Lt. Col. Dave Cotton, chief of training with the 412th Operations Group at Edwards AFB, Calif., recently achieved an extremely rare milestone for active duty pilots—hitting 12,000 accident-free flight hours. A 1974 Air Force Academy graduate, Cotton hit his mandatory retirement cap of 28 years in 2002, but due to the war on terror, he was retained to fill a key position. “I joined the Air Force to fly airplanes, that was really the bottom line,” Cotton said. He is up for re-retirement in 2006.
The Air Force budget would grow to $234 billion while Space Force spending would shrink to $26 billion under the White House's yearly ask.