Air traffic control apprentice SrA. Joshua Matias is the 2006 winner of the Air Traffic Control Association’s Lingiam Odems Memorial Award. Currently deployed to the 332nd Expeditionary Operations Support Squadron at Balad AB, Iraq, for the second time, Matias actually got the award for the work he did on his first deployment to Balad, from May through September 2005.
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…