Air Force battlefield airmen from Eielson AFB, Alaska, who have been training for a year-and-a-half with the Army’s 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from nearby Ft. Wainwright, left with the 172nd for Iraq Sunday—marking USAF’s first joint effort with a Stryker unit. Some 20 tactical air control party airmen—members of Eielson’s 3rd Air Support Operations Squadron— will direct combat and ISR aircraft from their Strykers, each manned with an Army driver and gunman, reports the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. (Read here about TACPs and ALOs.)
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.