Air Com
bat Command chief Gen. Ronald Keys, plugging the Air Force’s push to be executive agent for all the Pentagon’s high-flying unmanned aerial vehicles, said there’s “no good reason” why the sensors on Army and Air Force UAVs should be different, since they feed a common network that mostly wants the same kind of information. Having different sensors is just one of the elements that USAF leaders believe add unnecessary development and support costs, he told reporters at a press conference at Bolling AFB, D.C., earlier this week. Keys also warned that unless one service—his—is in charge of orchestrating UAVs, midair collisions with manned aircraft and “frequency fratricide” of jamming each other’s communications is inevitable. The Army and friends, of course, take a different view.
Gene Smith, Former POW and AFA Chair, Dies at 91
Jan. 19, 2026
Lt. Col. Richard “Gene” Smith, who overcame five and a half years as a prisoner of war in the notorious Hanoi Hilton from 1967 until 1973, died Jan. 16. He was one day short of his 91st birthday.
