Gen. William Looney, writes in a commentary on his first year as head of Air Education and Training Command, that AETC faced a more trying year than usual, with one of its premier training centers devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Among the command’s accomplishments, Looney noted that it had graduated 22,000 new enlisted airmen even as it restructured Basic Military Training “to match a typical” Air and Space Expeditionary Force cycle. AETC’s 19th Air Force flew nearly 560,000 hours, graduating 1,259 pilots and almost 20,000 new aircrew members. Collectively, writes Looney, the command “recruited, trained, and educated more than 432,000 airmen.”
The Space Development Agency says it’s on track to issue its next batch of missile warning and tracking satellite contracts this month after those awards were delayed by the Pentagon’s decision to divert funds from the agency to pay troops during this fall’s prolonged government shutdown.
