Air Force officials at Travis AFB, Calif., set to become a new home for the C-17, say they have worked with the final site activation task force. That clears the way for the planned July arrival of the Air Force’s most advanced strategic airlifter. Travis will be getting 13 of the new airlifters. They will be operated by the active-duty 60th Air Mobility Wing and Air Force Reserve Command’s 349th AMW. Additional active duty personnel—aircrews and maintainers—begin arriving in January. Travis has been working on C-17 facilities, including a $4.6 million flight simulator facility, a $8.9 million squadron operations facility for administration and maintenance shops, and an $8.1 million aircraft parts store—all of which officials expect to complete by late December. The base has other C-17-related facilities to be finished, but the SATAF found no “show stoppers” to delay the beddown of the C-17 at Travis. What’s left, says Col. Michael Cassidy, 60th Operations Group commander, is “a lot of messy staff work.”
The Space Development Agency says it’s on track to issue its next batch of missile warning and tracking satellite contracts this month after those awards were delayed by the Pentagon’s decision to divert funds from the agency to pay troops during this fall’s prolonged government shutdown.
