A C-17 from Air Mobility Command’s 437th Airlift Wing at Charleston AFB, S.C., delivered 30,000 H1N1 personal flu prevention kits to six South American countries in early May. The US Southern Command-sponsored program was a preventive measure intended to enable first-responders to distribute the kits as needed in Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua in the event the so-called Swine Flu broke out in those countries and to help contain the H1N1 virus which had spread across more than 30 countries. SOUTHCOM asked US Transportation Command for assistance and AMC’s 618th Tanker Airlift Control Center at Scott AFB, Ill., coordinated the mission, which took the Charleston crew about 36 hours to complete. (618th TACC report by 1st Lt. Justin Brockhoff; USSOUTCOM release)
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.