Members of the Altus Military Affairs Committee held their quarterly meeting at Altus AFB Thursday evening.

Committee chairman, Dr. Joe Leverett, briefed the committee on several activities that affect the community and Altus AFB. He stated that a site survey team would be visiting the base in the near future to determine the favorability of stationing the MC-12 Liberty at Altus Air Force Base. The MC-12 aircraft is a two engine turbo-prop aircraft that the Air Force and Army wants to use to augment many of the current unmanned drone aircraft. According to Leverett, the KC-X contract should be awarded sometime this year and Altus is being considered as the training base for the KC-X air crews.

“I think we have an excellent chance of being the training site for the KC-X tanker since we already train crews for the KC-135. As far as the MC-12, which also has an intelligence gathering mission, we are one of six possible sites for training the four-person crews. We have the ramp space and air space to take this new mission. Our proximity to Ft Sill’s ranges makes us a strong contender. I am cautiously optimistic,” Leverett said.

One of their first orders of business Thursday was electing Dr. Phil Birdine and Rick Steen to the committee. Birdine will become president of Western Oklahoma State College on July 1 and Steen heads the local office of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.

Other activities that are in the planning stages for the committee include a first sergeants dinner, feeding a bar-be-cue dinner at the Great Plains Rodeo, participating in the 102d annual Chamber of Commerce banquet, attending the Airlift Tanker Association Conference in Orlando, Fl., and the Air Education and Training Command’s Symposium in San Antonio where the first Altus Award will be presented. The Altus Award was established by the Altus MAC and approved by the AETC commander. The award will be presented each year at the Symposium to the AETC installation with the best community relations program.

Also discussed at the meeting was the Oklahoma University and Air Force Academy football game slated for September 18. Leverett said that David Braddock will be leading the committee’s effort for this event. Planned activities include flying several hundred cadets into Altus the day before the game, feeding them a bar-b-cue dinner and early the next day busing them to Norman for the game. A tail gate party is planned for them before the game and after the game, the cadets will be returned to Altus where they will spend the night before being flown back to the academy the next morning.

“This project is going to require a lot of work by the entire MAC committee,” said Braddock. “One of the events we are planning is for an Altus C-17 to fly the Academy’s Wings of Blue Parachute Team and drop them over the OU stadium to start the pre-game activities. This will be a big event for Altus and will hopefully be seen over national television.”

In closing the meeting, Leverett encouraged all members to become members of the

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Committee of 100 and support their activities. Two events remain this year, a business fair at the Altus Community Center on August 23 and a cook-out at the Lucas farm on October 25.

“The Committee of 100 is a grass roots program that welcomes newcomers to Altus AFB to our community where they are afforded the opportunity to meet local civic leaders,” said Leverett. “And, I would be remiss if I did not say that Eva Letha Lucas, who chairs the committee, and her committee members do an outstanding job of planning and conducting these events. In fact, their reputation is known around Air Force circles as a one-of-a-kind program,” added Leverett.