Air Force and Army engineers have shepherded a new runway project for Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan for about two years, formally opening the $68 million project Dec. 20. The old Russian-built runway required daily repair and simply was not up to the high volume of traffic seen at this central Afghan hub. Coalition and Afghan officials opened the new runway, built by an Egyptian company using workers from Egypt and Afghanistan. It’s longer and thicker to accommodate even the behemoth C-5 airlifter and jumbo jets.
An important U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.