Daily Report

Sept. 14, 2011

Senate Panel Scalps F-35 Funding, Slows Production Ramp Up

The Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel on Tuesday cut $695 million from the F-35 strike fighter program and recommended that aircraft production remains at Fiscal 2011 levels for two more years. These moves are meant “to limit outyear cost growth,”...

Senate Panel Caps Next Year’s Defense Spending at Current Level

The Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel on Tuesday approved $513 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget (minus military construction) in Fiscal 2012, freezing next year’s spending at the Fiscal 2011 level. That mark is nearly $26 billion less than President...

Carter Goes Before SASC to Discuss Nomination

Ash Carter, current Pentagon acquisition executive, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday he’d be willing to consider relocating and re-stationing overseas-based US military forces, including moving some back the United States, if he becomes deputy defense secretary. This would...

22nd Air Force Changes Command

Maj. Gen. Wade Farris assumed command of Air Force Reserve Command’s 22nd Air Force at Dobbins ARB, Ga., succeeding Maj. Gen. James Rubeor. “My wife, Kim, and I are excited about this job and excited about being a part of...

Spotlight: SMSgt. David L. Newman

One of the Air Force’s 12 Outstanding Airmen of the Year for 2011, SMSgt. David L. Newman is a superintendent for knowledge operations management in US Strategic Command’s global operations directorate (J3) at Offutt AFB, Neb. Newman orchestrated more than...

Senators Push F-16 Sale to Taiwan

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) recently introduced legislation that would require the Obama Administration to sell 66 new F-16C/D fighters to Taiwan—a move that is sure to anger China. “This sale is a win-win in strengthening...

Passionate about Defense

The Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said the fiscal situation faced by the Defense Department is so dire that he may even consider voting for a tax increase for the first time in his political career. “I...

Dangerous Regression

The Pentagon may be confronted by steeper cuts than it’s prepared to make even if the so-called Congressional “super committee” established under the Budget Control Act of 2011 comes up with the minimum $1.2 trillion in cuts to federal spending...

First Hosted Payload Set for Launch

An experimental wide-angle infrared sensor known as “CHIRP” is set to enter the history books as the first military payload deployed on a civilian satellite. The Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload, intended to evaluate future space-based missile warning technology, will perch...

Hitchhiking the Galaxy

CHIRP, the Air Force’s first payload on a commercial satellite, is set to blast off from French Guiana aboard a French Ariane V rocket this weekend. Research experiments such as the Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload currently are the only military...