Airmen at Kadena AB, Japan, on the island of Okinawa have been prepping the base and its aircraft for the first typhoon of the year, scheduled to hit the island this morning. Facing potential winds of 125 knots from Typhoon Man-Yi, Maj. Dani Johnson reports that the base began moving fighters and helicopters into shelters and sent larger aircraft—KC-135s, RC-135s, MC-130s, E-3 AWACS, and Navy P-3s—off to Andersen AFB, Guam. The Okinawa facility escaped severe storms last year, but weather officer Capt. Jonathan Wilson says that if this typhoon “moves even slightly in a westward direction, we will have a much more serious storm.”
RTX’s Raytheon unit was able to “significantly” extend the range of the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile using mostly software changes in experimental tests last year, expanding the reach and lethality of the standard U.S. dogfighting weapon, company officials said Sept. 15.
