Daily Report

April 30, 2014

On Your Mark-Up, Get Set, Go

The House Armed Services Committee began releasing its mark-ups of the Fiscal 2015 defense authorization bill on Tuesday. Four of the six subcommittees: intelligence, emerging threats, and capabilities; strategic forces; seapower and projection forces; and military personnel, will begin mark-ups...

More Bombers for the Navy Decade?

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower and projection forces panel, said the Air Force’s plan to buy 80-100 bombers is inadequate. Speaking with defense reporters in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, Forbes said he doesn’t have...

McCain Calls for IG Look into EELV

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) laid into senior USAF leadership on Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, saying he had grave concerns regarding the structure of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program and the acquisition process surrounding it. McCain...

AFRC Stays, For Now

The Air Force will not move to close down Air Force Reserve Command in 2015 despite a recommendation by the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force to do so, Secretary Deborah Lee James told Senate legislators Tuesday....

USAF and the Numbers Balance

Senior Air Force leaders said they are still studying a proposal from the National Commission on the Structure of the Air Force to transfer some 36,000 airmen from the Active Duty to the Air Reserve Components. Speaking during a Senate...

Westover Falls Victim to Sequestration

The 439th Airlift Wing at Westover ARB, Mass., will lose half of its C-5B aircraft due to federal budget cuts and the continuing impacts of sequestration. Eight Galaxies will transfer from Westover to JBSA-Lackland, Texas, beginning in 2015, states an...

East Europe’s Air Umbrella

p, .Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel met with Estonian Defense Minister Sven Mikser and Czech Republic Minister of Defense Martin Stropnicky at the Pentagon on Tuesday to discuss ways to bolster NATO activities in the Baltics in response to Russia’s aggression...

DOD Releases Suicide Numbers

There were 522 suicide deaths among service members in 2012, according to the newly released DoD Suicide Event Report. Of those, 319 suicides were among Active Duty service members and 203 were in the reserve components. Fifty-seven airmen took their...

Taking a Pause

CMSAF James Cody called on airmen to “commit to creating an environment where every airman is treated with dignity and respect” in his latest Roll Call, released April 28. Cody emphasized that both commitment and courage are needed to defeat...

Dark Spartan’s First Flight

The first fully configured MC-27J special operations aircraft took to the air for the first time on a test flight from Turin, Italy, announced manufacturer Alenia Aermacchi this week. The mini gunship, which is based on the C-27J Spartan, boasts...