The 772nd Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, the deployed C-130J unit at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, executed the first combat Extracted Container Delivery System, or XCDS, airdrop on 29 April 2013. The new airdrop method is designed to pull the bundles out of the aircraft at a faster rate than the current airdrop process, which improves the overall accuracy of the drop itself. With XCDS, an additional parachute attached to a group of bundles pulls them out of the aircraft together and at a faster speed, resulting in about a two-thirds smaller dispersion area on the ground. The first mission was carried out by a joint Air National Guard and active duty crew flying a C-130J deployed from Little Rock AFB, Arkansas.
