Some 15 Air Force civil engineers comprise a public works team supporting Army units at three different locations in Iraq. They technically are part of Det. 16, 732nd Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron at Balad AB, Iraq. Three of these airmen serve as the Power and Oil Infrastructure Team, currently working out of Kirkuk, where they assist Iraqis who run refineries and power plants and oversee some $32 million in construction projects in an area that is responsible for approximately 20 percent of Iraq’s oil production.
The Defense Innovation Unit is gearing up for the first flight of its commercially developed hypersonic testbed as soon as the end of February—part of a larger project to quickly increase the cadence of the Pentagon’s hypersonic flight testing and field advanced, high-speed systems and components at scale.
