Officials at Kirtland AFB, N.M., ceremoniously cut the ribbon at Building 950, site of the 58th Special Operations Wing’s new HC/MC-130J aircraft simulator. Lt. Col. Regan Patrick, 58th Training Squadron commander, called the simulator “a tremendous addition” to the wing’s training mission. “We intend to use it extensively to meet the needs of tomorrow’s warfighters,” he said. The simulator will enable the wing to train pilots, combat systems officers, and loadmasters “in an environment very much like the actual airplane” and “at substantially lower cost,” said Lt. Col. Alex Carothers, the 58 SOW’s HC/MC-130J program manager. This includes activities such as night-vision-goggle low-level operations, air-to-air refueling, and no-light landings,” he said. The ribbon-cutting took place on Jan. 19. The Air Force’s first MC-130J special-mission aircraft entered the inventory last September. (Kirtland report by John Cochran)
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.