U.S. Marine Cpl. Dalton James Kiser with Air Combat

U.S. Marine Cpl. Dalton James Kiser with Air Combat Element, Marine Rotational Force – Darwin, takes part in training at Nackeroo Airfield, Bradshaw Field Training Area, Northern Territory, Australia, Aug. 7, 2020. Kiser is a native of Florence, S. C.
“Most aviation squadrons have different roles for everybody. They can afford to do that; they have plenty of guys. For us, we’re it all rolled into one. We’re all maintainers. We have to fuel it, get the aircraft up in the air, recover it, replace components. Aside from knowing the aircraft, we run the retrieval system and the launcher. There’s normally about five to eight maintainers, we don’t really get to sit down. It’s nicer when we’re deployed, the flights are a lot longer, there’s some downtime. But there’s also more aircraft to maintain, more gear. Not a whole lot of sitting down, there’s no two-hour chow breaks.”
During the extended training, MRF-D’s ACE made history by launching an RQ-21A Blackjack into flight, from Australian soil, for the first time ever. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Harrison Rakhshani)