Air Force officials have discovered that some records lacked a required training report when the recent Force Shaping Board met to consider which of some 2,100 junior officers had to leave the service. Some 192 of the 844 (an earlier...

James Nicholson, Veterans Affairs Secretary, told lawmakers Thursday that he was “mad as hell” for not being told immediately about the theft of personal data on 26.5 million veterans. Nicholson was told 13 days later, and then he waited six...

In his testimony before lawmakers yesterday, the Veterans Affairs Inspector General, George J. Opfer, laid out a timeline of events related to the theft of veterans data. (Read his written statement here.) The timeline is very much central to this incredible debacle. As Sen. Larry Craig said at the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing yesterday, the fact that “VA’s computer system permits one person to download the records of 26 million individuals and no one is alerted … is not even the most absurd part of this story. What is even more mind boggling is that after he revealed the facts of the theft to his supervisors, it took 13 more days for anyone else to discover the lost data was on 26 million people. ... [And] Mr. Secretary [Nicholson] … you waited six more days to tell all of us.”

The head of Air Force Materiel Command, Gen. Bruce Carlson, told local civic and business leaders in the Dayton, Ohio, area earlier this week that the life expectancy of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has grown after the 2005 BRAC. According...

Officials of Air Force Reserve Command’s 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick AFB, Fla., tell Florida Today that as many as 40 percent of its pararescuemen will retire over the next two to five years. This is one of the tough-to-pass-the-training...

Air Force Space Command’s 45th Space Wing, Patrick AFB, Fla., provide range and launch support to launch the next generation weather-tracking satellite—Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-N—yesterday evening at 6:11 p.m. A Boeing Delta IV rocket launched the Boeing-built satellite, which company...

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor under President Carter, believes that the Bush Administration must implement a four-step plan to disengage the US military from Iraq. Speaking at a media breakfast in Washington on May 25, Brzezinski told reporters that his...

Zbigniew Brzezinski told reporters in Washington Wednesday that he believes the “severely stretched” US forces fighting the war on terror have done their job well. “In a country of 25 million people with only 130,000 US troops, the military is...

The 353rd Special Operations Group, stationed on the island of Okinawa at Kadena AB, Japan, sent some 200 airmen to U-Tapao, Thailand, for the 25th running of the Cobra Gold exercise. The USAF airmen provided their particular specialties—airspace control, special...

In today’s far-out news from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the scientific envelope-pushers have teamed up with researchers from Duke University and Imperial College in London to develop the blueprint for what is being dubbed an “invisibility cloak.” According...

Kyrgyzstan is entertaining (or not) US officials who have come to haggle over the Kyrgyz ultimatum—pay more for the use of Manas Air Base or get out. Agence France Presse news service reports that American negotiators were to arrive earlier...

F-22A Raptors from Langley AFB, Va., have made the 3,200-mile trip to Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, to take part in the exercise called Northern Edge. It was the first trip for the new stealth fighters outside the continental US. “This is...

News reports proliferated around the world following the May 22 mid-air collision between a Greek F-16 and a Turkish F-16, as reporters and pundits speculated whether this would be the spark that ignites the on-hold, but long simmering dispute between...

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research displayed some of its wares recently during the 4th Annual Team America Rocketry Challenge national finals at The Plains, Va., as a means to attract the rare young people with an interest in...

We speculated last August that NAS Oceana, Va., would not close when Congressional defense powerhouse Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) took up the cause during BRAC 2005 deliberations. And, in fact, the BRAC commission did issue somewhat of a reprieve, giving...

May 24, 2006 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 14 5 19 CAS/Armed Recon 56 26 82 Airlift 150 150 Air refueling 38 38 Total 70 31 188 289 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance