USAF General Pays Visit

The Commander of the United States Third Air Force, Major General Kenneth W. Hess, was in Accra last Wednesday for a two day working visit with the main Chiefs of Staff of Ghana's Armed Forces. He touched down at the Accra Air Force base in Burma Camp at exactly eleven o'clock, and was welcomed by a guard of honour on the tarmac. From there he went to visit first the Chief of the Defence Staff, Lt. General Seth Obeng, and then the Chief of Air Staff, Vice Marshall E. Mantey.

General Obeng was reluctant to release exact details of what is on the agenda, because of obvious security reasons. He said only that the visit was in order to look at, "how we can work as two armed forces, and how we can work efficiently together."

The US Third Air Force, though, is one of the two major USAF contingents based in Europe (specifically, Mildenhall in the UK) and is responsible for all US Air Force activities North of the Alps in Europe, and south of the Sahara in Africa. It is also responsible for 'contingency planning' in Africa, which involves constructing various hypothetical situations in which US forces may become involved, and then basing future force set-ups on the basis of these possibilities. The September 11th attacks have led the entire American military worldwide to reconsider their 'force postures', and the Third Air Force is no different.

The only hint given by General Obeng was his suggestion that, "in the future we shall see a lot of co-operation between the two armed forces." A return visit from the Chief of the Defence Staff to the UK is already on the agenda, though no specific date has been set as yet.

General Hess arrived with his Chief of Operations, Colonel Steve Dryer and his personal aide Major Gregg Brown. The group, which arrived on an official US government jet, left from the Air Force base on Thursday.