Loh to USAF: Ellsworth 
Move “Irresponsible”: Retired Air Force Gen. Mike Loh is making one last effort to help save Ellsworth AFB, S.D., from the BRAC axe. The former Air Force vice chief of staff provided videotaped testimony against the Pentagon plan to shutter Ellsworth and shift its B-1B bombers to Dyess AFB, Tex., when BRAC commissioners traveled to South Dakota in June. Loh has now written a letter to the commission because he is “more convinced now than I was in June that the Pentagon is wrong,” he tells the Rapid City Journal. In his letter, Loh claims the Pentagon decision to downsize to a single B-1B base is “irresponsible.”
House lawmakers unveiled a new reconciliation package July 15 with $60 billion for defense, $290 billion less than the Pentagon has been seeking, a day after a Senate vote to advance the annual defense policy bill failed—developments that show the perilous state of the Pentagon’s ambitious plans for fiscal 2027.