Air Force Gen. Lance Smith, head of US Joint Forces Command, told defense reporters in Washington yesterday that commanders, including Air Combat Command chief Gen. Ronald Keys, “understand” that airmen and sailors are needed to fill “skill shortages,” i.e. to serve in-lieu-of soldiers in the war on terror. (Keys has stated that the ILO effort is costing him money he doesn’t have.) Smith said, “In areas where they can contribute, they will likely be asked to continue to contribute,” despite news reports to the contrary. In fact, the Air Force personnel chief, Lt. Gen. Roger Brady, believes the call for ILO airmen could go up.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
