On Sept. 9, Creech AFB, Nev., experienced a failure of SIPRnet, an internal military network that parallels but is not connected to the internet, Maj. Malinda Singleton of Air Combat Command public affairs confirmed Thursday. Buzzfeed reported the network failure Wednesday and suggested potential connections between the SIPRnet problems and a series of recent remotely piloted aircraft strike errors made by US forces in Syria, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Singleton said, “there is no correlation between SIPR network issues and the disruption of the MQ-1 and MQ-9 flight operations. As to concern about the Sept. 9 SIPR connectivity issue, the investigation into the issue is ongoing, and for operational security reasons, we typically don’t discuss the specific impacts of a network outage.” She also said that “the network is up and running” again at Creech.
A new Air Force plan for how many fighters it needs in the next decade marks a sharp upturn from what it thought it needed just seven years ago. But analysts worry that the aspirational plan now in Congress' hands doesn’t make a tight enough connection to national strategy.
