Rose Tufano, project leader of Vero Beach Lodge’s Cookies for Soldiers program, received the following email from Lt. Col. Robert B. Fore. He is the Commander of the United States Air Force’s 817th Expeditionary Air Support Operations Squadron – a combat support unit located in Afghanistan.
Rose and Vero Beach Elks Lodge 1774 friends:
We received your box sent to the 9th Air Expeditionary Task Force located at Headquarters Resolute Support in Kabul and we thank you from the bottom of our heart. I would say keep sending them here because the mail room distributes them to different sections.
The country (USA) is focused on many strategic threats, and Afghanistan has been going on for so long that it just seems mundane. However, just to give you some insight on the progress here, the Afghan Army and Air Force are taking more and more ownership of their country. There are some real Afghan heroes and patriots fighting as hard for their country as we do — and often puts them and their family at great risk. It’s been a long road, and there’s still a long ways to go — but there are exciting signs that progress, though glacial, is being made.
We thank you for your thoughts and prayers. There is a direct tie to the great work the men and women are doing here to securing your safety back home. But you also have a direct tie to their resilience day in and day out, helping them stay focused and motivated.
A little bit about the 817th EASOS. We are the most diverse Air Support Operations Squadron (ASOS) in the world. We have Staff Weather Officers (SWO) scattered across Afghanistan which own/maintain 80% of the weather sensors in the country. Afghanistan, due to topography, has six very different weather systems which they have to interpret and provide weather forecasts to the many Attack and Airlift Helicopters and the Unmanned Intelligence assets in the country. This allows our Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Liaisons (ISRLO) to help the Army gather and develop target information. That information is passed to the pilots which are command and controlled by our Air Support Operations Center (ASOC). With all the different fighter aircraft provided by the USAF, USN and USMC, the ASOC makes sure the right aircraft gets to the right mission at the right time. Then finally, we have Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACS) who are on the ground observing the target area. They work directly with the pilots overhead to make sure the right bomb gets to the right target at the right time. As you can imagine, they have a very important job making sure that fast-moving jets and the bombs they drop are deconflicted from helicopters flying around and the friendly troops on the ground.
The 817th EASOS is involved in every level of tactical operations in Afghanistan. I’m a proud papa and wanted to give you a better idea of who we are and where your care package ended up.
Have a good one, and we love all our supporters. Little things make such a big difference here and we are eternally grateful.
Vr, LOVE
ROBERT B. FORE, Lt. Col., USAF