Air Mobility Command has proved the use of C-17 strategic airlifters to support the nation’s missions at the South Pole, when an aircrew from McChord AFB, Wash., dropped the first C-17 load—about 70,000 pounds—to scientists at the pole. The typical Operation Deep Freeze platform is an LC-130, but the C-17 can deliver four times as much in a single pass. Use of the C-17s is key to emergency resupply, especially when conditions prevent the ski-equipped LC-130s from landing.
Special-ops aviators, a physicist from the intelligence community, and an enlisted Marine with decades of deployments: U.S. Space Command’s military and civilian leaders who spoke May 7 were as likely to come from strictly space backgrounds as not. These are some of the day’s insights from inside the command, which…