Some 80 percent of the 1st Combat Communications Squadron at Bitburg AB, Germany, comprises junior airmen—senior airman and below and some first-termers, says the squadron commander, Lt. Col Joe Sublousky. And that is the reason the squadron developed its own basic deployment course. Recently the unit trained 33 new airmen, teaching them everything from how to set up tents to driving convoys and hand-to-hand fighting.
A new think tank analysis finds a hypothetical blended-wing body tanker could offer twice as much refueling performance as the KC-46A Pegasus and recommends the Air Force buy scores of them, as the service prepares to evaluate a BWB demonstrator next year and must juggle its future tanker plans with…