Air Force Reserve Command’s 908th Airlift Wing at Maxwell AFB, Ala., got its first revamped C-130 Hercules last week, and the Montgomery Advertiser reports that the unit considers the $10 million upgrade “a bargain.” The “new” C-130 is part of the Air Force’s planned C-130 avionics modernization program, which currently is under review for breaching the Nunn-McCurdy threshold. Air Force officials expect to decide a way forward for the program this month.
Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.