Parting shots

Heide Couch/U.S Air Force photos

From left to right, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Deprey, 9th Air Refueling Squadron instructor pilot, Airman 1st Class Robert Carswell, 9th ARS flight engineer, and Maj. Joseph Rush, 821st Contingency Response Group instructor pilot, take off in a KC-10 Extender at Travis Air Force Base, July 4. The training flight provided an opportunity for aircrew to maintain proficiency and included a fly-over supporting two fourth of July parades. An overview from a KC-10 Extender assigned to Travis Air Force Base, California, during the Fourth of July parade in Fairfield, July 4. The annual event commemorates the passage of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.

FLYOVER Travis airmen conduct July 4th

U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Aaron Rasmussen, 9th Air Refueling Squadron boom operator, conducts preflight checks prior to a mission at Travis Air Force Base, Monday, July 4. The training flight provided an opportunity for aircrew to maintain proficiency and included a flyover supporting two fourth of July parades.

Support

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Hodge’s team from Travis Air Force Base, deployed with Hodge to Afghanistan.

“We were doing a lot of Covid-19 testing for different NATO countries,” he recalled. “We were processing so many people from so many different countries, fulfilling individual Covid testing requirements so [people] could safely fly back home to their country.”

Leaving Bagram Air Base behind in June, the team continued their collaboration from different locations. Washington deployed to the U.S. military’s Blood Transshipment Center in Qatar, while Hodge headed to Kabul.

“When the blast occurred, a supervisor woke me up and told me to get to work – so I got to work,” Washington said.

“Over the next couple of days, we shipped about 256 units [of blood products] into Kabul through various means because the resources were cut off and a lot of the flights were grounded.”

He said they needed to get “real creative with the ways to get blood there” including piggy-backing pallets of blood products on “flights with special operations teams that went in on much smaller planes.”

Troops at the airport in Kabul were in need, he said, and the emergency resulted in the troops assisting anyone who needed it.

“The blood was going directly to the laboratory in Kabul whether it was for civilians, other services, other countries’ militaries . . . whoever needed the blood and was being treated as a trauma casualty at that time received the blood,” Washington said.

He recalled his experience in Afghanistan as unique because although he works in a large hospital, it’s not a trauma center.

“I’m a blood bank specialist,” he said. “I know blood. I know how to give blood. I know who needs blood.”

He acknowledged his training that prepared him for emergencies like this one.

“Doing that was a very eye-opening experience,” he said. “It’s really an adrenaline dump like nothing else. You find out exactly who everybody is in that moment.”

“It really makes you see the value of what you do firsthand, and I feel like that is something that I will not forget.”

Air Mobility Command graphic Air Mobility Command has begun the transition to its new Mobility Air Force Force Generation model, or MAFFORGEN, to increase high-end readiness, improve predictability, and provide a more sustainable and consistent mobility force.

Transition

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support the critical mobility mission. Instead of redlining force elements in a particular phase, MAFFORGEN provides the flexibility to meet surge and contingency requirements while streamlining the readiness cycle and reducing uncertainty in decision making across the command.

In the coming weeks, AMC force elements will receive their phase assignments as the command works towards MAFFORGEN interim operating capability at the end of Fiscal Year 2022.

“Our competitors have dangerous agendas and will not wait for America to be ready,” said Minihan. “MAFFORGEN will drive the readiness needed to win. Let’s go!”