Pacific Air Forces sent some 6,000 airmen to locations around the world this past year and expects to see its rate of deployments increase by about five to 10 percent next year, reports Stars and Stripes. A PACAF spokesman attributed part of the increase to in-lieu-of taskings. About half of those airmen PACAF sends on deployments go to Iraq.
The Air Force on March 12 awarded contract modifications worth a combined $2.4 billion to Boeing to procure an undisclosed number of E-7 Wedgetail as part of the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase and continue work on the airborne battle management aircraft’s radar.