US Northern Command has dispatched personnel from various bases to Texas and Louisiana to prepare for possible landfall by Hurricane Dean, a major storm that appeared to be gaining even more strength. NORTHCOM sent a 17-person team from its Standing Joint Force Headquarters-North at Peterson AFB, Colo., and an eight-person Joint Patient Movement Team from Scott AFB, Ill., headed to Texas. A Joint Interagency Air-Ground Coordination Team from Tyndall AFB, Fla., is in Austin to help FEMA with aeromedical evacuation and search and rescue efforts. And, the 43rd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron at Pope AFB, N.C., sent 40 airmen to Brownsville, Tex., via a C-17 flying out of Charleston AFB, S.C., to set up a Mobile Aeromedical Staging Facility. As for tracking Dean: airmen of Air Force Reserve Command’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron—the “Hurricane Hunters”—flew a WC-130J into the storm to support the National Hurricane Center, and recorded sustained winds increasing to 125 miles per hour.
The U.S. sent Air Force F-16s over central Syria in a show of force following the Dec. 13 killing of two U.S. Army Soldiers and one American civilian interpreter by a gunman linked to the Islamic State group.
