The Air National Guard-led 1st Air Force at Tyndall AFB, Fla., organized much of the hunt for famed aviator and tycoon Steve Fossett, engaging various aircraft and a USAF radar unit through the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at Tyndall, reports Capt. Nathan Broshear. The California, Nevada, and Utah Civil Air Patrol flew light aircraft and the California and Nevada Air National Guards C-130 and HH-60 Pave Hawk aircraft. On Sept. 5, CAP added an Airborne Real-Time Cueing Hyperspectral Enhanced Reconnaissance-equipped aircraft to the mix, to aid in identifying objects in the mountainous terrain where Fossett was believed to have gone down.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.