Originally Posted by
Less Hair
It won't bring back those poor shooting victims but SA should be made to pay tons and tons of money to all the victims and victim's families. Who selected those guys for foreign exchange training?
I had a long chat with a friend who used to work foreign student training issues. But we both have been out of uniform for a while.
1. Significant State Department influence.
2. Vetting usually done by home nation, not by US. (Though a few new rules did crop up from DHS and State Department)
3. After 9-11, the Navy had a haiatus on admitting foreign students from selected states in the Gulf region, but not due to the Navy having a new policy, but rather because DHS (a recently created Department) had implemented rules that basically said "nobody gets flight training unless (fill in blank with list of requirements"
4. My memory, a bit faulty, was that we'd just stopped doing it. For some reason, I had thought that when Rummy kept pulling US folks out of Saudi and moving some home and some to Qatar and Kuwait, there was also a reduction in Saudi student input on this side but apparently that memory wasn't correct.
The accessions only stopped for a while (and I don't think it was stopped for more than a couple of years).
5. I am about 75% sure that the following is correct: this most recent student (who did the shooting) was suposed to get the (fairly cheap) initial USN Nav/WSO training at Pensacola (Training Wing 6) and then proceed to a USAF training base to get WSO training for F-15's - which fits with the recent F-15 Strike Eagle variant the Saudis procured. (This tidbit from a different source)
FWIW, from sometime in the 90's unitl the late 00's or early 10's, the USN and USAF had a multi service training deal going on for WSO's / NAVs / NFOs at TRAWING 6. This included a variety of NATO and other foreign students. (It was driven by both BRAC and Goldwater Nichols direction...) It appears that the use of Pensacola as entry point remains a viable path for some of the foreign aviation. students.