What's new at Pope AFB?
Pentagon-level decisions remain to be made about who will pay which bills when Pope Air Force Base becomes Fort Bragg's Pope Army Airfield.
The work done at Pope Air Force Base, however, will continue without much change.
The active-duty 43rd Airlift Wing has sent away its Vietnam-era C-130E cargo airplanes, but its crews and airmen continue deploying around the world to do a wide range of jobs. Senior Airman Ashton L. M. Goodman, 21, of Indianapolis, on May 26 was killed in Afghanistan, becoming the wing's first airman to die in the war on terror: She was a truck driver assigned to the 43rd Logistics Readiness Squadron.
The Air Force Reserve Command's 440th Airlift Wing has arrived from Wisconsin with its C-130H airplanes. The Reserve wing is sending airmen overseas to support military efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa.
Army troops still wait to board Air Force airplanes in the passenger shelters at Green Ramp.
The even-less-visible side of Pope is its "battlefield airmen," known to airlifters as their "war-fighting partners." Those are the airmen who work on the ground with Army units.
The 18th Air Support Operations Group sends airmen to work with Army units, such as the 82nd Airborne Division.
The Combat Control School continues to graduate the men who wear the scarlet beret. Combat controllers train for two years at Pope and elsewhere to do mostly covert missions in hostile territory. They can parachute or infiltrate into enemy territory to set up drop zones, do air traffic control or call in aircraft to shoot or drop bombs on the enemy. They often work on an Army Special Forces or Navy SEAL teams and fight alongside soldiers and sailors while summoning Air Force firepower from overhead.