Daily Report

April 2, 2008

Saving Time and Money

Northrop Grumman reports that it has shaved center fuselage assembly time on the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, cutting it about 28 percent since the system development and demonstration phase. In an April 1 release, the company notes that...

Time to Start Looking at Minuteman Successor

Gen. Robert Kehler, commander of Air Force Space Command, expressed confidence in the Air Force’s fleet of Minuteman III ICBMs Tuesday, saying the force is nearly modernized to be solvent through 2020, but he said any extension beyond that needs...

Turning a Corner in Space

Since the Air Force handles nearly 90 percent of the Defense Department’s space-related programs, Air Force Space Command boss Gen. Robert Kehler told defense reporters in Washington Tuesday, “We believe the space mission is primarily an Air Force responsibility.” In...

Lagging Behind

Much advancement has been made in fielding new unmanned aircraft vehicles and getting actionable information to warfighters on the ground in real time. However, the back end of the US military’s UAV systems of systems enterprise—the collection and analysis of...

Survey Says

What’s the best unmanned sensor aircraft available today to support the warfighter on the ground? “It’s a thing called information,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles Shugg, commander of the Joint Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center of Excellence at Creech AFB,...

In for the Long Haul

The 50-year-old B-52 bomber is just too valuable to consider discarding it as long as it can be modified with new technology and not be more expensive than buying new bombers, says Lt. Col. Grey Morgan, Air Combat Command’s B-52...

Jamming Threats Proliferating, Kehler Says

In addition to the pursuit of militarized anti-satellite capabilities by certain countries, Gen. Robert Kehler, head of Air Force Space Command, told defense reporters in Washington Tuesday that a number of simpler technologies from the Cold War are proliferating, including...

Rewriting Jointness

US Joint Forces Command is getting away from using the term “interdependency” to articulate the US military’s vision for jointness and instead prefers to use “a comprehensive approach.”” Interdependency was “overused” and “taken to extreme,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles...

Down to the Nitty Gritty

MIRA X, the world largest-known scanning electron microscope, has already saved the Air Force an estimated $70,000 since its arrival last September at the Oklahoma City ALC, at Tinker AFB, Okla., in discovering cracks and defects in aircraft engines and...

Muddying the Waters

The Air Force and California local and state officials are working to resolve how the service will redirect stormwater from the radar station at Pillar Point AFS into Pillar Point Harbor off the San Mateo coast between San Francisco and...

From Air Refueling to Airlift

The New York Air National Guard’s wing at Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station formally switched from the 107th Air Refueling Wing to the 107th Airlift Wing on Tuesday, according to a New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs...

Air Sorties From the Global War on Terrorism

Air Sorties in War on Terrorism, Southwest AsiaMarch 30, 2008 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 25 9 34 2,385 CAS/Armed Recon 48 38 86 7,240 Airlift 131 131 10,780 Air refueling 43 43 3,349 Total 294 23,754...