The Army for the first time has invited the Air Force to participate in its annual “Unified Endeavor” exercise at Ft. Drum, N.Y. The goal is to talk airpower capabilities with senior members of the 10th Mountain Division, which shortly will rotate into the lead force of Joint Task Force-76 in Afghanistan. Airmen provided the training work for coordination with the theater air and space component. The lessons covered items ranging from working with USAF’s tactical air control party airmen in the field all the way up to coordinating major ground movements with the theater’s air operations center.
A top Pentagon tech official called on industry this week to help the military develop “lighter, more efficient” directed energy weapons designed to go on aircraft and conduct special operations missions or down drones—areas where the Air Force’s directed energy efforts have been quiet as of late.