Acting Secretary of the Air Force John P. Roth, NORAD’s Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, U.S. Space Command’s Gen. James H. Dickinson, Spark Tank, and more from Day 3 of the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium.
The Mitchell Institute is proud to release episode 12 of its “Aerospace Advantage” podcast: “Securing Tomorrow’s Skies: A Conversation with ACC Commander General Mark Kelly.” One of the Air Force’s key mission areas is gaining control of the sky—a crucial objective given that no military function can succeed if subject to attack from hostile airpower. While the service is in the midst of modernization with types like the F-35, it must also think about the capabilities it seeks to procure in future decades. Gen. Kelly provides insights into this process and how he expects the mission to evolve given the future threat environment.
Col. Timothy Danielson has been relieved as 71st Flying Training Wing commander at Vance Air Force Base, the Air Force announced Feb. 26. Maj. Gen. Craig Wills, 19th Air Force commander, relieved Danielson for a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to effectively command the 71st FTW, according to the release.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. LeRoy Manor, whose distinguished military career included commanding the 1970 training of a task force to liberate American prisoners of war far inside enemy lines in Vietnam, died Thursday at the age of 100.
Weeks after the launch of an earlier trio of Chinese military satellites, another trio of spacecraft successfully took off Feb. 24 aboard a Long March 4C rocket on a clandestine mission that analysts believe may involve spying on foreign naval forces. China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported the Yaogan 31 satellites “will be used for electromagnetic environment surveys and other related technology tests.”
The U.S. Air Force says it will be distributing bottled water to thousands of residents and business owners near its base in suburban Phoenix until at least April, marking the latest case of chemicals from military firefighting efforts contaminating the water supply in a nearby community.
A former contractor with the U.S. Air Force pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio on Feb. 25 to illegally taking approximately 2,500 pages of classified documents. According to court documents, Izaak Vincent Kemp, 35, of Fairborn, was employed as a contractor at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) from July 2016 to May 2019, and later as a contractor at the U.S. Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC).
In a statement Feb. 25, the company said "the schedule has been refined to match the demand of Blue Origin's commercial customers." The statement goes on to explicitly note that this is because Blue Origin lost out on a big government contract. "This updated maiden flight target follows the recent Space Force decision to not select New Glenn for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 Launch Services Procurement (LSP)."
It wasn’t until Chin was older that she realized the full significance of her father’s passion for flying: Jack Chin, the son of a Chinese immigrant father and a mother with African American and white ancestry, served during World War II as a Tuskegee Airman—the name for members of a segregated unit in the U.S. Army Air Forces who became the first Black military pilots in the country’s history. Chin enlisted at just 17 and graduated from the last class of Tuskegee Airmen in 1946. To commemorate Black History Month, Karen Chin sat down with CU Boulder Today to share memories of her father, who died in 2000—and to reflect on what she hopes younger generations will take away from the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen.
