Mobile distribution operator Amn. Jay Pickle just reached one-million gallons of fuel dispensed to various aircraft. Serving with the 455th Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron’s petroleum, oil, and lubrication element at Bagram AB, Afghanistan, Pickle averaged 1,595 gallons of fuel per aircraft over 104 days, according to the Bagram Bullet. The POL element has two other airmen—A1C Austin Ecker and A1C Brandy Leonard—who have reached the one million mark. These airmen fuel any aircraft at the base and, in fact, Lt. Col. Richard Peterson, 455th ELRS commander, said an Army helicopter medevac unit has requested the 455th’s POL airmen to refuel its aircraft since the airmen are “faster and safer.”
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…