A House Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday into whether the head of the National Guard should be a four-star general with a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew sharply different responses from defense officials and Guard support organizations....

Air Force Space Command’s analysis of alternatives for a next-generation land-based strategic deterrent recently concluded that the Minuteman III ICBM should remain in service beyond the previously planned retirement date of 2020, AFSPC’s acting commander said Tuesday. Current upgrades to...

Air Force Space Command’s view—not yet approved by Pentagon leadership—is that the command can “continue to evolve” the Minuteman III weapons system even further into the future. This ICBM evolution would eliminate—for now—the need for more-expensive alternatives, such as starting...

AFSPC acting commander Klotz says that ongoing propulsion, guidance, and other upgrade programs for the Minuteman III ICBM are coming along well. “We continue to make steady progress on the Guidance Replacement Program,” Klotz said Tuesday. “As of this morning,”...

Speaking in Washington Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz said that three test launches of the Safety Enhanced Reentry Vehicle earlier this year were so successful that Space Command scrapped a planned fourth test launch. SERV is a program to add...

An F-22 Raptor flying at Mach 1.5 released a 1,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition from 50,000 feet over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico last month, destroying a small ground target from a range of 24 miles, said...

The Congressional Research Service’s latest backgrounder on the much-in-debate Joint Strike Fighter program does nothing to calm growing fears over problems with cost and schedule. It quotes the Congressional Budget Office that attempting commonality across three models (Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps) can only lead to an F-35 JSF that is “more costly than Air Force requirements might dictate, but provide less capability than the Navy might desire.” And, it notes the GAO’s concern over what it terms the program’s risky plan to pursue overlapped testing and production, which GAO says could also lead to future cost growth. It’s not new, but the paper does collect all the potential pitfalls in one neat package.

The C-130 Hercules schoolhouse at Little Rock AFB, Ark., has been facing some challenges over the past few years—a surging demand for Hercs in Southwest Asia and loss of many airframes to center wing box crack problems—that led to a...

According to Reuters news service, the Air Force’s forecast for a new contract with Boeing for two-year’s worth of launches is only delayed, not dead. USAF had expected to close the deal in late spring, but it now looks like...

The National Security Space Institute in Colorado Springs, Colo., plans to inaugurate the first Missile Warning Advanced Course on July 24. The goal of the 13-week course is to create “pioneering space professionals whose knowledge encapsulates all tactical aspects of...

June 11, 2006 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 12 5 17 CAS/Armed Recon 49 26 75 Airlift 170 170 Air refueling 37 37 Total 61 31 207 299 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance