Air Forc
e and Army officials, including the surgeon general of each service, broke ground Dec. 8 in San Antonio, Tex., on the new $724 million construction and renovation project to unify the Air Force’s Wilford Hall Medical Center and the Brooke Army Medical Center. This expansion is set for completion in September 2011. It is occurring as a result of BRAC 2005, which called for the consolidation of Wilford Hall and Brooke into one medical center, to be called the San Antonio Military Medical Center, with two integrated campuses. Wilford Hall is now known as SAMMC-South, while Brooke is now called SAMMC-North. Among the changes under the expansion project, SAMMC-North will add a new hospital tower with emergency department, inpatient floors, clinics, and new administrative space. It will also get a new multi-level parking garage and a central energy plant. About 186,000 square feet of SAMMC-South will be renovated. SAMMC-North will become the inpatient tertiary care center, while SAMMC-South will serve as the ambulatory care center. Once the project is complete, the Air Force and Army will jointly staff and operate SAMMC. (San Antonio report by Maria Gallegos)
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.