Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan, has become the first forward-deployed expeditionary base to get a first sexual assault response coordinator. The move is part of USAF’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program. It aims to ensure that deployed personnel have specialists on base to handle sexual assault reports and offer support for victims. A key component of the SAPR program, which stood up in June, is that victims can now make confidential reports of sexual assault without notifying the chain of command or the office of special investigations. That is a factor that may cause numbers of reported assaults to increase. By some estimates, 80 percent of assaults go unreported.
Bell Textron has won DARPA's contest for a no-runway, high-speed drone that will prove out technologies useful for special operations forces and possibly the Air Force's Agile Combat Employment concept. Bell's design converts a tiltrotor to a jet-powered aircraft able to fly at up to 450 knots.