A 71-member team of airmen with the 5th Combat Communications Group, Robins AFB, Ga., flew into Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan, to await their call to set up communications capability for the Pakistan earthquake relief effort. These combat communications specialists—battlefield airmen—are trained to go into austere environments to set up air traffic control, radio, telephone, and computer capability. (Read our article here.) They came prepared to fan out in Pakistan in small teams of three to four people with backpack satellite radios and wireless computers to coordinate helicopter landings.
The Air Force rolled out new interim height standards for Career Enlisted Aviators aimed at improving aircrew diversity and “safely meeting accession demands,” as the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center works to update a 1967 anthropometric study used to establish USAF flight requirements for more than half a century.…