Daily Report

The B-52H will be redesignated the B-52J or possibly B-52K when it gets a new radar and new engines, but the Air Force hasn’t yet decided what will constitute the new B-52 variant, according to Col. Louis Ruscetta, senior materiel leader for the program. The program has also developed a new estimate of what the re-engining will cost and is about to submit it to Congress, but Ruscetta said reports of a 50 percent overrun are far overstated. In fact, he said he sees no overruns on the horizon.

Just over two years ago, the Air Force announced it was buying limited quantities of Textron’s AT-6s and Sierra Nevada Corp.’s A-29s. Now, the service is seemingly set to get rid of the aircraft, most likely in the form of a foreign military sale. Should such a sale occur, it would mark the end of a prolonged back-and-forth. At the moment, Air Force Special Operations Command and Air Combat Command operate three A-29s and two AT-6s, respectively.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has two new squadrons of F-35s at its disposal in Alaska just as “quite a bit of action” has taken place in the combatant command’s area of responsibility and the “advanced threats” there are becoming “more lethal,” said the squadrons’ wing commander, Col. David J. Berkland. Berkland’s 354th Fighter Wing at Eielson Air Force Base received the 54th of its 54 F-35s in April, giving Alaska—when also counting the F-22s at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson—the “largest concentration of fifth-gen, combat-coded airpower in the world” within its borders, Berkland said. The wing's priority now is to "shift ourselves into full operational capability to conduct agile combat employment operations throughout the Pacific AOR at austere locations," he said. 

The Tactical Boost Glide program and the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept still have value, even though the programs they support are either in source selection or flight testing, said Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, head of Air Force Materiel Command. The Air Force is pursuing the TBG and HAWC programs jointly with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. “I do think there’s value in completing” the two hypersonic projects with DARPA, Richardson said. “We can reduce risk by letting those programs run.” He said there’s a difference between “whether they’re required, or inform” the operational systems.

Looking to address Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s operational imperatives, cyber leaders with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center recently analyzed their networks and systems to see how they would hold up against cyber threats. The leaders came away with a “sobering” observation: Key IT networks and data centers were secure, but the networks that support base facilities, weapons systems, and infrastructure were less so.

After years of wrangling in Congress and more than a dozen failed bills, President Joe Biden signed the largest expansion of Veterans Affairs health care in 30 years, adding more than 5 million eligible veterans but leaving some waiting up to 10 years for phase-in periods or without coverage for chronic conditions. “Veterans of the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan did not only face dangers in battle, they were breathing toxic smoke from burn pits,” Biden said before signing the act into law. The bill immediately gives 23 conditions presumptive status, making service members eligible for care without proving that brain, respiratory, or other cancers were service-related.