Several press reports say Pentagon acquisition chief Ken Kreig has given the green light for the Air Force to re-engage its effort to find an aerial refueling aircraft replacement. The first step will be a formal request for information, which...

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) say that the Air Force has agreed to transfer a squadron of T-38 training fighters to the Kansas Air National Guard wing at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita. Under BRAC...

Talk of cuts to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program are surfacing again and seems to be focusing on the Air Force conventional takeoff and landing version once again. The CTOL variant was squarely in the QDR crosshairs until Pentagon...

USAF Presses for Greater Legislative Relief: The Air Force plan to further meld its active and reserve components is driving a new effort to change legal barriers to the enterprise. USAF did get some legislative relief a couple of years...

The Air Force effort to upgrade 112 C-5 airlifters has passed a major hurdle—the successful test of new General Electric engines mounted on one of the airlifters as part of the C-5 Reliability Enhancement and Re-engining Program. There was some...

What’s Driving the Personnel Cuts: Air Force leaders point to a range of initiatives—from streamlining depot maintenance to making personnel cuts—as the means by which they can hedge enough funds to recapitalize and modernize the force. We’ve already reported that...

Fleet wide aircraft readiness rates have remained consistent over the last two decades, but not the cost to operate and maintain the aircraft. “Our costs have increased pretty significantly just to attain those mission capable rates,” Faykes said. In the...

As personnel and readiness costs have risen, USAF has devoted less money to procurement and research and development, Maj. Gen. Frank Faykes told reporters at a briefing on USAF’s 2007 budget request. In 1986, USAF put 55 percent of its...

Air Force Research Lab officials think there may be jet fuel in a lump of coal—the problem, of course, is to get it out. AFRL hosted a meeting recently with federal, state, and industry experts to discuss how the military...

Space-based defense against an ICBM attack will not come without a heavy price tag since it would require a thousand or more space-based interceptors to do the job, according to RAND senior nuclear policy analyst David Mosher and Union of...

The burden of identifying a culprit in the growing volume of attacks on US satellites—commercial, civil, or military—will fall to the military under a revised national space policy, according to Air Force Col. Anthony Russo, who heads the space division...

After getting feedback and taking a longer look at the law and “military necessity,” USAF officials have produced a revised set of religious guidelines. The original guidelines, issued in August 2005, had come under attack both for going too far and not far enough. Based on that earlier experience, Lt. Gen. Roger Brady, USAF deputy chief of staff for personnel, said, “This is an open and honest debate, so another interim period is appropriate prior to this set being made the final version.” According to Brady, the new version is much shorter (one page instead of four), offering “leaner, broader verbiage.” He said the guidelines will “in no way restrict private prayer or chaplain’s activities in religious settings” or require a chaplain to participate in religious activities “inconsistent with their faiths.”

The lawsuit filed by Michael Weinstein against the Air Force for allowing improper proselytizing at the US Air Force Academy has sparked an intervention motion by the National Association of Evangelicals. According to the Rocky Mountain News, the group wants...

Air Education and Training Command officials awarded a $178 million contract for Initial Flight Screening activities to Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Doss Aviation. The Air Force decided last year to dispense with its six-year-old program employing several civilian flight schools to...

The Pentagon has identified the remains from a remote Sierra Nevada glacier as Leo A. Mustonen of Brainerd, Minn. Mustonen was the pilot of an Army Air Forces AT-7 training flight that crashed in 1942 in Kings Canyon National Park....

Members of the New York Air National Guard’s 137th Airlift Squadron are among US military forces participating in New Horizons Honduras 2006. The Air Guardsmen flew a C-5 airlifter loaded with supplies to La Ceiba, Honduras, where US and Honduran...

Army Ground Liaison Officer Capt. Phil Messer and friends have high praise for USAF’s 379th Air Expeditionary Wing and the support it provides ground forces in Iraq. Messer shared an e-mail he got from a soldier, who wrote: “We were...

Personnel of the 59th Medical Wing from Lackland AFB, Tex., airlifted seven-year-old Meaghan Ababa from Hawaii to Los Angeles in what her doctors describe as a “miracle” flight. The girl had been placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine to...

The Missile Defense Agency plans to deploy an advanced missile defense radar, the X-band radar system—to Japan within six months, according to top agency officials speaking at a budget briefing earlier this week. As part of last year’s military realignment...

The fuel technicians of the 376th Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron at Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan, have to dig the unit’s huge fuel storage bladders out of the snow—by hand. It takes 12 airmen about two hours per berm, and there are...

February 8, 2006 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 14 5 – 19 CAS/Armed Recon 32 20 – 52 Airlift – – 160 160 Air refueling – – 34 34 Total 46 25 194 265 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation...