A group of airmen from the 621st Contingency Response Wing recently returned home to JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., from Gabon in West Africa, after helping deliver more than 450,000 pounds of equipment to Bangui, according to a press release. Gabon’s military was asked to deliver equipment to Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, as part of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission, and the 621st CRW was called in to help. After Lt. Col. Michael Sheldon, an air mobility liaison officer attached to US Army Africa/Southern European Task Force, along with a small team of airmen in Gabon for a planning conference, inspected the materials and coordinated with Air Mobility Command to schedule the C-17, another 621st CRS team worked with French and Gabonese forces to load the equipment onto the plane. “The mission was important in our ability to make an outsized contribution to the larger goals of the US government in Africa,” Sheldon said. “Besides helping a partner nation contribute to an important peacekeeping mission, we helped elevate an important African ally.”
The use of a military counter-drone laser on the southwest border this week—which prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly close the airspace over El Paso, Texas—will be a “case study” on the complex web of authorities needed to employ such weapons near civilian areas and the consequences of agencies…
