Tour of Duty -- Armed Forces Entertainment for the 21st Century
April 4, 2007 — -- Ethan Isaac and Jonathan Svec just got back from a tour in Iraq -- but not that kind of tour. Isaac and Svec, the lead singer and guitarist from New York City-based band Edison, were on an extended concert tour, performing in front of troops from Oman to Okinawa.
With hundreds of thousands of troops and their families stationed around the globe, Armed Forces Entertainment (AFE) is charged with the daunting task of providing entertainment, and a much-needed morale boost, to soldiers even in the most dangerous parts of the world.
"AFE is a Department of Defense program that manages all entertainment overseas, bringing entertainment to troops and their families," explained Lt. Col. Tamara Moes, the chief of AFE in Washington, D.C., in an interview with ABC News. "We have about 371 sites that we currently work with in six different regions -- from the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Europe, the Balkans, the Pacific, and South, Central, and Southwest Asia, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan."
USO tours have long showcased celebrity headliners -- early names included Danny Kaye, Elizabeth Taylor, and Sammy Davis. While AFE coordinates logistics for the USO tours, they also program a far greater number of performances on their own. It's these AFE tours that tend to be composed of up-and-coming performers like Edison. AFE pursues these lesser-known acts for a variety of reasons.
"The challenges with celebrity acts are with the amount of time they can go out on tour with us and when they can go out on tour with us," said Lt. Col. Moes. "Up-and-coming bands and performers allow and afford us the opportunity to send them out on the road for 30 up to 45 days. The opportunity that this brings for us is they can go out and do more performances."
Last year alone the AFE launched 118 different tours with a whopping 1433 total performances, reaching out to troops in every corner of the world. "Troops are looking for a broad range of entertainment," said Lt. Col. Moes. "From country to rock to alternative-they're not really specifically interested in one group. They like variety. The key to us is making sure we bring out a variety of performances."
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