Shaw Air Force Base

Mm-hmm.

So, um, that turned out to be a factor in this because one of the battalion forward air controllers, which was, who was a, uh, a very young lieutenant, uh, coming from Shaw Air Force Base, where they flew the T37 as a FAC, as a airborne FAC aircraft-

Hmm

... uh, just wasn't doing well at his battalion, and he was, he was very much disliked, um, by his Army, uh, by these, by the staff there at the battalion.

I'm sorry.

Home of the Shaw Air Force Base, one of the largest military installations in the southeast, 44 miles from Columbia, where most of the lawyers live.

Most of the witnesses and investigators live in the Lowcountry, more than 100 miles in the other direction.

Sumter sits in the 3rd Judicial Circuit, completely separate from the 14th, where the Murdaugh dynasty operated.

And, you know, you hear the same thing through their conversations that there's a lot that goes into those decisions.

Um, you know, when, uh, When the 10th got deployed to go to the Gulf for Desert Storm, you know, there were two squadrons from Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina and the 10th from Han Air Base in Germany.

And they met over there and they formed the 363rd Tactical Fighter Wing Provisional in Aldofra, UAE.

well, how'd that happen? Like, why would you take two squadrons from Sean, one squadron from Han, right? And the reason that that happened was that they flew with the same engines, which means they could deploy there and all of the maintenance troops and all the logistical supply lines could be, everybody knew what was going on because we all had the same Block 25 engines, right? And so, yeah, so there's all kinds of reasons.

Uh, the, the primary ones were in Bahrain, the Fifth Fleet headquarters, and Al Udeid, uh, Air Force Base in Qatar, which was the center for, uh, what they call the CAOC, Combined Air Operation Center, which is part of AFCENT, the Air Force Central Command component.

Uh, the, the, the official headquarters of AFCENT is in, uh, Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina.

But really for the last, um, good-- more than twenty years, uh, it's been, uh, its de facto headquarters has been there on Al Udeid.

I, I went through there back in, uh, two thousand and six.

So it, you know, it's a major base.

But the damage that's been inflicted on these bases, the destruction of radar systems, the destruction of satellite communication systems, the destruction of buildings, uh, and, and headquarters is so significant that the Pentagon, just from a budget- budgetary standpoint, has said, "So we gotta go in and ask for billions of dollars to rebuild? And we can't guarantee the security of those sites." Well, what's interesting is if you look at the, uh, base in Al Udeid at, uh, uh, the, the Combined Air Operations Center, the Pentagon decided on February twenty-sixth to shut that down and bring that headquarters back from Qatar to Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina 'cause they said, "Uh, we don't think we can protect it." And they were right.

I give them credit for one thing, man.

They made a prediction, they anticipated it, and they were absolutely correct.

They have bought up too much farmland.

The military base he's talking about is Shaw Air Force Base.

They bought farmland right next to Shaw.

They're interfering with our food supply chain.

In fact, even, uh, I, I learned that subsequently that before the war started on the 28th of February, uh, the folks at the Combined Air Operations Center in, uh, Al Udeid, uh, in Qatar said, "Okay, we're closing down the CAOC here.

Everybody, we're going to Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina 'cause it's too dangerous to stay here." And that was before the war started.

Oh, wow.

But it was a good move.

They have bought up too much farmland.

Uh, the military base he's talking about is Shaw Air Force Base.

They bought farmland right next to Shaw.

They're interfering with our food supply chain.