Afghanistan remained a busy place for Air Force strike aircraft June 6-7, according to Air Forces Central. Near Bagram on June 6, for example, A-10s took out enemy combatants with 500-pound laser-guided bombs, the command said in a release. And in Now Zad, F-15Es struck enemy combatants with the same type bomb. Highlights of activities on June 7 include B-1B bomber attacks with 500-pound and 2,000-pound joint direct attack munitions against enemy firing positions in Musa Qal’eh and against an enemy building and a weapons cache in Gardez, AFCENT said in the airpower summary for that day. In total, coalition aircraft flew 52 close air support missions in Afghanistan on June 6 and 46 on June 7. In Iraq, there were 56 CAS missions on June 6 and an identical number on the following day, AFCENT said.
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.