The Air Force needs to look at different ways to protect, resource, and design its network so that officials can accelerate the process of adding and utilizing new technology, said Lt. Gen. Bill Lord, chief of warfighting integration in the Air Force Secretariat. Speaking last week at AFA’s CyberFutures Conference just outside of Washington, D.C., Lord said he wants to see the service become “device agnostic.” In other words, that means the ability for government-issued Blackberries, iPhones, and other types of devices to work off of the same network without experiencing any compatibility issues. However, he cautioned that 24th Air Force at Lackland AFB, Tex., the Air Force’s cyber operations arm, is a “small crowd and can be quickly overloaded” with the onslaught of new technology. “There is huge pressure to bring devices onto the network, but then we have to be able to manage those devices,” Lord said.
Boeing received a $2.47 billion Air Force contract Nov. 25 for 15 more KC-46s, bringing to 183 the number of Pegasus tankers on contract to all customers, foreign and domestic. The new contract—for Lot 12 of the initially planned KC-46 buy—is to be completed by 2029.
