The Air Force has canceled the Red Flag-Alaska 13-2 exercise that was slated to take place in April, announced Pacific Air Forces officials on Wednesday. They cited “budgetary considerations” associated with sequestration as the reason. Air Force officials have previously warned that curtailing training exercises would be one of the unavoidable consequences of budget sequestration, which took effect on March 1, bringing with it severe spending cuts for the US military. PACAF considers RF-A to be its premier combat flying training exercise. It normally takes place for several weeks at Eielson AFB, Alaska, utilizing the Joint Pacific Alaskan Range Complex. US units from across the Pacific, along with British and Canadian forces, were scheduled to participate in this exercise iteration. “PACAF plans to honor the commitments made to our allies by extending an offer to them to continue to use the airspace and the range through unit-level training,” states the command’s March 27 release.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…