News / Military
By Howard Altman / Tampa Bay Times / July 21, 2016
PHOTO: A Boeing 757 flown by Delta Air Lines, like this one pictured in the skies over Seattle, took off last week from MacDill Air Force Base. A civilian jet is a rare site at the military installation. (Associated Press)
No, Delta Flight 8965 wasn’t at the wrong airport when it took off from MacDill Air Force Base on Tuesday evening.
The Boeing 757 passenger jet was part of the military’s Domestic Charter Service Contract. The contract kicked off in 2014 as essentially a five-year, half-billion-dollar effort to transport military personnel across the nation for training exercises and for pre- and post-deployment positioning, according to Cmdr. Dave Nunnally, spokesman for U.S. Transportation Command, which runs the program.
Delta is one of 15 airlines taking part, said Nunnally. Its flight out of MacDill was ferrying about 50 newly promoted general and flag officers to bases across the nation as part of an orientation program called CAPSTONE, according to deputy director Bonnie Swanson.
The CAPSTONE program was created in 1982 with participation on a voluntary basis, according to its website. Four years later, the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 made it a law that all newly selected general and flag officers attend CAPSTONE.
“The course objective is to make these individuals more effective in planning and employing US forces in joint and combined operations,” according to the website.
During the program, students study “major issues affecting national security decisionmaking, military strategy, joint/combined doctrine, interoperability and key allied nation issues.”
The Delta flight was taking the flock of new one-stars to selected command headquarters for an up-close-and-personal view of how they are run.
The trip started with a visit to U.S. Southern Command in Miami on Monday, then continued to MacDill, where the officers visited U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, both headquartered at MacDill. It’s the only base in the country with two unified combatant commands.
At MacDill, they met with Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the CentCom commander, and Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas Trask, the SOCom vice commander, according to Swanson.
“They get an overview, have the commander talk to them and basically get a current operations brief on what is going on at each command,” Swanson said.
CentCom oversees U.S. military operations in some of the world’s most dangerous places, a 20-nation swath running east from Egypt to Pakistan. Votel, the commander, recently returned from a visit to Afghanistan, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan and Iraq. SOCom synchronizes the global war on terror and is responsible for providing trained and equipped commandos to be used by commanders like Votel.
On Tuesday, the officers took off from MacDill headed for Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Neb., where they were scheduled to visit U.S. Strategic Command. On Thursday, they were scheduled to fly to U.S. Northern Command headquarters in Colorado Springs and finish the trip today with a visit to U.S. Transportation Command at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, Swanson said.
Delta has been flying for the military since the 1950s, said spokesman Anthony Black.
But Delta Flight 8965 is unique in that it rolled off the assembly line in 1989, making it one of the newer aircraft taking off from MacDill.
The base’s resident fleet of 16 KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling jets, which are shared by the 6th Air Mobility Wing and the 927th Air Refueling Wing, first flew back when Eisenhower was in the White House.
The Pentagon last week announced the death of an airman who was supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, the battle against the Islamic State.
1st Lt. Anais A. Tobar, 25, of Miami died July 18 in Southwest Asia from a non-combat-related injury.
She was assigned to the 4th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.
There have been 2,347 U.S. troop deaths in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, 21 U.S. troop deaths and one civilian Department of Defense employee death in support of the followup, Operation Freedom’s Sentinel in Afghanistan, and 17 troop deaths and one civilian death in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.
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