After signing an agreement with the Ethiopian government last November, the Air Force is helping to modernize Arba Minch Airport in southwest Ethiopia, reports Addis Fortune, Ethiopia’s largest English-language newspaper. Workers are extending the airport’s 9,170 foot, hard-surface runway, and making facility and service improvements, so that the site could potentially accommodate USAF airlifters, according to the report. The airport is located about 340 miles south of the country’s capital, Addis Ababa. Seventeenth Air Force at Ramstein AB, Germany, supervises USAF’s air-related outreach activities on the African continent, including those to build the capacity of partner nations’ air forces. (For more, see Engagement in Africa from the Air Force Magazine archives)
With more than a third of the Air Force's entire E-3 AWACS fleet deployed to support the war against Iran, the ability to perform airborne battle management, or ABM, remains essential to the broader joint force, a new think tank report argues.