A contingent of airmen from Air Force Reserve Command’s 916th Air Refueling Wing at Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C., departed Andersen AFB, Guam, on Nov. 3 to return home from a two-month deployment that supported the Air Force’s continuous bomber presence at Andersen and the F-22s temporarily stationed there. During their time on Guam, these airmen flew and maintained KC-135s under the 506th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron. They generated 86 sorties, accumulated more than 380 flying hours, and off-loaded more than 250,000 pounds of jet fuel. A group of more than 60 airmen from AFRC’s 927th ARW at MacDill AFB, Fla., has now replaced them in the 506th EARS for the next two months. This is the first deployment for the airmen of the 927th ARW since the unit’s relocation to MacDill from Selfridge AFB, Mich., in 2008 (Andersen report by SrA. Nichelle Anderson)
A combined Navy and Air Force program is seeking to build a smaller version of a ubiquitous air-to-air missile that could give advanced aircraft, such as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, greater magazine depth in a high-end fight.