The Air Force’s new Chief of Staff, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, believes the Air Force must get back to the good old days of weapon systems development when it took only six years to field the F-15 fighter, once the...

According to the Air Force’s new acting Secretary, Pete Geren, the service has no intention of pitting the F/A-22 against the F-35 in budget battles. Both new fighters are needed, Geren assured an audience in Dallas Friday. Lockheed Martin is...

Hurricane Katrina tested USAF medical disaster response like never before, according to Air Force Surgeon General Lt. Gen. George Peach Taylor Jr. Speaking Monday at the AFA conference, Taylor said the roots of the Air Force’s disaster response were established...

US Central Command believes that, on Saturday, an airstrike using a precision guided munition killed the “senior al Qaeda terror consultant and foreign fighter facilitator known as ‘Sheik,’ ” who was in a house in Ubaydi in western Iraq. Officials...

Members of the 407th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron on a routine base-defense patrol outside Ali Base, Iraq, spied insurgents trying to set timers on rockets aimed at the base. The insurgents evidently spotted the security team and skedaddled without finishing...

Northrop Grumman and Raytheon say they expect in April to begin full-up flight tests of the B-2 stealth bomber with its new active electronically scanned array radar. Company reps at the AFA Air & Space Conference and Technology Expo provided...

Northrop Grumman is transforming the B-2 bomber as part of the long range strike plan still under development by the Air Force. (See our report here.) Besides the new radar, the B-2 gets a smart bomb rack assembly—giving it the...

Although the BRAC commission acquiesced to the Pentagon recommendation to strip the Pennsylvania Air National Guard’s 111th Fighter Wing at NAS Willow Grove of its A-10s, it included a caveat in its final report that the Pentagon should consider keeping...

As others had before them, BRAC commissioners criticized the timing of the 2005 base closure and realignment process, saying, in a chapter titled “Issues for Further Consideration,” which begins on p. 305 of their final report, that they had conducted...

The commander of the 81st Training Wing at Keesler AFB, Miss., Brig. Gen. Bill Lord, said Saturday that repairing the damage done by Hurricane Katrina to the base would take at least $500 million, according to the Associated Press service....

Air National Guardsmen from Alabama, Delaware, Kansas, and Mississippi pulled an expeditionary medical support (EMEDS) soft-sided hospital out of storage in Kansas—shaking it out for its first use. Put aside for homeland security emergencies, the EMEDS facility is now the...

Bring out the sniff dogs and check everything twice—or maybe not. In a gesture of goodwill, China sent a 747 loaded with 100 tons of Hurricane relief supplies to the international relief staging center at Little Rock AFB, Ark.

Really Major InfestationCall the 910th: There is only one unit in the Defense Department that has full-time, fixed-wing aerial spray capability—Air Force Reserve Command’s 910th Airlift Wing, Youngstown, Ohio. The unit has sent two specially equipped C-130s and 50 crew...

Support from around the country continues to flow into the Katrina devastated Gulf Coast. Even Air Force units in the upper Northwest are keeping the operations moving. Logistics readiness and aerial port airmen of AFRC’s 939th Air Refueling Wing, Portland...

Some 900 soldiers of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division working out of the New Orleans airport now have the cool comfort of an Air Force tent city, courtesy of the 4th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron. One soldier said it will...

The Air Force stuck out a “wanted sign” Friday, posting a draft RFP for the second phase of procurement of the Small Diameter Bomb. The Air Force must compete this phase, per direction from Congress last spring, following the conviction...

For those airmen fighting the war on terror in the Philippines, the Air Force has made getting decorations a shade easier. The vice commander of Pacific Air Forces now can approve all medals for airmen deployed for Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines,...

There are complaints galore over the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. As far as Adm. Timothy Keating is concerned the problem with US Northern Command’s efforts was that natural disaster response is not the command’s primary mission. Nonetheless, he told...

Military folk hard hit by Hurricane Katrina now have Tricare counselors up-close-and-personal at a number of evacuation sites to provide information about benefits, contact numbers, and claims procedures. Now, if they could just explain the rules to the rest of...

Two teams of Air Force paralegals have set up shop at Keesler AFB, Miss., to help airmen try to recover personal property or file a legal claim for reimbursement of property on base destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The base’s own...

September 9-11, 2005 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 31 21 – 52 CAS/Armed Recon 141 65 – 206 Airlift – – 495 495 Air refueling – – 124 124 Total 172 86 619 877 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation...