The Air Force and Navy have together flown the T-6A Texan II for more than half a million hours since the new trainer’s introduction in mid-2000. The new joint trainer reached the milestone at the end of June, according to a recent release from the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. The Air Force now has some 318 T-6As and the Navy another 47; the services expect to buy a total of about 760 aircraft. The two services use the single-engine, turboprop trainer with tandem seats for initial undergraduate pilot training, and the Navy also uses it for flight officer training and its test pilot school. In the Air Force, the T-6A has replacing the T-37 Tweet.
The Air Force has dispatched an element of its Natural Disaster Recovery Team to Guam in the wake of Super Typhoon Mawar, which has caused widespread damage on the island and at Andersen Air Force Base. The team will assess the damage and put together a recovery cost estimate for…