US military aircraft to arrive in Dominican Republic for deployment in the Caribbean

The gov­ern­ment of the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic has au­tho­rized sev­er­al U.S. mil­i­tary air­craft to land in the coun­try in the com­ing days as part of an op­er­a­tional sup­port de­ploy­ment in the Caribbean.

The air­craft will have tem­po­rary per­mits to op­er­ate from re­strict­ed ar­eas at San Isidro Air Base and Las Améri­c­as In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The co­op­er­a­tion agree­ment cov­ers sur­veil­lance, trans­port, and tech­ni­cal sup­port mis­sions.

Air­craft ex­pect­ed to take part in­clude the KC-130 tanker and the C-130 Her­cules, two of the U.S. Air Force’s most ver­sa­tile and wide­ly used plat­forms.

The C-130, in ser­vice since 1954, is one of the most suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary trans­port air­craft in his­to­ry. De­signed for rugged op­er­a­tions dur­ing the Cold War, it has been used in con­flicts such as Viet­nam and Desert Storm, as well as ma­jor hu­man­i­tar­i­an mis­sions in Haiti, dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Ka­t­ri­na, and in glob­al dis­as­ter zones.

The KC-130, in­tro­duced in the 1960s, serves as a tanker and lo­gis­tics air­craft, en­abling aer­i­al re­fu­el­ing for fight­er jets, he­li­copters, and drones.

It has sup­port­ed op­er­a­tions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, as well as night­time spe­cial op­er­a­tions and per­son­nel trans­port.

Al­though the au­thor­i­ties have not dis­closed flight sched­ules or the num­ber of air­craft in­volved, their de­ploy­ment in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic may sup­port mar­itime and aer­i­al sur­veil­lance, move­ment of sen­si­tive equip­ment, lo­gis­tics for re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions, in-flight re­fu­el­ing, and trans­porta­tion of tech­ni­cal per­son­nel.

The mis­sion is said to be part of on­go­ing se­cu­ri­ty and tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion agree­ments be­tween both coun­tries.

SAN­TO DOMIN­GO, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Dec. 13, CMC