It’s often overlooked in the rush to acquire extravagantly sophisticated equipment, but the traditional 24-hour command post is alive and well and still performing vital command, control, and communications functions whether at stateside bases or in the thick of things in Iraq. Its main task is coordinating emergency actions, but one of the primary, day-in-day-out jobs of command post controllers, like the ones in the 506th Air Expeditionary Group at Kirkuk AB, Iraq, is “flight following” all inbound and outbound traffic, says MSgt. Gary Kaczmarek. Controllers work flight details with various base functions to ensure the aircraft spend minimal time on the ground.
North American Aerospace Defense Command on Jan. 25 tracked two Russian maritime patrol aircraft entering the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. NORAD tracked the two Tu-142s in international airspace, and they didn’t enter the sovereign airspace of either the United States or Canada. No U.S. or Canadian aircraft scrambled to…