Hurlburt Field: The Home of Air Force Special Operations
On the Emerald Coast next to Eglin, Hurlburt Field is the headquarters of Air Force Special Operations Command and the home of the 1st Special Operations Wing, the air commandos who fly the AC-130 gunships, the CV-22 Ospreys, and the other aircraft that put special operations forces where they need to be. The Airmen here are a tight, highly trained, deployment-heavy force, and many of them hold clearances and special-mission qualifications that an allegation can put at risk overnight. They live the Panhandle life off duty in Fort Walton Beach, Mary Esther, and Shalimar, sharing the white-sand beaches with Eglin next door. A command running sensitive special operations work will move hard and fast against anyone it sees as a liability.
Military defense is all Bilecki Law Group does, and Air Commandos and Airmen fly us in from around the world for these cases, to Okinawa, Germany, and Korea, because this work is all we do and only the best will do. Hurlburt is practically our backyard, a short flight up the coast from our Tampa office.
The Pilot Who Landed in the Fire to Save His Wingman
The air commando spirit was set by Major Bernard F. Fisher over the A Shau Valley in 1966. When a fellow pilot was shot down onto a besieged Special Forces airstrip ringed by the enemy, Fisher did not wait for a rescue helicopter. He put his own propeller-driven A-1 Skyraider down on the cratered, burning runway under heavy fire, taxied through the wreckage, pulled the downed pilot aboard, and flew them both out as rounds tore through the aircraft. He became the first Airman to receive the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. He landed in the middle of the fight rather than leave a man behind. That refusal to abandon one of his own is the standard we bring to a case at Hurlburt.
Why Airmen at Hurlburt Bring Us In
We win court martial cases. Military defense is all we do, and Airmen fly us in from all over the country because of our trial record. The military justice system is not built to find the truth; it exists to preserve good order and discipline, and a command running special operations missions will make an example of an Airman to prove it holds the standard. A serious case is investigated by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and for sexual assault and other covered offenses the decision to refer charges to a court martial no longer belongs to your commander but goes to an independent Special Trial Counsel. Your Area Defense Counsel may be capable but carries a heavy caseload inside the same system, which is why Airmen serious about winning bring in their own counsel.
UCMJ Charges We Defend at Hurlburt Field
Below are the most common charges at Hurlburt Field. Treat them as a starting point, not a complete list, of the UCMJ cases we defend.
Sexual Assault and Sex Offenses (UCMJ Article 120 / Article 134). These allegations route to an independent Special Trial Counsel now, and the command treats a report as established before the investigation is finished, all the more so in a tight special operations community where word of an allegation travels fast and the command wants to look decisive. These cases demand counsel who will run an independent investigation and contest the case rather than let the allegation stand in for proof, because a conviction can mean confinement and a federal record, with registration required for a covered sex offense under the applicable federal and state law.
Domestic Violence and Assault (UCMJ Articles 128b and 128). Domestic violence under Article 128b is charged as aggressively as any offense in the UCMJ since the Office of Special Trial Counsel took these cases over. It covers a spouse, an intimate partner, or a family member, and it treats strangulation or suffocation as its own charge that the government can bring even with no visible injury. A qualifying conviction also triggers the federal Lautenberg firearms bar, which can end an Air Force career because an Airman has to be able to carry a weapon. We also defend assault under Article 128, the usual charge when a night out on the coast ends in a fight, where self defense is a recognized defense.
Fraud and Larceny (UCMJ Articles 124, 121, and 107). A deployment-heavy command runs on travel claims, government cards, special pays, and entitlements, and that paperwork is where fraud cases here are born. The government reads a questioned travel voucher, a misused government card, or a special pay it later disputes as fraud against the United States under Article 124, larceny under Article 121, and a false official statement under Article 107, often stacked into a long charge sheet. But a disputed claim is not a crime, and the government still has to prove you knowingly lied and intended to defraud, not that a voucher was wrong or that you were given bad finance guidance.
Drugs and Off Duty Conduct (UCMJ Articles 112a and 134). Drug cases often turn on the chain of custody and the government's burden to prove any use was knowing and wrongful. An Airman is subject to the UCMJ off duty, so an incident off base comes back to the command, and for a special operations Airman a drug allegation also threatens the clearance and the qualifications the job depends on. A positive test is evidence the government may use to argue knowing, wrongful use, not an automatic finding of guilt, so the collection, the chain of custody, and whether any use was knowing all remain the government's to prove.
A Career and a Reputation Worth Defending
We do not pretend that every Airman who calls us from Hurlburt is innocent. What matters is how serious the case is, not your rank. If a matter is genuinely minor, your Area Defense Counsel can handle it, and we will tell you so honestly. But when the case is serious, everything is on the line at once: your career, your clearance, your retirement, your good name, and your freedom. A court martial conviction is a federal criminal conviction, and the parameters that now govern sentencing place each offense in a confinement range, two and a half to ten years for sexual assault and ten to twenty for rape, binding the judge unless specific facts justify going lower, along with a punitive discharge and, on a covered sex offense, sex offender registration. That is why you fight.
If you are facing an investigation or court martial at Hurlburt Field, reach out for a free defense strategy session. We will tell you exactly what you are facing and how we would defend it. The government is already building its case. The only question is whether anyone is building yours.
Cases Connected to Hurlburt Field
These cases include trials, hearings, investigations, and administrative matters. A connection to this location does not necessarily mean that the trial occurred here.
- Case connected to this location: Bilecki Holds 29-Specification Article 124 Frauds GCM on Air Force Lt Col to 30 Days, No Dismissal, Retirement Approved
FAQ
OSI wants to interview me at Hurlburt. Do I have to talk to them?
No. You are not required to sit for an Office of Special Investigations interview or answer their questions. Under Article 31b of the UCMJ you have the right to remain silent and to a lawyer, and you can invoke both at any point, including before the interview begins. OSI is collecting evidence, not giving you a chance to explain, and it takes very little to be titled as a subject, a label that follows you for years. Decline, ask for counsel, and call a defense lawyer before you give any statement.
I'm facing a long fraud or travel-claim charge sheet. Can it really be cut down?
Yes. These cases are almost always overcharged, broken into a long list of specifications to make the conduct look worse than it is, and many of them fall apart once the real documents and the actual finance guidance are in front of the government. We have done exactly that, taking a fraud general court martial from twenty-nine specifications down to fifteen, with no dismissal and the member's retirement approved. The defense is to force the government to prove a knowing lie and intent on each specification, which it often cannot do.
I'm in a special-mission unit and under investigation. Can it cost me my clearance and qualifications even if I beat the charge?
It can, because your access and the court martial run on separate tracks. A command or security manager can suspend your clearance and pull your qualifications on a serious allegation before anything is proven, and a clearance revocation is a separate administrative process that we do not handle. But that process turns on what the criminal investigation finds, so the strongest thing you can do to protect your career is to defeat the underlying allegation, which is what we do.