Having barely transitioned back to their assigned home station at Peterson AFB, Colo., after a year’s deployment in Southwest Asia, several returning airmen with Air Force Reserve Command’s 302nd Airlift Wing joined other wing members to swing into fire-fighting mode, helping battle raging fires in the Pacific Northwest. The 302nd AW has sent 21 airmen and a fire-fighting equipped C-130 to southern Oregon to counter the worst fire there in 10 years, reports the Colorado Springs Gazette. The wing plans to rotate its crews in weeklong shifts through September.
The KC-Z4, a blended wing body tanker concept being developed by startup JetZero, could fuel larger groups of aircraft at longer range to hold more targets at risk, company officials say.