Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan, has become the first forward-deployed expeditionary base to get a first sexual assault response coordinator. The move is part of USAF’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program. It aims to ensure that deployed personnel have specialists on base to handle sexual assault reports and offer support for victims. A key component of the SAPR program, which stood up in June, is that victims can now make confidential reports of sexual assault without notifying the chain of command or the office of special investigations. That is a factor that may cause numbers of reported assaults to increase. By some estimates, 80 percent of assaults go unreported.
The Air Force has finished modifying and testing the new VC-25B Bridge aircraft that will serve as a temporary Air Force One, the service announced May 1. All that’s left now is to finish painting the jet before it starts flying this summer.