The 36th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron deployed to Andersen AFB, Guam, from Minot AFB, N.D., has just set a record for launching its 200th consecutive sortie with a 100 percent mission effectiveness rate for their venerable B-52 bombers. Basically over the course of a five-month deployment, MSgt Frantz Juan-Pierre, a unit section chief, says the unit’s maintainers “caught a couple of breaks” and found “there was nothing we couldn’t fix.”
With a fresh directive from the president, the department could opt to repeat its unconventional—and potentially unlawful—move to pay troops using unused non-personnel appropriations.

