Air Force Academy and Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets have been taking in sights and sounds of the Air Force in action under a program called Operation Air Force, which is in its second year. The participating cadets—all in the top 20 percent of their classes—fall into different year groups, but usually only the senior level cadets get to deploy overseas. Some 52 senior cadets were sent to three air bases in Southwest Asia for their orientations. (Read here about the SWA group; here for those that visited Edwards AFB, Calif.; here for Buckley AFB, Colo.; and here for Eglin AFB, Fla.)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth foot-stomped the Pentagon's push for acquisition speed and contractor accountability in a Jan. 12 speech at Lockheed Martin’s production hub in Fort Worth, Texas—the heart of the department’s biggest acquisition program, the F-35.
