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Pentagon has released the name of the airman who was killed by an improvised explosive device March 15 while working with a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. He is SSgt. Timothy Bowles. Born in Anchorage Alaska, Bowles grew up on Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., where his father was stationed, according to an Air Force release. He was a fire truck mechanic assigned to the 3rd Logistics Readiness Squadron at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, who was serving since last November with the 755th Air Expeditionary Group’s Nangarhar Provincial Reconstruction Team. The IED destroyed the vehicle that he was in while part of a four-vehicle patrol checking on a local school. “The 3rd Wing and all of Team Elmendorf feel the pain of losing Sergeant Bowles,” said Col. Richard Walberg, vice commander of the wing. Walberg added, “He was always ready to go beyond what was merely expected of him. In fact, on [March 15], he filled in for a comrade who was not feeling well.”
Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii is trialing novel energy technology to provide electrical power and hydrogen fuel in the kind of isolated and austere outposts the Air Force will need in the Pacific theater for its new Agile Combat Employment way of warfare.