President Bush on Feb. 26 formally nominated Texan S. Ward Casscells to replace William Winkenwerder as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Casscells, with degrees from Harvard and Yale, has served as Chief of Cardiology at the University of Texas at Houston and Memorial Hermann Hospital, among other positions. Winkenwerder has served at the Pentagon’s top doctor since October 2001. The President also has nominated Claude M. Kicklighter of Georgia to fill the Inspector General slot vacated by Joseph Schmidt in September 2005. (Thomas Gimble is serving as acting IG.) Kicklighter, one-time VA chief of staff and State Department special advisor for stabilization and security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been working as director of the Iraq-Afghanistan Transition Planning Group.
As with previous stealth aircraft unveilings, the Air Force’s imagery of the F-47 Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter has been doctored to keep adversaries guessing about its true shaping and design philosophy.