Washington, D.C.- The Air Force has acted to add a new name for those Servicemembers that are in transition.
Instead of being “In Lieu of” status while awaiting deployment the Chief of Staff for the Air Force, General Norton Schwartz has enacted a new title.
Its called JET. This is a new acronym for “Joint Expeditionary Tasking”. It is a name that the general feels more accurately reflected the status of many dedicated Airmen waiting or on station during their deployments both stateside and overseas.
Airmen that are deploying would put down on paperwork for the Air Force “ILO or In Lieu of” but as General Norton pointed out “the contributions of Airmen around the world every day are not in lieu of anything.”
There are different types of military deployment that count as Joint Expeditionary Training. One is airmen joining with other sister services and equipment from other branches of the US Armed forces, another is performing Airmen in roles in place of other US Armed Forces troops, and finally US Air Force Airmen who join a unit made up of personnel and equipment from several different types of Services and other US Armed forces units.
Several years ago in 2004 the Air Force began to use the term “In Lieu of” to describe deployments that are not typically Air Force in nature dealing with service in Iraq, such as assisting or assignment in Convoy duty.
