U.S. airmen are helping to move resources into the country, as the State Department, which is leading the response, announced a humanitarian assistance program. The first plane, an Air Force C-17 Globemaster, arrived in Bogota overnight on Aug. 14. Another C-17 landed in Medellín on Sunday, with airmen unloading pallets of supplies, according to U.S. Southern Command.

According to the State Department, military planes are transporting supplies from a prepositioned warehouse in Miami. Cargo flights are departing from Homestead Air Force Base in southern Florida. The first plane carried water as well as hygiene and shelter supplies to be given to relief groups on the ground. A second flight brought Starlink kits to help restore Internet access following the quake. 

Alongside military-ferried supplies, two urban search and rescue technical support teams also flew into Colombia to help first responders search for survivors.

The 7.4-magnitude quake hit western and central Colombia on Aug. 10. Alongside nearly 300 killed, hundreds more remain missing as responders continue to clear debris.

It’s the second time in two months that American forces flew in emergency aid from the United States after a major earthquake hit a South American country. In late June, a pair of 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes hit Venezuela, damaging large swaths of the country and killing more than 6,300 people. Members of the 621st Contingency Response Wing flew in supplies and air traffic controllers, while Marines from Littoral Combat Force-24, the force deployed to the Caribbean, were sent to assist. Roughly 2,000 troops participated in the effort, which involved aircraft, an amphibious transport dock and 900 American service members operating inside of Venezuela. The last members of the earthquake response team left Venezuela on July 25, after a month of on-the-ground work. 

Task & Purpose reached out to Southern Command about the extent of the military’s assistance and if troops, ships or additional aircraft would be deployed to help Colombia, similar to the response in Venezuela. SOUTHCOM directed questions to the State Department, which did not immediately answer questions about additional military deployments.

The post US forces begin delivering aid to Colombia after deadly earthquake appeared first on Task & Purpose.

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The blockade, covering all of Iran’s ports, oil terminals and coastal areas, will be enforced for all vessel traffic — regardless of flag — from 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on July 14, the center said in an advisory.

“Any vessel suspected of entering or departing the blockaded area without authorization is subject to interception, diversion, and capture. Non-compliant vessels may be legally compelled with force,” the statement said.

The center said neutral transit through the Strait of Hormuz heading to or from non-Iranian destinations will not be impeded.

The blockade, covering all of Iran’s ports, oil terminals and coastal areas, will be enforced for all vessel traffic — regardless of flag — from 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on July 14, the center said in an advisory.

“Any vessel suspected of entering or departing the blockaded area without authorization is subject to interception, diversion, and capture. Non-compliant vessels may be legally compelled with force,” the statement said.

The center said neutral transit through the Strait of Hormuz heading to or from non-Iranian destinations will not be impeded.

The mission to China was expected to last through early September, with an investigative team working in Hunan province while field operations are conducted in Guangshi province bordering Vietnam, according to DPAA officials.

The presence of a new recovery team in China marked another milestone in the slow evolution of China’s cooperation on the MIA issue since agreeing in 2008 to give limited access to records of the People’s Liberation Army that might aid in searches.

Since the 2008 agreement, there have been about 10 searches in China, and in February 2024 China acknowledged for the first time that Chinese specialists were assisting in the site surveys.

“Over the years, committed to the humanitarian spirit, the Chinese side has provided assistance for the U.S. military to search for the remains of its missing personnel in China,” Zhang Xiaogang, a Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman, said at a regular press briefing in February 2024.

Currently, there are believed to be about 678 unresolved cases of missing U.S. personnel in China from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Over the years, DPAA officials have made repeated pledges to reduce the number of unresolved cases and get as many answers as possible to the families of the missing but those promises have now run up against the hard numbers in the defense budget.

At an annual briefing for the families last month, DPAA Director Kelly McKeague detailed the funding shortfalls in his remarks to the families and in a series of charts. DPAA’s budget of $185 million for Fiscal Year 2025 was reduced to $167 million in FY26, and was projected to come down again to $160 million in FY27.

The result would be that the 27 recovery and investigative teams that were in operation in Vietnam in FY2025 would be reduced to a total of seven in the projected FY2027 DPAA budget, McKeague said.

McKeague also told the families that DPAA effectively had a new boss. McKeague would remain as director but he would report directly to controversial retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Tata has called former President Barack Obama a “terrorist leader” and said he believed Obama was a Muslim.

In an interview with Military Times, McKeague pledged to work closely with Tata and said he had urged the families to press their representatives to support a bill proposed by Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., to boost the DPAA’s budget by $40 million.

The bill has been attached to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act policy measure but there is no guarantee that the money will actually be appropriated.

Over the years, the recovery missions in China have had limited success, but McKeague pointed to what had been the unresolved case of Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Morton Sher, of Greenville, South Carolina.

Sher died at age 22 when his Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter was shot down on Aug. 20, 1943, and crashed in Hengyang City, Hunan province.

At the time of the crash, local villagers put up a makeshift headstone with Chinese markings at the site of the crash. Despite this, a postwar search proved unsuccessful and Sher was officially classified him as killed in action and unrecoverable.

At the time of the crash, Sher was flying for the Army Air Forces 76th Fighter Squadron, 23rd Fighter Group, 14th Air Force, where many of the Flying Tiger veterans had gone after the volunteers disbanded.

According to the Defense Department, while flying in October 1942, engine trouble forced Sher to bring his aircraft down near a Chinese village, where the villagers greeted him with celebration and ordered up a feast, with Sher providing the entertainment. They later escorted him through nearby mountain villages back to his base.

Sher later recounted the experience in an Army newsletter that was picked up by the Associated Press: “I sang a few American songs for them and they were highly pleased. The banquet turned out to be one of the biggest surprises of the trip.”

In a letter home the day before he was shot down, Sher told his parents that he was turning down a chance to come home and take a job as an instructor. “I let another pilot take that instructing job, for I find things too exciting here to leave right now,” Sher said in the letter.

Sher’s remains were eventually identified on June 11, 2025.

In a statement, Air Force Col. Brett Waring, commander of the 476th Fighter Group at Moody AFB, said that “None of us knew Morton Sher. We didn’t know his name until recently, but as soon as we learned of his coming home, we leapt at the opportunity to honor him and support his family. The bond that we share never dies, and no one is left behind or ever forgotten.”