Thirty-one members of the 755th Air Expeditionary Squadron became the first airmen sent to the Air Force’s new deployment transition center at Ramstein AB, Germany, on their way home from a combat deployment. These explosive ordnance disposal airmen had just completed a six-month combat tour at Kandahar, Afghanistan. They participated in the center’s three-day program to help airmen gradually transition back to their lives back home through activities like group discussions and social events like sightseeing. “I don’t want to sound too melodramatic about it, but it’s nice to have something at the end where it’s almost like a little bit of closure, where you can just relax as a unit again and everybody understands what they all went through while we were deployed,” said Capt. Lee Turcotte, 755th Delta EOD Flight commander. (Ramstein report by Capt. John Ross)
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.