A four-man team from Holloman AFB, N.M., deployed to Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan, to help the Army pack up Force Provider assets—more than 500,000 tons of bare base gear—for reserve storage in Southwest Asia or shipment back to the States for reconditioning. The airmen of the 49th Materiel Maintenance Squadron ready the equipment first by cleaning it, coding its condition, making repairs, and gathering it into sets. Without their work, Army officials said the process would have taken up to 12 months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in contract labor. MSgt. David Lott, the team chief, said the 49th is the only squadron left in the Air Force that performs this type work.
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…