Air
Force Reserve Command’s 910th Airlift Wing at Youngstown ARS, Ohio, sent two C-130H aerial spray aircraft and crews to the Gulf Coast, where they arrived at the staging area in Mississippi April 30 to be ready to provide assistance in the clean up operation following the April 22 explosion and sinking of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig about 130 miles southwest of New Orleans. Another two aircraft and crews were standing by at Youngstown. The unit has the only large area fixed wing aerial spray unit, normally providing larvicide and insect eradication and vegetation control at training ranges, but the airmen train also to help disperse oil slicks by spraying a chemical that helps break it down for natural assimilation by the ocean. According to a May 1 Miami Herald report, the 910th AW aircraft had begun their spraying operation. (Also see 910th AW release; Youngstown Vindicator report; AFPS report by Donna Miles; Deepwater Horizon response Web site)
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…