The 380th Air Expeditionary Wing in Southwest Asia (not Iraq or Afghanistan) has been supporting war on terror operations for years. For about the same length of time, Air Force officials have been working to improve living and working conditions, and, come April, they plan a big move into what they term the Temporary Containment Area. But the TCA, officials say, will be a vast improvement over the existing tent city, where 13-year-old tents housed six to eight people. The hard walls of the new rooms will afford quite hours, so air and ground crews can get some well-earned rest. The move to new quarters, say officials, will not disrupt the 380th’s mission of aerial refueling and intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance operations.
A three-month continuing resolution that ended in December inflicted less pain on the Department of the Air Force than it had expected, as procurement and construction continue in the new year. The federal government operated under a stopgap spending measure that stretched from the beginning of the fiscal year on…