On M
ay 24, for the first time, a US military aircraft touched down at Kampong Chhnang Province airfield in Cambodia, Pacific Air Forces said in a May 27 release. The aircraft, a C-130 from the Alaska Air National Guard’s 144th Airlift Squadron at Anchorage’s Kulis ANGB, flew 3,000 pounds of medical supplies in to the countryside airfield, which was built in 1975 under Pol Pot’s regime. The mission was for Operation Pacific Angel, a humanitarian-assistance effort run together with the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and Royal Thai Air Force.
A new Air Force plan for how many fighters it needs in the next decade marks a sharp upturn from what it thought it needed just seven years ago. But analysts worry that the aspirational plan now in Congress' hands doesn’t make a tight enough connection to national strategy.
