As the Air Force embraces the concept of Agile Combat Employment, the service and the wider U.S. military have paid increasing attention to small islands throughout the Indo-Pacific—places like Tinian, Palau, and Saipan, all fewer than 200 square miles, have hosted troops and received millions ...
The Air Force will begin its 71st annual Operation Christmas Drop on Dec. 4. The weeklong exercise is a yearly tradition that delivers supplies such as food, fishing equipment, school books, and clothes to remote islands in the Pacific. It is the longest-running Department of ...
Ten Airmen on the South Pacific island of Palau watched intently as an MQ-9 Reaper flew in for an automatic landing recently. Neither of the two air crew members grabbed the controls from the pilot at Creech Air Force Base, Nev. Instead, for the first ...
JOINT REGION MARIANAS, Guam—Laid out across a vast wooden table made in the woodshop of a Navy ship repair facility in Guam in 1967 was a map of the Pacific Ocean island chains of the Northern Marianas, Palau, and Micronesia. As large as the map was—spread out ...
JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii – Six years ago, agile combat employment (ACE), the Air Force concept of operating at dispersed and austere bases, was a PowerPoint presentation advocated for by Pacific Air Forces leadership. Now, as the concept nears Initial Operational Capability (IOC), adding new ...
U.S. Air Force and Japan Air Self-Defense Forces earlier this month flew the 69th annual holiday tradition—Operation Christmas Drop—airdropping bundles of aid and toys to Palau despite COVID-19 restrictions. Aircraft dropped 64 bundles to the 500-island archipelago of Palau from Dec. 6-10, both providing aid ...