A US Air Force B-1B bomber providing close air support near Musah Qal’eh in Afghanistan Tuesday fired a GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition on Taliban extremists engaging coalition ground forces with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades—the attack stopped. French Air Force M-2000s also provided CAS during the encounter. This encounter (and the one below) follows hard on the heels of the A-10 air strike conducted Monday on a Taliban compound.
Raytheon, a division of defense giant RTX, recently announced a multiyear deal with the Pentagon to increase annual production of the Air Force’s primary dogfighting missile by more than 50 percent from two years ago.
