Airmen and HH-60G Pave Hawk rescue helicopters assigned to the 33rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron at Bagram Airfield. Afghanistan, on Nov. 27 recovered the bodies of three civilians killed when their MI-8 helicopter crashed four days earlier in the remote mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Agence France Press reported Nov. 27 that the three victims were believed to be Ukrainian nationals flying a chartered mission for a company called Airfreight Gulf in support of Supreme Global Services Solutions, a Netherlands-based catering and logistics contractor supporting NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. The helicopter presumably went down due to poor weather conditions. (Includes Bagram report by Capt. David Faggard)
Secretary of Defense Austin Lloyd III met with his counterparts from Australia, Japan and the Philippines to discuss bolstering defense ties on May 2. The discussion included plans for joint F-35 exercises with Japan and Australia in the coming years.