The Air Force plans to include billions of dollars in the upcoming five-year defense plan for a new long range strike platform, which DOD wants to see fielded by 2018, an unnamed defense official told Reuters news service. John Young, defense research and engineering director, voiced his concern earlier this month that the Air Force might miss the program objective memorandum deadline, thereby making it impossible to meet DOD’s aggressive timetable. The nameless official told Reuters that the Air Force would earmark “substantial resources” in the 2008 POM to make the 2018 deadline.
The Air Force kicked off one of its biggest exercises this week with the latest edition of Bamboo Eagle, featuring combined virtual and live training scenarios focused on test the command-and-control “nervous system” leaders need to operate on a complex joint battlefield spread over vast distances.
