Daily Report

House appropriators want to continue building additional C-17 airlifters, above the 205 aircraft the Pentagon set as the end, and to keep pressing forward with a second engine for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, again against Pentagon desires....

The A-10 Warthog force flying over Afghanistan since February has amassed some 12,000 mission hours and expended about 100 tons of ordnance as its provides close air support to coalition and International Security Assistance Force ground troops. The Hogs and...

USAF’s combat weather force is trying out a new approach to training that would consolidate training sites and resources for new airmen in the highly specialized field, essentially ensuring “they are prepared for the job and ready to deploy” as...

Since February a team of five workers with S&K Technologies has been taking an F-15D apart—and still has a way to go before it will have completely disassembled the fighter, probably in November—to enable the Air Force to study age...

According to Steve Schooner, co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at George Washington University Law School, the Defense Department plan to rebuild its acquisition workforce to 1998 levels by the year 2015 "is not only too slow, but it aspires to far too little." He made that dire claim during a July 21 hearing conducted by the House Armed Services Committee's temporary panel on defense acquisition reform. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on April 6, when he previewed his 2010 budget plans, said the Pentagon would convert 11,000 contractors and hire 9,000 new government acquisition professionals by 2015. Schooner maintains 1998 is a false marker since the "lion's share" of workforce cuts came before 1998. In his view, too, there is no way the DOD hiring plan can keep up with its "looming retirement crisis," in which DOD predicts some 50 percent of its acquisition force will be eligible to retire in the next five years. However, the lagging economy may have put the skids on some retirement plans, Shay Assad, director of defense procurement acquisition policy, told the lawmakers. He said there has been "a slowdown," but he acknowledged that leaves the department with "an aging workforce" that is still understaffed. Schooner maintained that since it took the department 20 years to reach this acquisition crisis, "it will take far more than five years of timid efforts to restore and reinvigorate the acquisition workforce."

Retired Lt. Gen. Lawrence Farrell Jr., now president of the National Defense Industrial Association, told the House Armed Services Committee’s defense acquisition reform panel July 21 (see above) that the acquisition process requires a “healthy tension” between operators who state...

At least two of the fabric specialists at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center at Robins AFB, Ga., where they do everything from maintaining parachutes and survival kits to sewing on uniform patches and manufacturing engine heat exchangers each have...

Air Sorties in War on Terrorism, Southwest AsiaJuly 20, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 25 26 51 8,386 CAS/Armed Recon 20 66 86 19,159 Airlift 37 37 26,898 Air refueling 55 55 9,216 Total 229 63,659...