John lamontagne 15th squadron commander

Oct. 3, | By David Roza

A few months after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in , Capt.

John lamontagne 15th squadron commander

John D. Lamontagne was a C pilot at Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., where he and his fellow Moose drivers started flying with night vision goggles to prepare for blacked-out landings in the Middle East in the new Global War on Terror.

“At the time, night vision goggles were a mission set for our most experienced crew members,” Lamontagne, now a four-star general and the new head of Air Mobility Command told Air & Space Forces Magazine 23 years later.

“9/11 basically drove the whole team at Charleston, and then I’d say probably across Air Mobility Command, to be qualified on NVGs … it didn’t turn night into day, but it was very much a key enabler to do what we needed to do at a lower level of risk.”

So when Lamontagne’s squadron commander asked if he’d be interested in flying a special operations team to Kandahar in the early mon