Free Republic

Volunteers at Squantanoa helping get aid to mountain people in wake of Helene, after it became apparent that FEMA sucks.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis cut through the red tape to rescue Floridians stranded in Israel. What we didn’t know is that he’s also planning to pick up non-Floridian Americans, as well as those Joe Biden dumped in Greece. “We knew there’d be people that wanted to get back, many hundreds, maybe even more than 1,000. And they were not getting any luck with the State Department or with the embassy. So I did an executive order last week, activating Florida emergency response to be able to bring planes in there and take people back home.” “I had mothers that were...

Former Vice President Mike Pence insisted the United States should do more for Ukraine as it is in the throes of an invasion from Russia Wednesday during an interview with FNC’s “America’s Newsroom.” Pence argued for a “21st century Berlin airlift” as a response to the humanitarian crisis spurred by the Russian invasion.

U.S. military pilot Gail S. Halvorsen - known as the 'Candy Bomber' for his candy airdrops during the Berlin airlift after World War II ended - has died aged 101. Halvorsen died Wednesday following a brief illness in his home state of Utah, surrounded by most of his children, James Stewart, the director of the Gail S. Halvorsen Aviation Education Foundation, said Thursday. Colonel Gail Seymour 'Hal' Halvorsen is best known as the 'Berlin Candy Bomber' or 'Uncle Wiggly Wings' and gained fame for dropping candy to German children during the Berlin airlift from 1948 to 1949. Halvorsen was beloved...

Almost 24,000 Afghans have entered the U.S. since the Kabul airlift began, the State Department said Wednesday after previously declining to offer specific figures on immigration linked to the evacuation from Afghanistan. State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters that a total of 31,107 evacuees have arrived in the U.S. between Aug. 17 and Aug. 31. Of those people, 23,876 are “Afghans at risk,” comprising 77 percent...

Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, was the last soldier to leave Afghanistan, officials said Monday. U.S. Central Command released a picture of Donahue preparing to board the final military C-17 cargo plane to leave Hamid Karzai International Airport...

Minor but nagging question: WHO, what nations, are doing airlifts? How much? I saw a brief clip of a plane on FOX clearly with German insignia. I’m sure everyone is still trying to get their respective people out, but any idea on the magnitude of each?

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm earlier this week chartered a military jet to attend a diplomatic summit in Ukraine as the Pentagon struggled to evacuate Americans and allies from Afghanistan with limited time and operational resources, sources told the Washington Free Beacon. Granholm's flight took place amid the United States' frantic effort to airlift tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan ahead of the Taliban's Aug. 31 deadline, and as the Department of Defense was forced to call in civilian airlines to bolster its strained evacuation fleet. The secretary's use of a military jet — and particularly the flight's timing —...

During a press briefing Monday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan suggested a slowdown in approvals for the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program during the Trump administration contributed to the current delays in evacuating Afghans... ..."When we took office in January, the Trump administration had not processed a single Special Immigrant Visa since March of 2020, in nearly a year," Sullivan said. Facts First: This is incorrect... ...The White House told CNN that Sullivan was referring to the Trump administration stopping in-person interviews in Kabul... [but the Embassy] was closed for in-person visa services due to the prevalence...

President Biden was blasted by critics on Thursday over a baffling report revealing that U.S. officials provided the Taliban with a list of American citizens green card holders & Afghan allies to grant entry into the outer perimeter of the city’s airport... .."What?" CNN contributor Mary Katherine Ham wrote ... ...Eli Lake, a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion wrote alongside the Politico story, "I never again want to hear about Biden’s competence, empathy or experience. This debacle is worse than 1000 Helsinkis. And I say that as someone who wrote that Helsinki was a humiliating disgrace." "These are the smartest people...

Even though the Biden administration has 5 days left until August 31st, CNN is reporting that the Biden administration will conclude evacuations from the country in 36 hours. John Berman and Brianna Keilar said Thursday on New Day that government sources have told the network that the Afghan evacuation effort will wrap up in another day and a half. The news comes just after Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that 1,500 Americans at the most are still in Afghanistan and need help escaping the country....

The Biden administration is making preparations to invoke an emergency civil aviation program, while adding to the number of U.S. bases that can house Afghan evacuees

In the winter of 1946, Skymaster 56498 soared over the midwest plains of the United States as it neared the end of a 6,000-mile journey, carrying a very precious cargo. On board were dozens of British prisoners of war being repatriated from the battlefields of World War Two after the allied victory over Imperial Japan. And now it is saving British servicemen again - as former members of the armed forces find camaraderie and new skills as they work to restore the aircraft to its former glory. At the forefront of technological innovation at the time, the Skymaster's 4,000-mile range...

A planeload of desperately needed medical supplies arrived in New York from China on Sunday, the first in a series of flights over the next 30 days organized by the White House to help fight the coronavirus, a White House official said. A commercial carrier landed at John F. Kennedy airport carrying gloves, gowns and masks for distribution in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, three hard-hit states battling to care for a crush of coronavirus patients. The airlift is a product of a team led by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, which formed “Project Airbridge,” a partnership between...

Operation Nickel GrassExcerpt: The Arab states had trained well and Moscow had supplied equipment on a colossal scale, including 600 advanced surface-to-air missiles, 300 MiG-21 fighters, 1,200 tanks, and hundreds of thousands of tons of consumable war materiel. By Monday, the Israelis were reeling as missiles supplied by the Soviet Union took a heavy toll on aircraft and tanks. The IDF was running out of artillery shells and the Israeli Air Force warned that its capability to sustain combat would be exhausted within the week... On 12 October, Nixon decided that no more delays could be allowed, and ordered the...

A massive airlift of refugees will begin in Central America next week after regional countries agreed to help thousands of stranded Cubans who have been driven by the threat of normalised relations to migrate to the United States. Fears that talks between Washington and Havana may soon curtail favourable US migration policies have prompted the biggest rush from the Caribbean island since the "raft exodus" of 1994. More than 40,000 Cubans have entered the US this year, almost double the number in 2014. Many more are stranded, after travelling via Ecuador, which offered visa-free entry for Cuban arrivals, and then...

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders. The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and...

Boeing Looks Afar for New C-17 Jet Sales As U.S. Demand for Military-Cargo Plane Wanes, Aircraft Maker Hopes Mideast, Asian Buyers Will Fill the Gap BA -0.34%Boeing Co., BA -0.34%racing to drum up sales of its C-17 to avoid shutting down production of the military-cargo plane, believes new orders may emerge in coming months from the Middle East or Asia, a senior executive said. "Our hope is that future sales occur [in those regions] this year," Bob Ciesla, program manager for the C-17 Globemaster III, said in an interview this week. Mr. Ciesla declined to discuss specific countries that may...

The chief of U.S. transportation command says he is worried daily that advanced, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles will show up on the battlefield in Afghanistan or along the routes to fly there that could threaten strategic airlift. In particular, classified State Dept. cables have voiced concerns about Chinese weapons and trainers having connections with the Taliban. “Today [that threat] could change,” says Air Force Gen. Duncan McNabb. “I want us to stay ahead of it, with all of our international partners, [by being aware] these things might happen. We don’t talk a lot about it, we readjust. Even though it’s not...