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732nd Air Expeditionary Group
732nd Expeditionary Support Group

During a ceremony on 12 November 2010 at Al Faw Palace, the 732nd Air Expeditionary Group was inactivated and the 467th Air Expeditionary Group was activated, giving the new group's commander full administrative and operational control over Individual Augmentee (IA) airmen, along with the joint expeditionary tasked (JET) airmen they already had administrative and operational control of in the Iraq Joint Operations Area. This change was part of the creation of the Iraq Training and Advisory Mission - Air Force, the 321st Air Expeditionary Wing, to which the 467th Air Expeditionary Group was assigned.

The 732nd Air Expeditionary Group provided oversight and advocacy for roughly 1,800 Air Force personnel spread across 6 squadrons who were tactically assigned to US Army and Marine units throughout Iraq. These airmen included security forces, civil engineers, lawyers, interrogators, military working dog teams, intelligence specialists, and airfield managers. These airmen were under tactical, or day to day, control of Army and Marine units, while administratively and operationally controlled by the 732nd Air Expeditionary Group.

The 732nd Air Expeditionary Group traced its history to the 32nd Air Base Group (Reinforced), which was established on 20 November 1940 and activated on 15 January 1941. The unit was redesignated as the 32nd Air Base Group on 6 November 1941 and again as the 32nd Service Group on 13 June 1942. The unit was disbanded on 11 June 1945.

The unit was reestablished as the 732nd Expeditionary Mission Support Group and converted to provisional status on 14 January 2004. The unit was then designated as the 732nd Expeditionary Support Group in by 2005 and then as the 732nd Air Expeditionary Group by 2007.

The 732nd Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron was established on 2 March 2004 at Balad Air Base, Iraq, as a subordinate unit of the 732nd Expeditionary Mission Support Group. The 732nd Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron provided operational and administrative control of Air Force logistics detachments that fell under the tactical control of the US Army. The 732nd Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron initially consisted of 2 light/medium gun truck detachments: Detachment 2632 at Balad Air Base and Detachment 1058 at Forward Operating Base Speicher. The Squadron also had a fuels detachment. The Air Force mission conducted 3,472 convoys since they took over the mission, traveling nearly 3 million miles as of 5 July 2005).

The 732nd Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron had been established when combat in Operation Iraqi Freedom shifted from a force on force battlefield to counter-insurgency operations and the Army found themselves short of the forces required conduct operations. With the Army facing a guerilla force focused on severing lines of communication, the Air Force offered forces to fill the increasing requirements for land transportation personnel, vehicle operators and mechanics.

The combat airmen assigned to the detachments of the 732nd Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron during Operation Iraqi Freedom II achieved great success in completing a multitude of missions supporting the United States Army. In the first-ever of its kind mission for the United States Air Force, the detachments provided convoy security to over 40,500 vehicles on nearly 2,500 combat logistics patrols covering over 2 million miles on the world's most dangerous roads. The brave men and women of these detachments forged on despite being bombarded by 459 attacks from small arms fire, improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades and vehicle-borne IEDs.

An Airman assigned to the 732nd Expeditionary Mission Support Group, 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing and attached to the US Army's 494th Truck Company at Balad Air Base, Iraq was killed in action on 11 July 2004. Staff Sergeant Dustin W. Peters, 25, of El Dorado, Kansas, died when the convoy he was riding in encountered an improvised explosive device near Forward Operating Location Summerall.




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