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wo years after Hurricane Katrina left $950 million in damage at Keesler AFB, Miss., the base’s five-year recovery plan has “exceeded all expectations,” Brig. Gen. Paul Capasso, 81st Training Wing commander, said last week. The base’s training mission “never went away entirely—training was going on in base shelters at the height of the storm,” and that, according to Capasso, kept Keesler on the move. Air Force journalist Susan Griggs reports that the base has cleared more than 4,000 trees damaged in the hurricane; begun work this year on 1,028 new homes, the first to be ready next spring and the last two years later; and started work on a $78.6 million shopping complex to replace the main exchange and commissary destroyed by Katrina.
Facing competition from fast-growing startups, Lockheed Martin is speeding up production of an “affordable, scalable” hypersonic glide body, dubbed the Next Generation Glide Body, the firm said in a June 24 release.