The Air National Guard boss, Lt. Gen. Craig McKinley has no illusions about the state of the Air Guard fighter force, which generally “has always had older equipment than the Air Force,” he told the On Guard in a year-end interview. It was an ANG F-15C that disintegrated in mid-air in November, prompting the extended stand-down of the F-15 Eagle fleet. McKinley reminds us, “That airplane was a 1980 F-15C model, and we have older F-15s than that in some of our units. … We need to be very cautious about preserving the resources we have, having a plan to modernize those and to be extremely careful so that we don’t put our pilots at risk when we fly these older aircraft.”
The Space Development Agency says it’s on track to issue its next batch of missile warning and tracking satellite contracts this month after those awards were delayed by the Pentagon’s decision to divert funds from the agency to pay troops during this fall’s prolonged government shutdown.
