Members of Air Force Reserve Command’s 445th Airlift Wing at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, will begin their C-17 training on Thursday with an aircraft on loan from JB Charleston, S.C. A 445th AW aircrew will fly the C-17 from Charleston to Wright-Patterson, according to a wing release. The unit will use this C-17 as a maintenance trainer. A second C-17 is scheduled to arrive in Ohio next month to provide 445th AW aircrews with a training platform. Already 32 maintainers from the wing have trained at Charleston and 10 pilots and six loadmasters—equating to three C-17 aircrews—have completed their training at Altus AFB, Okla., said wing officials. The Air Force intends to bring eight C-17s to Wright-Patterson by the end of Fiscal 2012 to replace the wing’s 10 C-5As as part of a broader plan to retire up to 22 C-5As fleet-wide.
The Air Force kicked off one of its biggest exercises this week with the latest edition of Bamboo Eagle, featuring combined virtual and live training scenarios focused on test the command-and-control “nervous system” leaders need to operate on a complex joint battlefield spread over vast distances.
