US Air Force’s largest aircraft used to remove $5B in illegal drugs from Calif.

The U.S. Air Force used its largest aircraft to move $5 billion worth of illegal drugs from a storage facility in California to eventually be destroyed in the Midwest. 

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The initiative, called “Operation Burnout,” was the “largest recorded aerial transport of hazardous narcotics for destruction,” the Air Force said in a Tuesday news release. The operation spanned from May 18 to May 20 and started at the March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, where 50 metric tons of seized narcotics were airlifted by a C-5M Super Galaxy to the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. 

The drugs, which included substances such as fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine, were then transported to a facility in Indiana for “final destruction,” the Air Force said. 

Gerald Mapp, a senior advisor to the Drug Enforcement Administration for the U.S. Department of Defense, said in the news release that the recent environmental closures of major facilities that destroy hazardous materials left authorities with growing piles of seized drugs. 

“We have to store this stuff once we seize it in an approved warehouse, but more stuff is always coming in,” he said. “You have to look at fentanyl as a major problem — one pill can kill you.”

Authorities said the C-5M Super Galaxy helped expedite the drug destruction process and that it also helped crews avoid ambush, theft and other logistical issues.

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“If we had not partnered with the Air Force, we would have had to drive it across several states, which would have taken tons of manpower and days to do,” Rashida Weathers-Hurst, a section chief for the DEA’s office of forensic sciences, said in the news release. 

According to the Air Force’s website, the C-5M Super Galaxy is mainly used to transport cargo and people for the U.S. Department of Defense. It has five sets of landing fear, 28 wheels and four engines, and it can carry 281,001 pounds of cargo. 

In California, authorities have been cracking down on illegal drugs in recent years, especially fentanyl. California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office announced in March that over the past two years, California Highway Patrol officers seized 2,549 pounds of drugs, including more than 50,110 grams of fentanyl.