Air Education and Training Command hosted a three-day workshop earlier this month to put finishing touches on plans to provide installation support in San Antonio as two Air Force Bases—Lackland and Randolph—and one Army post—Ft. Sam Houston—form a joint basing arrangement directed by BRAC 2005; the consolidation, to be completed by 2011, will form the largest customer-based organization within DOD. (San Antonio Joint Program Office report by Ron Rogers) ¦ Airmen completed June 16 a nearly six-month construction project to improve the runway at Sather Air Base in Iraq, and there’s more to come under a 15-month, $33 million airfield rehabilitation project that benefits coalition air mobility operations—enabling large aircraft to use the field—and the fledgling Iraqi Air Force. (Sather report by SSgt. Amanda Currier) ¦ Air University has realigned the Civil Air Patrol-USAF function, which provides support and liaison to USAF’s auxiliary CAP, under the Jeanne M. Holm Center for Officer Accessions and Citizen Development, in what Lt. Gen. Allen Peck, Air University commander, calls a “win-win” for both organizations with the potential for even greater synergy than in the past. (AU report by Carl Bergquist).
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.