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.
The Space Development Agency says it’s on track to issue its next batch of missile warning and tracking satellite contracts this month after those awards were delayed by the Pentagon’s decision to divert funds from the agency to pay troops during this fall’s prolonged government shutdown.
