South Dakota Republican
Sen. John Thune claims the Air Force misled the BRAC commission about a federal lawsuit affecting the B-1Bs that fly out of Dyess AFB, Tex. Residents near Dyess filed suit in 2000 over noise along training routes. (Read our story here.) Thune wants to save Ellsworth AFB, S.D., which, under the Pentagon’s BRAC proposals, would shift its B-1B bombers to Dyess and be shut down. He says the lawsuit is more threatening than the Air Force makes it out to be.
The Air Force on March 12 awarded contract modifications worth a combined $2.4 billion to Boeing to procure an undisclosed number of E-7 Wedgetail as part of the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase and continue work on the airborne battle management aircraft’s radar.