Airlifting 45,000 pounds of humanitarian aid bound for Afghanistan gave an Air Force Reserve Command KC-10 crew from the 78th Air Refueling Squadron at JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., a rare opportunity to fulfill the tanker aircraft’s secondary cargo role. These airmen flew their Extender to Minneapolis-St. Paul ARS, Minn., to pick up the load of privately donated food aid and bring it to JB Charleston, S.C. “Denton cargo gives us an opportunity to practice our secondary role, adding a dynamic to the mission that is impossible to obtain on local training flights,” said Capt. Christopher Sampson, the lead pilot for the Jan. 9 flight. The Denton program, jointly organized by the Pentagon, State Department, and US Agency for International Development, provides humanitarian shipments space-available transportation on Air Force flights. From Charleston, the food aid will travel to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, for distribution by the Army. (McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst report by TSgt. Shawn Jones)
The Air Force is on track to reach its annual goal of graduating 1,500 new pilots that had proved elusive to this point, one year after the service launched a sweeping overhaul of its undergraduate pilot training program, Air Education and Training Command said Sept. 14.
