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irmen of the 494th Fighter Squadron deployed to Southwest Asia from RAF Lakenheath, Britain, flew 972 combat sorties and became the first unit to employ the Small Diameter Bomb in combat. And, that’s not all. The F-15E Strike Eagle unit also was first to employ new mission planning software. The unit covered both Afghanistan (82 missions) and Iraq (890 missions) during its four-month deployment that began just as Air Combat Command officially declared the SDB initially operational.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
