USAF has been providing airmen to aid the Army with convoy and security work for some time and now the Air Force reports that last year it began providing other “in lieu of” forces to help the Army with medical evacuation operations from point of injury to a nearby medical facility. Three Air Force medics attended helicopter survival school, then in February deployed to Afghanistan, where two operate out of Kandahar Airfield and one is forward deployed with ground troops. The Air Force also has added a medevac mission to the 33rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron’s standard combat search and rescue duty. (Read more about the USAF medevac effort here.)
The KC-Z4, a blended wing body tanker concept being developed by startup JetZero, could fuel larger groups of aircraft at longer range to hold more targets at risk, company officials say.