Roger That: Illinois National Guard unit headed to Afghanistan

A deployment ceremony is scheduled for Friday to say goodbye to about 30 military police officers from the 233rd Military Police Company of the Illinois National Guard who are set to deploy to Afghanistan for 10 months.

The ceremony is scheduled to take place at 2:30 p.m. Friday at the Illinois Military Academy on Camp Lincoln in Springfield. The soldiers will train for a brief time at Fort Bliss, Texas, before deploying to Afghanistan.

The 233rd MPs will provide security operations in support of Operation Freedom's Sentinel, which is the new name for operations in Afghanistan. The company is expected to return home in December 2016.

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The KC-46A Pegasus successfully transferred fuel through its boom to an F-16C Fighting Falcon Jan. 24 to demonstrate aerial refueling operations in advance of its first production decision later this spring, according to an Air Force press release.

The KC-46A passed 1,600 pounds of fuel to an F-16C piloted by Lt. Col. Daniel Alix of the 416st Flight Test Squadron, 412th Test Wing out of Edwards AFB, California, who characterized the mission as a complete success.

Officials said it was a big step forward for the program and for the tanker capability that will serve as the backbone of Air Force global operations over the coming decades.

“I'm extremely proud of the entire industry and government program team that made today happen,” said Brig. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, the Air Force program executive officer for tankers, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. “This aerial refueling marks the first of many, and represents years of hard work beginning to pay dividends.”

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The Marine Corps says the 12 Marines who were in two helicopters that crashed off Hawaii are considered dead, according to the Associated Press.

The status of the missing Marines changed to deceased on Wednesday, after five days of searching for them. The Marine Corps says casualty assistance calls officers personally notified each family of the change. The search began late Thursday when a civilian on a beach reported seeing the aircraft flying and then a fireball.

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The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that more than two dozen declassified Pentagon documents shows important and previously unknown details about the role of Cyber Command, the Defense Department's still-forming unit tasked with defending the country's digital domain.

Though initially established to consolidate the military's digital operations, Cyber Command does not serve as a full-scale Defense Department command. Positioned under the wing of US Strategic Command, tasked with minding the US military’s nuclear arsenal, Cyber Command appears to have little authority to execute its mission without oversight from other command units, according to the newspaper.

In fact, several experts who have reviewed the documents say Cyber Command's lower rank compared to other units such as Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, could actually undermine the country's ability to confront growing threats in cyberspace.

This story was originally published January 25, 2016 at 11:55 AM with the headline "Roger That: Illinois National Guard unit headed to Afghanistan."