The new Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Michael Moseley, used the occasion of his first major address (September 14) to re-affirm the main mission. Speaking at AFA’s Air & Space Conference, he noted that the Air Force has been...

Lockheed is working on an unmanned aircraft with significant new capabilities, Neil Kasena, director of advanced development programs—the “Skunkworks”—tells Air Force Magazine’s John Tirpak. The manta-ray-shaped craft, called “Serious,” has a central jet engine, which powers lift fans embedded in...

The Skunkworks is also working on “morphing” technology, employing new materials that permit an aircraft to change its shape in flight. The aircraft would be able to alter its profile and planform to grow longer for high speed, broader for...

Sen. Byron Dorgan, the liberal Democrat from North Dakota, took to the Senate floor with a speech on Sept. 12. He held up “something from my desk”—a portion of a wing strut of a Soviet Backfire bomber. “We did not...

The Air Force is facing some near-term decisions about whether to do major service-life extension programs on today’s F-15s and F-16s, Gen. Ronald Keys, Air Combat Command chief, told reporters at AFA’s Air & Space Conference in Washington, D.C. Fielding...

Keys further said he doesn’t foresee a “train wreck” in tactical forces, where large numbers of airplanes must retire before the new ones arrive, although “there’s always an opportunity for a train wreck to happen” if a huge technical problem...

Some of the Air Force’s A-10 Warthogs are developing cracks that will be expensive to repair, leading USAF to scale back its plans to upgrade the fleet, said ACC chief Keys. The problem Hogs were made with “thin skins,” explained...

ACC plans to upgrade its F-15E Strike Eagles with new avionics, Keys said. “We’re about out of memory and processing power” in the current system, he said. With this upgrade, called “Golden Eagle,” the youngest F-15Es in the USAF inventory...

ACC is working with the Air National Guard to determine whether to upgrade the Guard’s F-15Cs with an Active Electronically-Scanned Array radar. ACC chief Keys said that some sort of AESA capability is going to be needed to do homeland...

Testifying before lawmakers last week on the perils that may befall the Pentagon in its workup of the Quadrennial Defense Review, Daniel Goure noted that the “so-called overmatch capabilities”—notably airpower—were created because they were “and, I would argue, remain absolutely...

According to ACC chief Keys, the Air Force could not have too many Predator unmanned aerial vehicles. “If you had 1,000 of them, I don’t think you’d have enough,” said Keys. One thing that makes the Predator increasingly important is...

Northrop Grumman says that it ran an exercise in which it used one of its Global Hawk UAVs to reconnoiter an area stricken by a major hurricane—this was two weeks before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, destroying much of the Gulf...

Air Force officials believe that the first floor of the medical center at Keesler AFB, Miss., could be open again within two months—much sooner than expected after the damage wrought by Katrina. That was the good news. The Air Force...

President Bush late last week sent the BRAC commission report to Congress. Apparently, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided to accept the commission’s slightly slimmed down version of closure and realignment actions and not recommend that the President send it back...

Having the skill and capability to aerial refuel aircraft was limited to fewer than a handful of countries. It is no mean feat and makes the master a member of the military elite who can send warplanes on strike missions...

The National Reconnaissance Office—the one-time super secret military organization that shepherds spy satellites—has lifted the cover from another Cold War reconnaissance program. This one was called “Poppy,” an electronic intelligence satellite first launched in the early 1960s. Its mission was...

In a hearing last week on the Quadrennial Defense Review, Dov Zakheim, formerly the top Pentagon budgeteer, offered a familiar refrain. He expressed concern about the way that military personnel benefits, principally health care, continue to drain funds from acquisition....

Hunter’s Tack or Let the Truth Be Told: Hunter told Zakheim, “The real essence of what you were saying is, we need to increase the defense budget by a good $10 to $15 to $20 billion in real terms.” That...

Ordered by the Senate to review the Pentagon’s work on the Mobility Capabilities Study, now expected out sometime this fall, the GAO offers some “preliminary observations,” mainly that the Congressional auditors were “unable to assess the adequacy” of the DOD...

The Air Force needs to revitalize its industrial preparedness program, retired Lt. Gen. Richard Scofield said at the AFA conference. The process came into being in 1947 and has helped introduce new manufacturing methods and streamline acquisition, according to the...

Active Fighter Unit Takes up Noble Eagle Duty: Because members of the Louisiana Air National Guard’s 159th Fighter Wing, based at New Orleans airport, have been dealing with the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in their personal lives and to...

The Air Force is expanding its interaction with India’s air force. Recently, two US airmen from the 13th Fighter Squadron, Misawa AB, Japan, visited the Indian Air Force, flying in the Russian-made Su-30 fighter, while two Indian Air Force pilots,...

The Pentagon expects to complete work on the next phase of international partnership agreements for the Joint Strike Fighter program next year. The JSF arrangement marks a departure from past programs, because the eight partners—Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands,...

The Democratic view of national security issues, unveiled last week by House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, is an attempt to attract voters who view the party as weak on national security. So says Hoyer. He explains that the...

Industry officials are rolling out their candidates for the Air Force’s CSAR-X—the new aircraft to replace the service’s elderly HH-60 Pave Hawk combat search and rescue helicopters. Boeing is offering the HH-47, a version of its CH-47 Chinook helicopter, as...

September 15, 2005 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 10 9 – 19 CAS/Armed Recon 44 23 – 67 Airlift – – 160 160 Air refueling – – 35 35 Total 54 32 195 281 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation...