Mother Nature snows out air drop mission
Crew chiefs from the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, offload air drop bundles from a C-130H Hercules following a mission cancellation. The bundles contained more than 17,000 pounds of food intended for U.S. troops deployed to a forward operating base in southern Afghanistan. A conventional air drop delivers cargo to a drop zone by using forecasted winds along with surface wind and altitude winds to calculate a release point. ?Anytime we can use conventional methods to drop it keeps us from passing the drop zone twice which gives the enemy less time to react,? said Capt. Ricardo Bravo, Joint Precision Air Drop System subject matter expert deployed from Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark. (U.S. Air Force photo by Maj. Carie A. Parker)