj. Gen. Darrel Williams, and Gen. Daniel Allyn turned over U.S. Army Forces Command to Gen. Mark Milley.

There also were more somber farewells, including the funeral for Medal of Honor recipient Cpl. Rudolfo Hernandez and a memorial for Spc. Kelli Bordeaux, whose body was found two years after her disappearance in Fayetteville.

Other changes were more physical.

Fort Bragg officials contended with multiple road closures as crews worked to build the Interstate 295 connector to Interstate 95. Leaders also broke ground on several Fort Bragg facilities, including a new Fisher House and an Intrepid Spirit Center.

Fort Bragg started new traditions, including the All American Marathon, and honored the past, participating in ceremonies marking the anniversaries of Operation Market Garden and D-Day, which both occurred 70 years ago, and the Green Ramp Disaster, a fatal plane crash that claimed the lives of two dozen paratroopers and injured more than 100 more in 1994.

The year also was one of uncertainty.

News of potential troop cuts, tighter budgets and the fate of the 440th Airlift Wing, a one-star Air Force Reserve unit marked for inactivation, dominated the headlines at times.

And, of course, the year had its share of scandal.

Fort Bragg hosted the court-martial for then-Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, who was convicted of adultery and inappropriate relationships with two women.

At least one brigade commander was relieved of duty for misconduct, and the commander of Womack Army Medical Center was relieved after senior Army medical leaders lost "trust and confidence" in him.

What does 2015 have in store?

If I had to guess, it will be a pretty familiar year.

Fort Bragg soldiers remain in Afghanistan, and more are slated to head to Iraq and West Africa.

Uncertainty with budgets remain and likely will for the near future.

And leaders will continue to come and go.

All the while, Fort Bragg will keep doing what it typically does. Soldiers will train, and some of the nation's most called-upon forces will continue to prepare for whatever challenges the military faces next.

Through it all, that is what Fort Bragg does best.

brooksd@fayobserver.com

©2014 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.)

Visit The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.) at www.fayobserver.com

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Rivals in military religious freedom dispute say rule is unclear

WASHINGTON — Faith in Jesus might not be your solution, an Army Ranger chaplain told members of the 5th Ranger Training Battalion in a mandatory suicide prevention briefing last month, but that’s what helped him through his struggle with depression.

The presentation prompted a sharply worded letter from the chaplain’s commander and rekindled a long-running dispute over whether the expression — and the promotion — of religious faith must remain private in the U.S. military or whether it is allowable on duty.

Nearly a year after the Department of Defense issued a heavily revised religious expression policy that advocates said would bring a new level of religious freedom, the dispute at Fort Benning, Ga., is evidence that the new wording hasn’t done away with old disputes. The fight over what constitutes free exercise and what qualifies as government-imposed religion remains as heated as ever.

The chaplain, Capt. Joe Lawhorn, also presented nonreligious ways to combat the military suicide epidemic at the session, held off base near Camp Merrill, Ga., on Nov. 20. When the men filed out, they carried handouts prepared by the former enlisted soldier, who attended seminary at Liberty University, a conservative Christian institution founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell.

One side of the handout featured secular suicide-prevention tips. The other side presented Christianity as the answer.

“Enduring and overcoming distress begins by maintaining your integrity of connectedness with God,” the handout said. “Invite Jesus into whatever you’re feeling. Remember, he will never let you down (Romans 8:1.)”

A member of the battalion, a staff sergeant who asked to remain anonymous to avoid potential retaliation, said he was shocked by what he’d heard and read. The atheist infantryman, who said it’s possible to work through trauma without religion, said the briefing was an affront to soldiers of other faiths or no faith.

“It just seemed entirely inappropriate for something that’s not supposed to be a religious gathering,” he said. “The part about opening oneself to Jesus — it sounds like they’re saying if someone doesn’t believe, they can’t be healed.”

After the incident was publicized by the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers advocacy group, Fort Benning’s command warned the chaplain to cool the religious content in mandatory briefings.

In response, Lawhorn’s attorney, Michael Berry — of the Liberty Institute, a competing advocacy group — cited the wording in the new policy in a letter demanding that the Army explicitly approve religious content in the chaplain’s briefings.

“The Army has not and cannot point to any law or regulation Chaplain Lawhorn violated,” Berry, senior counsel and director of military affairs for the organization, told Stars and Stripes. “On the contrary, federal law and military regulations permit and protect religious expression by servicemembers.”

Guidance needed

Both sides agree on one point: There’s a “tsunami of confusion” over what the policy says.

That’s the phrase used last month in Congressional testimony by Military Religious Freedom Foundation president Mikey Weinstein, a former Air Force lawyer who fights to prevent commanders from injecting mandatory religion into military life and work.

The phrase was endorsed in the same hearing by a frequent opponent, Ron Crews, a retired Army chaplain who heads the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. Crews’ group advocates for chaplains, frequently evangelical Christians, who want to talk freely about their faith.

Each side charges the other with misrepresenting the new policy, but they agree that the DOD needs to do much more to establish what it all means.

“There’s an incredible lack of education,” Weinstein said, advocating strict discipline and courts-martial as a teaching tool as a response for those who bring religion into the military workplace.

Berry, who testified in the same hearing last month as Weinstein and Crews, said the DOD needs to clearly explain how the revised policy authorizes actions like Lawhorn’s anti-suicide briefing.

Other controversial policy changes have been accompanied by guidance on implementation, Berry said.

“When ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ in the military was repealed, they didn’t just tell folks, ‘OK, it’s been repealed, carry on with your lives,’ ” Berry said. “Instead, there was a program of training to ensure it was adequately understood. I think that is a pretty wise approach to take, and I think something similar should be implemented here.”

The current DOD policy on religion was released in January in response to a requirement from Congress in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. According to the federal law, “the Armed Forces shall accommodate individual expressions of belief” as much as possible.

When the policy was released, the main focus of attention was on free exercise of religion for minorities, who became able to more easily obtain exceptions to policy to wear beards or articles of clothing that violate military regulations.

But the policy doesn’t just cover minorities who follow traditional practices, including Sikhs, Jews and Muslims. It extends the prospect of free religious expression to all, including the military’s Christian majority.

According to the key section, “unless it could have an adverse impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, and good order and discipline, the Military Departments will accommodate individual expressions of sincerely held beliefs.”

For supporters of strict separation of church and state, the “adverse impact” exception of the law is key; any dissension in the ranks as a result of religious grudges or discord can only hurt the readiness of the unit.

“The bottom line is, we have to make sure our military is tough enough to be ready to kill the enemies of our country,” Weinstein said. Because of that imperative, the government has a compelling interest in limiting the kind of untrammeled religious expression civilians enjoy in order to maintain strong and unified military units, he said.

But hypothetical damage to unit morale, discipline or readiness doesn’t constitute “compelling interest” under the law for the government to limit religious speech, Berry said.

“When we’re actually court-martialing someone for prejudicing good order and discipline, it requires direct evidence — someone to actually get on the stand and demonstrate an effect,” said Berry, who served as an attorney in the Marine Corps. “Otherwise, it’s all speculation and someone playing worst-case scenario.”

Opposite views

Despite the new policy, which appears to give greater protection to religious freedom, Berry said there is a heightened level of hostility to religious rights in today’s military.

Jason Torpy, president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, said the opposite — that there is a heightened sense among some religious people that federal law and the new DOD policy give them free rein to proselytize.

“If evangelicals in Congress want military chaplains to enforce Christianity in their official duties, then they are getting their wish,” he said in a statement. “But if we all seek religious liberty and the mental health of our military men and women, then here should be swift action against that chaplain, his endorsing agency, and the battalion commander who participated in this wanton abuse of their military authority.”

After Torpy’s airing of the anonymous soldier’s complaint, Fort Benning’s command took action. Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade commander Col. David G. Fivecoat issued a “letter of concern” to Lawhorn in late November that accused him of violating Army policies on religious expression and equal opportunity.

When Berry pushed back on Lawhorn’s behalf, Fivecoat revised the letter to remove the policy citations, but left in place an order to “create an environment of tolerance and understanding.”

Then, earlier this month, Maj. Gen. Scott Miller, commander of Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, pointed out that the letter issued to Lawhorn is not an official punishment but an attempt at guidance that is re-moved from a soldier’s file upon reassignment.

In declining to remove the letter, Miller stopped just short of explicitly criticizing Lawhorn but pointed out what is expected of a chaplain when carrying out duties like suicide-prevention training.

“Their role is not to provide religious instruction during non-religious mandatory training classes,” he wrote in a statement released to the media. “Chaplains may appropriately share their personal experiences, but any religious information given by a Chaplain to a military formation should be limited to an orientation of what religious services and facilities are available and how to contact Chaplains of specific faiths.”

Berry said Lawhorn’s retelling of his experience with depression, and how faith pulled him through, was appropriate to the situation. It’s the Army that enshrines “spiritual fitness” as one of the elements of overall soldier fitness, he said, and sends chaplains to conduct mandatory training.

“If you have a problem with what Chaplain Lawhorn has done,” Berry said, “I would submit you have a problem with the Army, not with Chaplain Lawhorn.”

carroll.chris@stripes.com

Twitter: @ChrisCarroll

Ceremony marks transition of US troop presence in Afghanistan

3 minutes ago

By Heath Druzin

Stars and Stripes

Published: December 28, 2014

KABUL, Afghanistan – After 13 years, the U.S.-led military coalition is officially shifting their long military mission to a limited presence focused on training and advising.

The changeover, which was marked by a ceremony Sunday, is largely symbolic – the combat role of international troops has been steadily reduced over the past two years – but President Barack Obama has hailed it as the end of America’s war in Afghanistan.

But there will still be nearly 11,000 U.S. service members in Afghanistan in 2015 and while the focus is to be on training and advising, foreign troops will still have the ability to go after al Qaeda and Taliban in certain circumstances. At the height of the war, there were 100,000 American troops in the country.

The shift comes as many say violence has reached its highest levels of the war – more civilians and Afghan troops died in 2014 than in any other year since the U.S. invasion in 2001 – and the Afghan security forces are now largely on their own to battle a still entrenched Taliban.

Continued international air support, intelligence, and logistics help is seen as key to bolstering the Afghan forces.

Druzin.heath@stripes.com; Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes