Those 'Hegseth bodyguards' are actually there for the Air Force's 'Doomsday' plane [View all]
Members of the Air Force's National Airborne Operations Center Security Forces team travel with the E-4B Nightwatch aircraft — not as personal guards to the Secretary of Defense, as some speculated.
A short video of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in the normally unremarkable act of climbing a set of stairs launched a wave of internet speculation this week when it also captured two armed guards who looked like they might be assigned to him.
Both wore Air Force flight suits, carried M-4-style rifles with tactical vests — a rarely-seen level of firepower on civilian VIP flights — and both were women.
Speculation on the pair ranged from incorrect to ridiculously incorrect. Posters on social media immediately labeled the pair as everything from secret Delta Force operators to undeserving “DEI recruits.”
One internet outlet even called them “Hegseth’s Heavily-Armed Female Bodyguards.”
Some even compared the two to the ornamental “Amazon” guards once favored by Muammar Gaddafi.
A few internet sleuths got closer to the truth, assuming they were Phoenix-Raven troops, the Air Force’s specially-trained security forces squads that fly on large transport aircraft like C-17s and C-130s when they travel to unsecure airbases (Ravens were aboard nearly every flight out of Kabul during the 2021 airlift).
It will shock you to learn that in each of those cases, someone on the internet was wrong.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/hegseth-doomsday-security-team/
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