Senior officials from US Southern Command, along with local Miami area government representatives, broke ground at Homestead Air Reserve Base for the new headquarters facility for Special Operations Command South. The $41 million, 125,000-square-foot building is slated for completion within the next three years. It will host more than 400 personnel from all branches of the military and will feature new teleconferencing tools and technology. “We are building up front in this building the mechanisms [so that] our operations, plans, intelligence, and logistics [personnel] can have a lot more active collaboration,” said Rear Adm. Thomas Brown, SOCSOUTH commander. The project will see the command transition from a trailer-based building to a more permanent presence in South Florida. SOCSOUTH, a component of SOUTHCOM, overseas special operation missions throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. The ground-breaking was on Jan. 10. (Homestead report by Arthur McQueen)
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.