The Air Force plans to hold a selective early retirement board—SERB—targeting lieutenant colonels and colonels beginning on Jan. 8. In July, the service said it must shed in Fiscal 2007 some 8,000 officers, including hundreds of twice-deferred 0-5s and 0-6s not already selected for promotion to brigadier general. It wants to get volunteers to leave the service by Sept. 1, 2007 (not Sept. 30, as we reported earlier), but, if not, the SERB will identify the officers that must go.
A combined Navy and Air Force program is seeking to build a smaller version of a ubiquitous air-to-air missile that could give advanced aircraft, such as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, greater magazine depth in a high-end fight.