Air Force Reserve Command civil engineers are spending six months on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean Sea to help build an operations center and barracks for the country’s police force as part of a humanitarian assignment. Approximately 140 civil engineers currently are focused on finishing the brick and mortar for walls and completing the roof trusses before the next team arrives in two weeks, according to Lt. Col. Richard Matthews, commander of the 433rd Civil Engineer Squadron at Lackland AFB, Tex. Construction on the facility has been on schedule since beginning in January and is set for completion in July, with 12 AFRC teams scheduled to rotate through the project in two-week stints.
A new Air Force plan for how many fighters it needs in the next decade marks a sharp upturn from what it thought it needed just seven years ago. But analysts worry that the aspirational plan now in Congress' hands doesn’t make a tight enough connection to national strategy.
