The Air Force has awarded Bronze Star Medals to Lt. Col. Vincent Cooper, an air liaison officer with the Missouri Air National Guard’s 157th Operations Group, and 1st Lt. Amanda Reed, with the 18th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Kadena AB, Japan, for their meritorious actions while deployed to Southwest Asia. The Globe-Democrat reports that Cooper served as a senior offensive officer with the 609th Air and Space Operations Center in SWA, where he helped execute more than 31,000 close air support missions in Iraq and Afghanistan from September 2008 to September 2009. Reed served as a brigade battle captain with US Army forces at Forward Operating Base Hughie in Afghanistan from June to December 2009, during which time she led a joint training team and logged more than 3,000 convoy miles. (She has since transferred to Aviano AB, Italy.) (Kadena report by SSgt. Jason Lake)
The U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear development facilities saw the first use of the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a weapon specifically designed for such a mission more than 20 years ago. The Air Force B-2s were the only platform with the stealth and carrying capacity needed to haul the huge…