Air Combat Command boss, Gen. Ronald Keys, who announced last week his decision to retire this fall, told an audience in Virginia Beach, Va., last week that the Air Force diligently applied its surveillance assets from large airframes to unmanned aerial vehicles to tackle the threat of improvised explosive devices in Southwest Asia because combatant commanders had a “hazy feeling” they would help, reports Bob Brewin of Government Executive. Speaking at the Transformation Warfare Conference sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International, Keys called such use a “waste of assets.” He wants to find the IED-making networks and stop them at the source.
As the U.S. war with Iran intensifies, the Pentagon is rushing more warplanes to the region, deploying Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons and F-35 Lightning II fighters to the Middle East, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.