Daily Report

Oct. 13, 2009

Keep ‘em Coming

Air National Guard boss Lt. Gen. Harry Wyatt III wants to see the creation of more associate pairings of his units with their active duty and Air Force Reserve Command counterparts that go beyond the changes already being instituted under...

Blame It on a Bug

Yes, Air Force Space Command investigators have determined that a large insect was responsible for the chain of events that led to a transport vehicle carrying non-nuclear Minuteman III ICBM components overturning in a rural area near Minot AFB, N.D.,...

No End in Sight

Members of the 55th Wing from Offutt AFB, Neb., and their RC-135 Rivet Joint electronic-signals-collecting aircraft have been deployed in the US Central Command area of responsibility every day for the past 7,000 days—that’s since August 1990. And there’s no...

New Training Unit

The Air Force reactivated the 479th Flying Training Group Oct. 2, this time at NAS Pensacola, Fla., where it will lead the service’s newly structured combat systems officer training starting next May. Per BRAC 2005, the Air Force is consolidating...

Small Talk

Boeing announced Monday that its industry team developing a small diameter bomb II offering for the Air Force concluded a 42-month risk-reduction phase on Sept. 29. This phase concluded with a flight test of its SDB II design that, dropped...

WorldView-2 on Orbit

Members of the 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., successfully launched DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 high-resolution commercial imagery satellite into polar orbit Oct. 8 aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. The satellite is now undergoing a calibration and checkout...

Coping with Disaster

The US and Indian air forces will train together during the next installment of the Cope India exercise that begins on Thursday and runs through Oct. 24 at Air Force Station Agra in Uttar Predesh, India. This year’s activities will...

Airman Receives Cheney Award

Capt. Daniel Santoro, a C-130E instructor pilot with the 37th Airlift Squadron at Ramstein AB, Germany, received the Cheney Award from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz Oct. 8 during a ceremony in the Pentagon. Santoro was recognized...

Ex-Air America Pilots May Get Help

Congressional defense overseers want the Director of National Intelligence to assess the advisability of extending federal retirement benefits to members of Air America—the CIA-run covert air force that gained notoriety for its role during the Vietnam War—who served prior to...

Air Sorties in Southwest Asia

Oct. 7-8, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 52 58 110 12,793 CAS/Armed Recon 46 177 223 27,339 Airlift 317 317 37,315 Air refueling 104 104 13,510 Total 754 90,957 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance...