Members of Air Force Reserve
Command’s 920th Rescue Wing flew fully a third of their Hurricane Katrina sorties in the dark in an area peppered with power lines and buildings, not to mention other aircraft. The Patrick AFB, Fla., airmen credit the warfighting technology in their HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters. To help them pluck from danger 1,043 people stranded by Hurricane Katrina, the Reservists used a combination of night vision goggles, forward-looking infrared radar, and electronically linked mission overlays.
NORAD surged two F-35s, two F-16s, and a trio of KC-135s to Pituffik Space Force Base in Greenland earlier this month for a “dynamic operational exercise,” testing its ability to rapidly deploy forces in the Arctic.

