An Air Force Reserve Command aircrew on Sept. 26 flew the C-141 Starlifter’s last combat mission—ferrying cargo to Europe, then patients out of Southwest Asia. AFRC’s 445th Airlift Wing, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the last operational C-141 wing in USAF, and it is now transitioning to the C-5 airlifter, with the first to arrive in early October. Since 2002, the 40-year-old C-141 has flown 70 percent of the sick and wounded from the SWA theater. The 445th will continue flying C-141s—within the US borders—until spring 2006.
The future U.S. bomber force could provide a way for the Pentagon to simultaneously deter conflict with peer adversaries in two geographically disparate theaters, said Mark Gunzinger, the director of future concepts and capability assessments at AFA's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, during a March 21 event. But doing so…