The North Dakota Air National Guard’s 119th Fighter Wing Happy Hooligans touted what they thought was a new flying safety record: more than 70,000 accident-free hours in the unit’s F-16 fighters. Unfortunately, it is not the most accident-free hours for an F-16 unit. That record, so far, goes to the South Carolina ANG’s 169th FW, which has amassed 101,000 major-accident-free flying hours in F-16s, reports the Associated Press news service. Both records are might impressive.
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.
