The Air National Guard’s Enlisted Aircrew Academic School at Little Rock AFB, Ark., has trained its final loadmaster, bringing its total to 4,182 students over a 20-year period. The school got a one-year reprieve last year when the Air Force realized that its plan to create a single enlisted aircrew center of excellence at Lackland AFB, Tex., initially would mean it wouldn’t have the needed capacity to train enough students. However, the Air Guard’s Little Rock instructors are not quite done: The Marine Corps wants them to train six loadmaster classes in Fiscal 2009, and they are working to develop a syllabus for two ANG-centric enlisted aviator courses. (189th Airlift Wing report by MSgt. Bob Oldham)
Lawmakers on both sides of Capitol Hill are pressing the Pentagon to get serious about the threat cheap, small drones pose to U.S. forces at home and abroad—and to put them in the hands of American troops as quickly as possible.