AF Discourages Contact Lenses On Deployments

“As of right now, if Airmen want to wear their contacts while they’re (deployed), they have to get preapproval from their (deployed) commander,” said Maj. Robert Kesead, 52nd Aerospace Medicine Squadron optometry flight commander. Contact lenses are time consuming to take care of, and they have become an operational safety issue as well, officials said. “It was discovered that 90 percent of ocular foreign bodies were preventable just by wearing glasses,” said Capt. Jeff Autrey, 52nd AMDS optometry clinical services chief. Airmen who require corrective eyewear must deploy with two pairs of eyeglasses, if needed, and protective mask eyeglass inserts, according to U.S. Central Command guidance. “We make it mandatory for deploying Airmen to bring their military-issued glasses as well as their everyday glasses,” Autrey said. “If both pairs of glasses became nonoperational, the brown plastic glasses are the only glasses that can be repaired (while deployed).”