Air Combat Command has activated the 42nd Attack Squadron at Creech AFB, Nev., whose mission is to operate the MQ-9 Reaper hunter-killer unmanned aerial vehicle. The Reaper can carry 15 times the amount of weapons than its smaller brother, the MQ-1 Predator. (Note: The Air Force news release says the 42nd AS is the service’s first “attack squadron,” which may be so since 1947, but the service’s antecedents had at least one, the 8th Attack Squadron, forerunner to today’s 8th Special Operations Squadron.)
Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.