Reversing a split that caused a fair amount of grumbling over the summer, the Pentagon announced late Thursday that National Reconnaissance Office Director Donald Kerr has been appointed to a new Air Force post as the assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force for intelligence space technology. The appointment took effect Oct. 3. Kerr is the first person to be named NRO director who is not also the undersecretary of the Air Force. (DR, 09/22/05) Undersecretary Ronald Sega is also the DOD executive agent for space. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last month that all interested parties, including the Air Force, believe that splitting away the NRO job made better management sense, but that the Air Force and NRO should remain “closely connected.”
It'll take up to 18 months for Lockheed Martin to deliver the 100 or so F-35s that went directly from production line to storage, awaiting the completion of Tech Refresh 3 testing. Customers haven't complained about the order in which the backlog is being delivered.