Congratulations to the Major for a job well done, but the airman who wrote this needs to go back to school - what the heck is a “surfaced air threat”? (Surface-to-air threat seems what was intended...)
Surface to air is likely what he said, but maybe his words were sort of run together, and the journalist interpreted it as 'surfaced air threat'.
One of my nephews flew an Apache Longbow D in Afghanistan, in 2005, and took part in that search operation, as well.