Daily Report

June 4, 2009

Paradigm Buster

The Air Force and Lockheed Martin flew the experimental Advanced Composite Cargo Aircraft for the first time on Tuesday at the service’s Plant 42 in Palmdale, Calif. The initial demonstration flight lasted about 87 minutes. “The aircraft was a real...

R.I.P. CSAR-X

The Air Force on Tuesday pounded another nail in the coffin of its now-cancelled CSAR-X program, by “terminating for convenience” its $712 million contract with Boeing from 2006 for the system development and demonstration phase of the HH-47 rescue helicopter....

Thinking Globally

Air Force Global Strike Command is tentatively scheduled to have its activation ceremony on Aug. 7 at Barksdale AFB, La., Maj. Gen. Floyd Carpenter, the new commander of 8th Air Force, told the Senate Armed Services strategic forces panel yesterday....

Burning Down the Risk

The General Accounting Office and some members of Congress are skittish about concurrency—testing aircraft while building more at the same time—in the F-35 stealth fighter program, but they shouldn’t be unduly worried. That’s the word from Marine Corps Maj. Gen....

SBIRS Production Contract

The Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.5-billion contract for the third Space Based Infrared System satellite, GEO-3, and the third SBIRS sensor payload, HEO-3, destined for a separate spacecraft. Lockheed announced the deal Tuesday. “The improved infrared event...

Bomber Team Endures

Boeing is “very happy” in its partnership with Lockheed Martin to develop technologies and eventually a proposal for the next generation bomber, and the arrangement will stay intact for now, Boeing Military Aircraft President Chris Chadwick told reporters Wednesday. The...

Sleepless in Crystal City

What keeps the new F-35 program manager up at night? Cuts in production, which would have the effect of unraveling major threads of the program, says Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Heinz, whom the Senate confirmed on May 21 for...

Plenty of Room

F-35 program manager Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Heinz says there’s plenty of room to expand production of the F-35 should the Pentagon want to steepen the curve of production and build more aircraft sooner. “There’s no reason” why the...

Reports Greatly Exaggerated

Boeing has plenty of military work and good prospects, Chris Chadwick, president of the company’s military aircraft sector, said Wednesday. Deflecting punditry suggesting that Boeing was mortally gored by the Pentagon’s recent spate of budget cuts and terminations, Chadwick told...

Lucky 13

Goodfellow AFB, Tex. has long been a hub for the training of imagery analysts who subsequently served as sensor operators for Predator unmanned aerial vehicles. Now, as of May 27, it is also one of the few Air Force installations...

Nuclear Posture Review Tidbits

The Pentagon Tuesday issued a two-page fact sheet on the nuclear posture review that is underway with the intent of establishing US nuclear deterrence policy, strategy, and force posture for the next five to 10 years. It will also provide...

Air Sorties in War on Terrorism, Southwest Asia

June 1, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 26 19 45 6,141 CAS/Armed Recon 26 75 101 14,830 Airlift 150 150 20,791 Air refueling 52 52 6,798 Total 348 48,560 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance...