Mohammed Atta was Egyptian.

And now, members of the Egyptian Air Force are being trained to use modern avionics equipment, in Picayune, Mississippi: Egyptian military representatives getting training at Stennis airport. (Hat tip: TS.)

PICAYUNE, Miss. - Eight members of the Egyptian military are staying in Picayune for the next three months while they train on new avionics being installed on two Lockheed C-130s at Stennis International Airport at Kiln.

The Egyptian Air Force owns the two planes.

Ned Formby of Picayune owns and operates Memphis Aerospace Corp. Formby’s company designs the hardware to be able to withstand the tremendous stress it must undergo in a cargo plane capable of making landings on hard, short fields. …

Formby’s company is a subcontractor to Memphis International of Norcross, Ga., which has the contract through Foreign Military Sales, an agency of the Pentagon, to upgrade the avionics of the Egyptian C-130s.

Once the work is completed, some of Formby’s people will be flying out to Egypt where they will work on the 24 other C-130s used by the Egyptian military.

“They are our closest Arab ally in the region,” Formby said of Egypt.

Here’s how close this “Arab ally” is, from a demonstration at Cairo University in February of this year: