During testimony on the 2007 budget, Air Force leaders have been using the term “Total Force” with an add-on “Integration.” It is the term for the service’s initiative to “provide America with a smaller, more capable, more affordable Air Force through new organizational constructs and a focus on Total Force across every emerging mission,” the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, Gen. John Corley, said at the first hearing of the new Commission on the Guard and Reserves. Corley explained that the Air Force had “perfected” the collaboration of its active, Guard, and Reserve components over the course of the 25-year existence of the phrase “Total Force.” Now, he said, the service is ready to “take it to the next level”—through TFI.
B-52 Stratofortress bombers marked a new first in Operation Epic Fury when some of the BUFFs flew over Iran carrying JDAM-guided gravity bombs, according to people familiar with the matter. The development signals a weakening of Iranian air defenses and a new use for the venerable bomber in the nearly…