After three weeks of air-to-air combat exercises between the US Air Force and the Royal Malaysian Air Force, the airmen involved believe Cope Taufan 2006 proved a new level of interoperability. For the USAF F-15 pilots, flying with the RMAF MiG-29s provided a rare opportunity. The whole point of the exercise, says Lt. Gen. David Deptula, commander of the Pacific Air Forces warfighting center at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, was to help create an integrated team and the event “most certainly exceeded” that goal.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…