Andersen AFB, Guam—Pacific Air Forces is positioning airfield damage repair kits at locations throughout its area of responsibility to enable remote bases to quickly get runways up and running in the event of an attack, PACAF officials tell Air Force Magazine. Because of its strategic location in the Pacific and its two runways, Andersen will get four of the kits. One is for the 554th RED HORSE squadron, two for the 36th Civil Engineering Squadron, and one for Silver Flag training, which will enable instructors to introduce PACAF airmen to the new technology, Lt. Col. Andrew DeRosa, commander of the 554th RHS, told Air Force Magazine during a recent visit to Guam. The large kits are designed to provide everything crews need to fill a crater in the event of an attack, including heavy construction equipment such as rollers, dump trucks, and bulldozers, DeRosa said. “They are coming in piecemeal over the next several months,” he said, of the equipment. PACAF will standardize the kits across the region, though it is scaling the kit sizes based on need. Not every location in the Pacific has a double runway, he noted, and “the expectation is [an adversary] would send more missiles our way to take out more of the runway and we’d have more runway to repair, where another location may only have half, so [the kits] are slightly scaled,” DeRosa said.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. still “believes” in his mantra of “Accelerate Change or Lose”—and indicated the doctrinal changes it produced when he was Air Force Chief of Staff played a role in the service’s recent response to Iran’s aerial assault on Israel, he…