Air Force Materiel Command personnel at Robins AFB, Ga., are about halfway through Phase 1 of USAF’s new Sniper pod program. Lockheed Martin originally designed the next generation Sniper targeting pod for use on fighters in a traditional bombs-on-target role. However, it has proved enormously successful in both Iraq and Afghanistan as an intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance device. (Read “Pilots Praise New F-15E Targeting Pods” here.) Personnel at AFMC’s Warner Robins Air Logistics Center gained a workload of about 4,300 hours when it took on the Sniper program in a work/share partnership with Lockheed. By June 2006, the ALC expects to enter Phase 2—increasing its workload to more than 7,000 hours—in which it will handle electro-optical test and repair. Lockheed technicians are training the ALC Sniper workforce eventually to handle the majority of repair work.
Clarence E. “Bud” Anderson, the only living American triple ace pilot, was honorarily promoted from colonel to brigadier general in a rare and historic ceremony presided over by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. Brown called Anderson, 100, a “wrecking ball” of a pilot who “many of…