Defense Department forensic scientists identified the remains of CMSgt. Edwin E. Morgan, 38, of Eagle Spring, N.C., an airman who had been missing in action since the Vietnam War, announced the Pentagon. DOD returned Morgan’s remains to his family; his burial with full military honors took place on June 27 in Rockwell, N.C. Morgan was the loadmaster of an AC-47D gunship that departed Da Nang AB, South Vietnam, on March 13, 1966, on an armed reconnaissance mission along the Vietnam-Laos border. The airplane never returned. The Pentagon listed Morgan as missing in action, and a military review board later changed his status to presumed dead. In February 1997, a joint US-Lao team located a crash site in Xekong Province, Laos. Between February 2010 and May 2014, joint US-Lao teams surveyed and excavated the site, recovering human remains, military equipment, and aircraft wreckage that led to Morgan’s identification. (See also UK Daily Mail report.)
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…