The US military maintains a joint combat assessment team at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, which assesses aircraft battle damage. This can include battle damage suffered by any US fixed- or rotary-wing aircraft. The work yields insights on the enemy and ultimately helps to make these platforms more survivable. “Say, for example, an aircraft has been hit by small arms fire while flying a rescue mission. Depending on what evidence is available, we can characterize with pretty good accuracy what types of threats we are facing,” in that area explained Capt. Mark Friesen, one of the airmen performing this work. Much of the information gathered by the team is shared with the Defense Department’s aircraft survivability community, including the Survivability/Vulnerability Information Analysis Center at Wright-Patterson. (Kandahar report by TSgt. Renni Thornton)
Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi met U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Jan. 15 as the two nations look to further solidify their ties in the face of growing Chinese and North Korean threats.
