USAF engineers used the recent Alaska Shield/Northern Edge to practice their airfield set-up capabilities by constructing lighting on a rural airstrip in Red Devil, Alaska, 250 air miles west of Anchorage. Going by air is the only way to reach Red Devil. Last week, airmen from the 611th Civil Engineer Squadron at Elmendorf Air Force Base installed a portable runway lighting system, making it possible to use the airstrip at night. Why portable? An in-ground system would be destroyed by sheet ice in the harsh Alaskan winter.
Lockheed Martin projects more than a billion dollars of losses on a classified program, but company officials said April 23 they are confident it will turn profitable by 2028 and become a "franchise" system in the U.S. military.