Top Air Force brass, the House Armed Services Committee and The Army Times have come out against continued “in lieu of” taskings of airmen and sailors to perform the duties of soldiers and Marines.

“The committee is very concerned about the creep of nontraditional missions, such as ground combat skills, into the Navy and Air Force and the resulting potential weakening of those services’ core competency skills,” the committee says in its report accompanying the 2008 defense authorization bill.

The report notes that sailors and airmen are being asked to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan for missions that historically have belonged to ground combat troops, such as driving trucks, protecting convoys and providing base security.

One might think the Bush administration would want to correct this by substantially increasing the number of Army and Marine personnel. One would be wrong. Why should the administration start getting military-related policies right at this point? Fortunately, we now have two chambers controlled by people who will actually take care of our military (even if we don’t agree on their approach to Iraq).

The House and Senate versions of the defense policy bill would add 36,000 soldiers and 9,000 Marines above the Bush administration’s budget request, which had assumed increases of 7,000 people for the Army and 5,000 for the Marine Corps.

Air Force Gen. Moseley was a bit more blunt about the taskings:

Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley said last week he is increasingly reluctant to send airmen to do Army and Marine Corps jobs that are outside the airmen’s core competencies.

“We’ve drawn some red lines on some of the in-lieu-of taskings,” Moseley said.

“I’m going to be less supportive of things that are outside their capabilities.”

For example, he noted that airmen are guarding detainees at places such as Camp Bucca, Iraq.

“We don’t guard prisoners in the Air Force,” he said. “We don’t have prisons.”

And let’s not forget the harm to Air Force and Navy readiness pulling their personnel to do the Army’s work causes.

Some commands have lost 25 percent of their personnel to deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan, with no letup on the mission at home.

It’s time to increase the number of troops, folks.