The Senate on Friday confirmed Michael W. Wynne to be the new Secretary of the Air Force. (DR, 10/07/05) In the last action of the day, Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) asked for and received a unanimous confirmation of...
The Army for the first time has invited the Air Force to participate in its annual “Unified Endeavor” exercise at Ft. Drum, N.Y. The goal is to talk airpower capabilities with senior members of the 10th Mountain Division, which shortly...
Air Force-Army cooperation has come a long with since Operation Anaconda in early 2002. [Read our coverage here and here.] In that Army-led action, ground force commanders failed to even notify the air component until shortly before the operation was...
If It Sounds Like a Duck: Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has released a document of some 150 pages that outlines his views on what the Pentagon must do—by way of the Quadrennial Defense Review—to...
It is now becoming clear that USAF’s EC-130H Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft have been key to protection of coalition ground forces in Afghanistan. They have filled more than 1,500 air support requests since November 2004. The aircraft, flying out...
They just can’t build ’em fast enough. Predator unmanned aerial systems have turned into true workhorses—amassing some 4,000 hours a month in the Global War on Terror. In July, the total was 4,700 hours. Officials at Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson...
The technical people out at Aeronautical Systems Center are reporting the emergence of a new advanced display core processor for the F-15E Strike Eagle fighter. They say the new system will vastly improve its lethality and effectiveness. The Air Force...
Airmen, sailors, and soldiers are working together at Bagram AB, Afghanistan, to keep earthquake relief assistance flowing in to northern Pakistan. Maintainers for both the Air Force’s EC-130 and the Navy’s E-6B have been working with the 82nd Airborne Division...
Paul McHale, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense, told a Congressional committee investigating government response to Hurricane Katrina, that while the Pentagon responded well, the Administration as a whole did not follow the game plan. McHale noted that the...
An Air Force Reserve Command C-5 from the 433rd Airlift Wing, Kelly Field, Tex., airlifted 26,000 pounds of meals, ready to eat (MREs) to Homestead ARB, Fla., late last week to aid Hurricane Wilma relief efforts. At NAS JRB Fort...
A London-based defense think tank agrees with the Pentagon that China has been spending at least twice what it officially reports on military modernization. And, the amount is rising. In its yearly assessment of global military power titled “The Military...
Former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird has a few words—nearly 8,500 of them in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs—to say about invoking the specter of the Vietnam War. For one thing, the Nixon Administration official says the recounting of...
After DOD unveiled the National Security Personnel System this week, there are a lot of civilian employees in the department that still have questions, according to the Washington Post. For example, what do the new salary scales look like and...
Good News, Bad News: The Air Force reserve components have fewer nondeployable members than the Army reserve components do, according to the Government Accountability Office. (See the tables.) The bad news is that the active Air Force has a higher...
October 28, 2005 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 10 5 – 15 CAS/Armed Recon 40 22 – 62 Airlift – – 180 180 Air refueling – – 36 36 Total 50 27 216 293 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation...