The Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently began funding several new initiatives that hope to improve defense operations from process prediction—understanding the surprise factor in complex systems—to analyzing blogs to determine patterns to aid in the war against terrorism. In other research, AFOSR believes it has developed a break-through in high energy laser technology involving an electric oxygen iodine laser research, solving a 30-year-old problem.
An important U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.