According to a statement released yesterday evening by Lockheed Martin, the Government Accountability Office has sustained the company’s second protest over the Air Force’s combat search and rescue aircraft replacement program. CSAR-X competitor Sikorsky also submitted a second protest. And,...

“The large community” of space leaders gathered together in July and August to discuss their options in dealing with the threat posed by China’s demonstrated anti-satellite capability, specifically “to look at protections,” according to Ron Sega, the outgoing undersecretary of...

The realities of funding and the need to disseminate what the space ISR infrastructure gathers means that “integration of activities in space becomes increasingly important” in the future, Air Force Undersecretary Ron Sega told reporters yesterday. Sega sees an increasingly...

The Arizona Air National Guard formally activated its newest unit this week—the 214th Reconnaissance Group based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. It will be the latest guard unit to fly Predator unmanned aerial vehicles. Arizona Air Guardsmen have been flying...

The management reserve account for the F-35 Lightning II fighter, designed to fund unexpected development cost increases, is running low. Contractor Lockheed Martin has therefore requested reductions in the number of test aircraft, test flights, and personnel, Bloomberg news reports...

The F-35’s lengthy development is more difficult than the traditional “marathon” analogy, said Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin general manager for the Joint Strike Fighter. The program is more akin to a triathlon, Burbage recently said at a conference in Adelaide,...

Thanks to diligent work by John Donnelly of Congressional Quarterly, we now have our nominees for Hypocrites of the Year. They are the 67 liberal House Democrats who, in March, voted to chop the “wasteful” defense budget by 21 percent...

According to John Donnelly’s report in Congressional Quarterly (see above), these members of the House “Progressive Caucus,” all of whom voted to slash the defense budget, successfully lobbied for the following “earmarks” in the defense bill: • Rep. Dennis J....

It is depressing to note that these self-styled “progressives” weren’t the worst of the offenders. (See above.) Their $485 million accounted for a paltry 16 percent of a whopping pork-barrel total of $3 billion. The budget bill contained 1,300 earmarks,...

As we reported earlier, the B-52 now is fully certified to fly with a blend of aviation gas and synthetic fuel derived by the Fischer-Tropsch process. Air Force Undersecretary Ron Sega, who serves his last day on the job today,...

The Government of India has begun a worldwide hunt for 126 advanced fighter aircraft to replace its ancient MiG-21s. The nation on Tuesday invited bids from six manufacturers in a competition that could be worth $10 billion. The expected competitors...

While the future of US military forces in Iraq remains an open question in Washington, one security studies think tank has tackled the tricky question of how a proposed “redeployment” should occur. In a new report from the Center for...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency helped develop some of the technologies that enabled the US to come out on top in the Cold War. Now, DARPA is in the middle of transitioning its effort to better match the “Long...

The teaser we appended to the Aug. 30 Daily Report item on the new designation for the new special operations wing at Cannon AFB, N.M., attracted the most reader responses. Click here to reach the item “A New Number for...

Aug. 28, 2007 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 17 9 26 CAS/Armed Recon 50 47 97 Airlift 160 160 Air refueling 55 55 Total 67 56 215 338 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance Airlift includes Horn...