On a visit to Ali Base, Iraq, new Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne responded to airmen’s questions about changing deployment cycles, saying he is not certain that the new four-month rotation is necessarily the right answer. He noted that three months was “simply too short,” but said “maybe six months is the better and right number.” Wynne acknowledged that he might revise that answer when he’s been in office longer than six weeks. He also noted, as have USAF leaders before him, that more airmen should be in the deployment pool. Wynne said that some 30 to 40 percent have not deployed, adding, “I think airmen should spend a certain amount of time down range” to gain a “firm understanding of what’s going on and why.”
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
