Active Duty airmen from the 41st Airlift Squadron at Little Rock AFB, Ark., tackled Nevada’s mountainous terrain in their C-130Js during a training visit to Reno Air National Guard Base. The January trip was in preparation for the airmen’s upcoming deployment to Afghanistan, according to a Feb. 4 release from Nevada’s 152nd Airlift Wing, an Air Guard unit that operates C-130Hs at Reno. “The mission and terrain here in Nevada is similar to what we’ll see overseas, and we can’t get this kind of training at home,” said Lt. Col. Jim Burgess, 41st AS commander. The Arkansas Super Hercs flew mixed training sorties with Reno’s legacy C-130s. “We have experience flying in a mountainous environment in our H-model C-130s” that proved valuable to the visiting crews, said Lt. Col. Caesar Garduno, commander of Reno’s 192nd AS. Airmen of the 570th Contingency Response Group from Travis AFB, Calif., set up and ran several austere forward bases to give the crews practice in operating from high-altitude unimproved airstrips, according to the release. (Reno report by Capt. Jason Yuhasz)
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.
