Tom Carper: “just an hour or so ago, barely 50 feet out this door, many remaining members of the Delaware Army and National Guard…”

“just an hour or so ago, barely 50 feet out this door, many remaining members of the Delaware Army and National Guard were gathered. Coincidentally, it was a day that had long been scheduled for them to be on the Hill. National Guard associations from all over the country have converged on Washington, DC. In the last several weeks, many of their colleagues in the Army and National Guard have since deployed to the Middle East, to the area around Iraq, and some to Iraq. On Sunday night, at a National Guard headquarters hangar in Wilmington, DE, at the airport we said goodbye to almost 100 of the members of the 166th Military Airlift Command as they set off to join their colleagues and their aircraft on the other side of the world. They are the maintainers of the C-130s which are part of the air bridge from the United States to Iraq. It starts here with a very large C-5 aircraft and includes the C-17s, and at the end of the delivery system, the end of the air bridge, the C-130s, the smaller sort of rangers. The maintainers, the members of the 166th who have gone to join their colleagues, are the folks who make sure the landing gear works, the radio works, the hydraulic works, the avionics systems work. Without them we would not have C-130s that function, and without C-130s we would not have the kind of air bridge that we need to be successful in this war.”