A four-man team from Holloman AFB, N.M., deployed to Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan, to help the Army pack up Force Provider assets—more than 500,000 tons of bare base gear—for reserve storage in Southwest Asia or shipment back to the States for reconditioning. The airmen of the 49th Materiel Maintenance Squadron ready the equipment first by cleaning it, coding its condition, making repairs, and gathering it into sets. Without their work, Army officials said the process would have taken up to 12 months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in contract labor. MSgt. David Lott, the team chief, said the 49th is the only squadron left in the Air Force that performs this type work.
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…