Officials at Columbus AFB, Miss., last week hosted a senior delegation of Saudi military officials who came to the US to gain a better understanding of how the Air Force trains its pilots. Maj. Gen. Al-Sedais, commandant of Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal Air Academy, visited Columbus Dec. 2, along with five members of his senior staff, on the first stop of their tour. The Royal Saudi Air Force has begun sending some of its student pilots to the US for training as a means of expanding their understanding of American culture and working with an international partner. The Saudi students receive six months of intensive English language instruction at Lackland AFB, Tex., and then move on to Columbus for specialized undergraduate pilot training. (Columbus report by Capt. Marc Miedziak)
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…