Air Force Space Command officials said that technicians had powered down the equipment for Satellite Operations Center-52 at Onizuka AFS, Calif. SOC-52 had provided 36 years of 24-hour space support. The SOC-52’s final mission took place on Feb. 14, 2004, when its personnel placed the next-to-last Defense Support Program satellite into a perfect geosynchronous orbit, said officials. Onizuka itself is slated to close under the 2005 BRAC recommendations.
The Pentagon's research labs are ramping up their search for munitions that can be mass-produced—an effort likely to be buoyed by billions of dollars in the department's new fiscal 2027 budget request and tens of billions in the upcoming years. While the topline information shared about the President’s defense budget…