Ash Carter, Pentagon acquisition chief, said last week at a Washington conference that he recognizes USAF’s unique recapitalization challenges and continues to press on with a “family of systems” approach to handle long range strike and other critical missions to include intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance, electronic attack, penetrating attack, and more. “We’re working with the Air Force and over the next year we need to find our way ahead in all these areas,” Carter said, noting that not all the goals will be met, but many will have to be. Still, at a minimum, he aims to “provide an answer” in the coming year on the way forward for long range strike.
Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.