Air Force pararescuemen are hard at work in a disaster area. The PJs are flying over the mountains of northern Pakistan in a Russian-made MI-8 helicopter, surveying areas where relief supplies are needed in the aftermath of the country’s devastating earthquake. Other PJs on the team, comprising members of the Air National Guard’s 212th Rescue Squadron, Anchorage, Alaska, are on alert or flying with US aircrews. The Alaskan PJs, says TSgt. Chris Robertson, are particularly well suited to the situation in Pakistan. “We have, by far, more mountain training than any other unit in the world,” he noted.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
