Daily Report

A new Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment monograph suggests that the Air Force should cut in half its buy of F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters to pay for the kind of force the service will need by 2028....

Pratt & Whitney has decided to move about 1,000 of its 11,000-person jet engine workforce in Connecticut to Columbus, Ga., Japan, and Singapore, according to am Associated Press report. The move primarily results from failed negotiations with the machinists union...

While not advocating a return to the draft, Lexington Institute’s Loren Thompson writes in a new paper that “the real driver of increasing [operation & maintenance] costs in the regular defense budget isn’t ‘rising optempo’ as frequently alleged, but rising...

“We absolutely have to think systems engineering—think the entire system—not some point solution to an individual problem that benefits one aspect of one program, or one aspect of one company,” Lt. Gen. Tom Owen, commander of Aeronautical Systems Center at...

An Air Force Accident Investigation Board was not able to determine why an MQ-1B Predator unmanned aerial vehicle that crashed May 13 (earlier reported as May 14) in Afghanistan lost contact with its ground control station, Air Combat Command announced...

A two-man US Air Force team from the 1st Communications Maintenance Squadron, part of the 435th Air Ground Operations Wing at Ramstein AB, Germany, has completed the final site survey that will enable installation of a tactical air navigation (TACAN)...

Security Forces airmen have increasingly since operations began in Southwest Asia served on six-month deployments in which they work outside bases, providing protection for VIPs to Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Those airmen on VIP watch, known as Personal Security Details, work...

Documents related to the May 22, 1968, crash of a C-130 in Laos has led Randi Knebel, the 83-year-old mother of CMSgt. Thomas E. Knebel, missing since the Vietnam War, to believe her son died in the crash. The Joint...

The trial of James W. Fondren Jr., a retired USAF lieutenant colonel and former Pentagon civilian employee who is accused of passing classified information to Tai Shen Kuo, an agent of China, began Sept. 21 in US District Court in...

Air Sorties in Southwest Asia, Sept. 20, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 33 30 63 11,754 CAS/Armed Recon 18 79 97 25,443 Airlift 151 151 34,789 Air refueling 53 53 12,535 Total 346 84,521 OIF=Operation Iraqi...