Pete Geren, the Acting Secretary of the Air Force, has some sobering news: The service’s recapitalizaton problem, he says, will still be around to haunt Air Force leaders 20 years from now. He believes the age of the service’s aircraft...

The Pentagon’s slowness in finalizing its latest Mobility Capabilities Study has a real dollars-and-cents cost. “A lot of suppliers are done” with work on the 180th and last C-17 under the existing multi-year contract, according to Boeing’s Ron Marcotte. Boeing...

A C-17 on Steroids: The Pentagon has also been slow to complete its Intratheater Lift Analysis, which is examining the question of how many C-130s the Air Force needs and whether some of that mission should be carried out by...

Gen. Michael Moseley, new Air Force Chief of Staff, says the current analysis of alternatives for a replacement tanker aircraft offers “options across the board” for this new refueler. They comprise concepts ranging from re-engining old aircraft to new procurement,...

The new Air Force Chief unfurled an optimistic—perhaps unduly optimistic—take on the highly public political battle over Air Force plans to cut Air National Guard airframes and units. Moseley said the heat generated by the issue has led some to...

Checking the Legal Precedents, Twice at Least: Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia has asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to explore the “legal framework governing a President’s power to use the regular armed forces to restore public order” in situations...

France, Germany, and Spain rejected the argument by US and British defense chiefs that it is time for NATO to step in and relieve US forces of some counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan. (DR, 9/15/05) At a meeting of NATO defense...

Maj. Gen. Stephen Lorenz, a top Air Force budget official, says USAF is in the hole by about $800 million this year—all due to fuel increases. The big gas guzzler is Operation Noble Eagle, the domestic air defense activity now...

Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Gerald R. Murray led a panel of command chiefs at AFA’s Air & Space Conference in Washington, D.C. One topic raised was whether the Air Force planned to link documented physical fitness levels...

War is a failure of diplomacy, opined Edward S. Walker Jr., speaking at AFA’s Air & Space Conference. Now head of the Middle East Institute, Walker was an assistant secretary of state under Secretary Colin Powell. Walker criticized Washington’s “failure...

Weather scientists say the US is on the upswing of a 30-year up-and-down cycle of hurricanes, as evidenced by the bumper crop of powerful storms over the last three years. Gen. William Looney, head of Air Education and Training Command,...

Since 1944, the Defense Department’s only organization that provides aircraft and crews to fly into the eye of hurricanes and tropical storms is the Air Force Reserve Command’s 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, based at Keesler AFB, Miss. Their home base...

Air Force officials are getting ready to run the service’s next climate survey, beginning Oct. 1. USAF in 1997 began taking the temperature of the force—airmen and civilian—every two years. This survey period runs through Nov. 23. Here’s the link.

When Homeland Security officials said last week that DHS would postpone the start of its new personnel system until January 2007 that left the way open for DOD to be first to unroll its version of the performance and occupation-based...

Five Air Force Reserve Command airmen with the 908th Airlift Wing, Maxwell AFB, Ala., in December will get Army Commendation Medals for their service as vehicle operators in Iraq. They are: MSgt. Vera Berry, MSgt. George Campbell, TSgt. Cynthia Blais,...

Michael Scheuer, former chief of CIA’s bin Laden Unit and author of the best-selling screed, “Imperial Hubris,” is back. At AFA’s conference, he expressed his belief that al Qaeda will strike again on American soil. He gave no time prediction,...

BAE Systems says it achieved the first autonomous and untethered flight of its 3rd generation ducted-fan unmanned aerial vehicle recently. The company’s vertical take-off and landing craft went through a programmed flight plan that included automatic takeoff, waypoint navigation, loitering,...

September 14, 2005 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 10 9 – 19 CAS/Armed Recon 38 23 – 61 Airlift – – 170 170 Air refueling – – 35 35 Total 48 32 205 285 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation...