The Air Force released its force shaping numbers for Fiscal 2007, but it isn’t yet ready to talk about the following two years when it expects to complete a drawdown of some 40,000 “positions.” In an interview with Daily Report, Col. Phil Odom, chief of military force shaping policy, said that the service’s “2008 targets are driven by the success of 2007.” He emphasized that plans are still in development but that the service has calculated potential yearly “targets,” including the earlier revealed quota of about 8,000 officers for 2007. Odom noted that, as of Oct. 19, the Air Force had reached 59.2 percent of its 2007 goal for officers and that does not include the thousand or so it will put through elimination boards early next year.
An important U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.