Airmen of the 43rd Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron flew the unit’s 3,000th EC-130H Compass Call sortie May 19, a feat accomplished during five years of continuous deployment to operations in Iraq. The unit rotates airmen from its home base at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., to provide communications jamming support to US and coalition ground forces. “I’m pretty impressed that we’ve been able to keep the pace up this long,” said Capt. Benjamin Jody, aircraft commander on the milestone flight. He continued, “It’s a testament to the maintainers out here that we’ve been able to do this many sorties in that amount of time.” (The unit passed 2,500 sorties last summer and 20,000 combat flying hours in February.) (386th Air Expeditionary Wing report by SSgt. Thomas Doscher)
Planning an Air Show Is Hard. At Andrews, It’s Even Harder
Sept. 17, 2025
Joint Base Andrews opened its flightline this month to thousands of civilians, exposing a normally restricted airbase that regularly hosts the president and foreign dignitaries to a curious public eager to see current and historic military aircraft up close and in action.
