Daily Report

July 30, 2008

Stealth Duel

The Pentagon leadership should allow the Air Force to keep buying F-22s at least into the middle part of next decade, former USAF Secretary Michael Wynne told the Daily Report July 28. Why? Because around 2014, the F-35 stealth fighter...

North Has Plan

The air boss of Southwest Asia operations tells the New York Times that he has a “deliberate plan” that would position US and coalition airpower for the long haul in Iraq—the time after the major ground force redeployment. The Air...

Behind the “Grim” Reaper

Working under a rapid acquisition and development effort, Aeronautical Systems Center’s 703rd Aeronautical Systems Group at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, got the MQ-9 Reaper hunter-killer unmanned aerial vehicle to Afghanistan 18 months ahead of schedule, and earlier this month, it flew...

Bone and Sniper Off to SWA

At least one B-1B bomber equipped with a Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod left its home with the 34th Bomb Squadron at Ellsworth AFB, S.D., last week for a forward operating location in Southwest Asia, according to an Ellsworth photo release....

Tough Love

Former Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne thinks the service should be pitiless with losing contractors, so they’re not encouraged to endlessly protest important contracts. Excessively kind language, he said, leads the losers to think they only lost by a hair....

Out They Go 2

Kenneth Miller resigned from his post as a top Air Force acquisition official Monday, according to various news reports. Miller, who was one of the service’s key individuals in the KC-X tanker program, had earlier said he would leave following...

Prepping Aircraft, Pumping Gas

Airmen deployed to Manas AB, Kyrgyz Republic, recently set a new record in the amount of fuel offloaded by KC-135s to receiver aircraft in one day—more than a million pounds. The 376th Air Expeditionary Wing maintainers performed numerous quick-turns of...

More Missiles To Go?

The Great Falls Tribune reports that some community leaders around Malmstrom AFB, Mont.,—and other USAF missile bases—worry a new Administration might just decide to make further reductions in the nation’s nuclear weapons force. Malmstrom already stands to lose 50 of...

All for One

The 17th Operational Weather Squadron at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, has completed its consolidation of weather units in the Pacific region with the recent inactivation of the 11th OWS at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. The 17th OWS began this consolidation, an effort...

Air Sorties from SWA

Air Sorties in War on Terrorism, Southwest AsiaJuly 27, 2008 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 22 12 34 6,470 CAS/Armed Recon 25 68 93 19,031 Airlift 110 110 26,079 Air refueling 52 52 9,151 Total 289 60,731...