Daily Report

What “Starting Over” Costs: The Air Force spent $116.6 million to run the KC-X competition terminated last week by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the service reported in response to a query. Presumably, it will cost about as much to re-run...

Boeing Advanced Systems president Darryl Davis Monday said Boeing’s Phantom Works shop isn’t in any immediate danger of going out of business, but he did say that unless the Pentagon starts putting more money into advanced technology concepts, maintaining such...

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., announced Monday that its Predator family of unmanned aerial vehicles in use with the US and foreign militaries has eclipsed more than 500,000 flight hours, with 85 percent of that time spent in combat. These aircraft are also approaching the 50,000th mission mark, the company said. These milestones “give witness to the fact that the demand for our aircraft continues to grow,” because these platforms “are key contributors to mission success and saving lives in combat,” said Thomas Cassidy, president of GA-ASI’s Aircraft Systems Group. GA-ASI said it has produced more than 300 Predator-series aircraft to date. The family includes the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper used by the Air Force, the Sky Warrior Alpha used by the Army, among others. The company said the 500,000 hour milestone was reached during the armed reconnaissance flight of an MQ-1 July 26 over Iraq. MQ-1s have flown the vast majority of these hours. It was less than one month ago that the Air Force announced that the MQ-1 fleet alone surpassed more than 400,000 flight hours. Predator-series aircraft are now flying more than 20,000 hours a month supporting coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and providing surveillance of US borders, according to GA-ASI.

The Total Force team at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska that will operate and maintain new F-22 fighters and new C-17 airlifters formally marked achievement of initial operational capability by one of two F-22 squadrons and the C-17 unit early this month,...

On the eve of the Air Force nuclear summit, the special gray-beard task force chaired by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger has recommended that the service morphs Air Force Space Command into a new authority that brings nuclear-capable bomber units...

There’s more than rumor behind a purported shift of some or all of the Missouri Air National Guard’s 139th Airlift Wing from St. Joseph to Whiteman Air Force Base near Knob Noster, according to a News-Press report quoting Rep. Sam...

Senate Defense Appropriators last week passed their version of the 2009 defense spending bill, calling for nearly $488 billion, about $4 billion less than the President’s request. As part of the $101.8 billion directed toward aircraft procurement, the subcommittee markup...

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey believes that the "current $10 billion Air Force space strategy is under-resourced and severely constrained" and lays the blame on the "executive and Congressional national security establishment." In an after-action memo on his independent assessment of Air Force Space Command, he asserts that the "next Administration will have at most a year to analyze a series of difficult strategic and investment space decisions before US global superiority will start rapidly eroding." McCaffrey, who is now a defense consultant and also serves as an adjunct professor of international affairs, sent this memo to colleagues at the US Military Academy to foster "a wider debate and analysis." Among eight key judgments offered in the memo, he notes that the US will lose its ability to conduct covert military operations because of the proliferation of satellite intelligence among adversaries; terrorists will gain the capability to conduct electronic attacks against US satellites; terrorists and state actors "will actively prepare to attack US ground satellite control capabilities; and Russia will overshadow the US as the international leader in military space capabilities. He believes the nation's "underfunded national defense system"—focused on the war on terror with a "burn-rate of $12 billion per month"—has "distorted our modernization efforts and priorities."

The Air Force Reserve Command detachment at Moody AFB, Ga., that began in June 2007 to chart the course for the new Reserve A-10 operations at the Georgia facility is working toward activation of the 476th Fighter Group. Under USAF’s...

The 55th Electronic Combat Group at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., has sent its last Block 20 EC-130H Compass Call aircraft to a Waco, Tex., depot for upgrades to its avionics and mission systems. The upgrade effort for the Block 20 Compass...

Dark Landing in Antarctic: As if landing on a sheet of ice weren’t difficult enough in daylight, an Air Force C-17 aircrew on Sept. 11 utilized night vision goggles to make the first known landing in the dark in the...

Retired Col. Donald J.M. Blakeslee, one of the top scoring aces of World War II, died Sept. 3 at age 90 in Miami, Fla., per a notice in the Sun Sentinel. According to the official Air Force record, Blakeslee scored...

Air Sorties in War on Terrorism, Southwest AsiaSept. 11, 2008 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 29 19 48 9,002 CAS/Armed Recon 41 81 122 25,968 Airlift 134 134 32,950 Air refueling 60 60 12,772 Total 364 80,692...