Airmen and C-130s from the 36th Airlift Squadron based at Yokota AB, Japan, landed in Sri Lanka for a week of humanitarian response drills with Australian, Malaysian, and Sri Lankan partners. Pacific Airlift Rally, sponsored by Pacific Air Forces, is an “opportunity to work with and understand the procedures and philosophies adapted by the other nations that may come to our aid in a time of need,” said Sri Lankan squadron commander Sarike Aranayake, of the SLAF’s 2nd Airlift Squadron. “It also prepares us to help out in a situation anywhere in the world,” he added. Held this year at Colombo airport, the biannual exercise began Aug. 22, with aircraft and more than 300 airmen from all four nations participating. (Colombo report by MSgt. Cohen Young)
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…