Beginning this year, the Air Force tightened tuition assistance criteria to mandate that airmen maintain a grade point average of 2.0 or higher to continue receiving funds toward an undergraduate university degree. “If it is not maintained, your records will be locked, tuition assistance will be denied, and you will have to pay to take classes to bring your GPA up,” said Alice Patton, training and education chief at Nellis AFB, Nev., in a Jan. 8 base release. Graduate students must meet higher GPA standards than undergraduates, maintaining at least a 3.0 GPA to continue receiving assistance, states the release. Under the new criteria, airmen keeping up those grades will be eligible for $4,500 a year or up to $250 per credit hour. “Otherwise, airmen would just be wasting their time as well as Air Force funds,” said Patton. (Nellis report by A1C Monet Villacorte)
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…