Baltimore Sun

Maryland Air National Guard cargo crews are prepping for an expected deployment to Afghanistan next year, flying a critical mission of air-dropping supplies to U.S. troops fighting in remote locations.

Delivering ammunition, rations and water by parachute from the Guard’s C-130J cargo planes is increasingly necessary in Afghanistan, not just because troops are being scattered to small, local bases as part of a new strategy, but also because of the growing danger that ground convoys will be attacked by Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officers said. The more cargo that goes by air, the less risk to soldiers on convoys.

“We’re saving soldiers’ lives,” said Lt. Col. Mike Mentges, a Maryland Air National Guard pilot who flew missions there last year.

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On a recent practice mission in Maryland, Mentges and his crew thundered off a runway at Warfield air base, east of Baltimore, and swung out over a latticework of suburban homes and highways, heading northeast toward Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Glancing occasionally out of the oversized cockpit windows at the landscape tilting 1,000 feet below, Mentges, the colonel who was in Afghanistan last year, and his co-pilot, Capt. Geoff Haan, a 31-year-old from Oneonta, N.Y., kept up a steady exchange with a controller at the Aberdeen drop zone code-named Aegis.