Lt. Gen. Gary North, head of US Central Command Air Forces, uses comparisons that make the enormousness of the airpower role in operations in Southwest Asia easier to grasp. For instance, he compares the effort by theater airlift forces so far this year to moving “the equivalent of the city of Baltimore.” Or, he told Pentagon reporters Friday that if they placed the amount of cargo airlifted in theater in 18-wheel trucks, the trucks would stretch—end to end—from Washington to New York City.
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.