Lt. Col. John Bunnell, an F-15E weapon system officer, on Jan. 24 reached his 3,000th flight hour in the backseat of a Strike Eagle during a four-hour mission from Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. “This is a nice milestone for me,” said Bunnell, a native of Birmingham, Ala., who is deployed from RAF Lakenheath, Britain, as commander of Bagram’s 494th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. This unit comprises a contingent of F-15Es and airmen deployed to Afghanistan from Lakenheath’s 494th Fighter Squadron. Bunnel has been flying in F-15Es since 1990 and has now completed 120 combat sorties. More than 370 of his 3,000 flight hours have been in combat. (Bagram report by SSgt. Richard Williams)
In the small world of Air Force weather specialists, combat weather specialists are a niche unto themselves, deploying with Army ground units to provide forecasts and, if need be, fight alongside those Soldiers. For Staff Sgt. Francisco Estrada, the hardest part of the job isn’t the possibility of ground combat,…
