On Dec. 6th, a sea of blue flooded a sleepy township in Pennsylvania to honor Staff Sgt. Dylan Elchin, the 25-year-old airman who was killed alongside two U.S. Army Green Berets in Afghanistan in late November.
In the last two hours of his life, Air Force Tech. Sgt. John A. Chapman saved the lives of a special operations teams by sacrificing himself to stop the enemy from shooting down a helicopter carrying reinforcements to the battle.
Air Force Special Operations Command has been itching to add a frickin’ laser beam to the already-brimming arsenal of its AC-130J Ghostrider gunships. But plans for a high-powered add-on to the Air Force’s “ultimate battle plane” may have hit a significant obstacle.
The MC-103J Commando II airplane rumbled low to the ground, nearing the intense firefight below where a team of American special operators and allied commandos were encircled by Taliban fighters in a remote part of Afghanistan.
