An Air Force C-17 aircrew recently transported a well-drilling rig from the Republic of Djibouti to Gode, Ethiopia, in Africa under the auspices of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. (CJTF-Horn is a little-publicized element of Operation Enduring Freedom.) A US Army unit is using the rig to dig four drinking-water wells for the Ethiopians. All of this feeds into the US effort to deal with terrorist inroads in the Saharan and Sahel regions of Africa, which are heavily Islamic and poor.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall doesn’t see great value in trying to break the Sentinel ICBM program off as a separate budget item the way the Navy has with its ballistic-missile submarine program, saying such a move wouldn’t create any new money for the Air Force to spend on other…