SrA. Sarah McRae has managed to amass 1,000 combat hours as an airborne maintenance technician—a feat that in normal times would take such techs eight years. SSgt. Mike Andriacco reports McRae did it in two. She is with the 41st Electronic Combat Squadron at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., and reached the thousand hour mark while deployed to Afghanistan. Squadron commander Lt. Col. Richard Fojtik credits McRae and her cohorts with keeping the EC-130H Compass Call aircraft at a phenomenal 97 percent mission capable rate over the past four years.
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
