Service members from Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa forward deployed to Uganda to conduct search and recovery operations of human remains and the flight data recorder from an Ilyushin II 76 aircraft wreckage.

All 11 people aboard the Soviet-era IL-76 freighter died in Uganda after it crashed into Lake Victoria shortly after takeoff from Entebbe International Airport on March 9, 2009.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Gregory Joachim, U.S. Embassy, Uganda Defense and Army Attache, the U.S. contracted IL-76 was carrying tents and water purification units to Mogadishu in support of the African Union mission in Somalia.

"The Ugandan response was quick and they were able to rescue some fisherman and debris," he said. "The wreckage is believed to be under 24-26 meters of water and 10 meters of silt."

The Government of Uganda requested U.S. assistance in recovering the victims, retrieving the black box and flight data information and support in providing advisory and technical services to the accident investigation.

Lake Victoria is the second largest fresh water lake in the world.

"This is a search, classify and map mission. They just give us a big area and we use our different sonar systems to get a detailed map of what's down there," said sonar technician Petty Officer Michael Beuregard. " A lot of times you can't tell 100 percent what something is but you can tell that something is there and in a situation like this, chances are it's part of what we are looking for."

The team brought three types of sonar systems, including both unmanned under water vehicles and boat-towed systems.

"We can program unmanned vehicles, put them in the water and go. They have a very good picture quality because you're not effected by surface conditions and they are very accurate on giving you marks, " he said. "Some of the benefits of the towed systems is we get real time data. With the unmanned vehicles we have to recover them and then download the data."

The tail of the aircraft, believed to hold flight data information has not yet been found. As wreckage is hopefully identified with the Sonar systems, divers will go down in an effort to find and retrieve the aircraft flight data information.

"U.S. service members are in the Horn of Africa to build relationships with partner nations. Tragedy came to Ugandans, they asked for our help and we came," said Rear Admiral Anthony Kurta, CJTF-HOA commander. "Personnel recovery is an important part of CJTF-HOA's mission. This time we have deployed a team specifically to support the Ugandans in their recovery operations. We work beside Ugandan military forces on a regular basis as part of our efforts to strengthen their own security capacity."
CJTF-HOA employs an indirect approach to counter violent extremism. Through a strategy of cooperative conflict prevention the task force helps build the internal capacities of countries at risk to prevail against extremist exploiting instability.

CJTF-HOA personnel use military-to-military mentorship as the cornerstone to building partner country security capacity and support development by building schools, clinics and hospitals and conducting Medical Civil Action and Veterinary Civil Action projects in the Horn of Africa.