After signing an agreement with the Ethiopian government last November, the Air Force is helping to modernize Arba Minch Airport in southwest Ethiopia, reports Addis Fortune, Ethiopia’s largest English-language newspaper. Workers are extending the airport’s 9,170 foot, hard-surface runway, and making facility and service improvements, so that the site could potentially accommodate USAF airlifters, according to the report. The airport is located about 340 miles south of the country’s capital, Addis Ababa. Seventeenth Air Force at Ramstein AB, Germany, supervises USAF’s air-related outreach activities on the African continent, including those to build the capacity of partner nations’ air forces. (For more, see Engagement in Africa from the Air Force Magazine archives)
Senior U.S. lawmakers expressed frustration that they are being cut out of some of the Trump administration’s most central decisions on military policy and spending. Their concerns, which are shared on both sides of the aisle, concern the budget reconciliation process as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plans to slash…