A bipartisan group of 19 Senators has written to the heads of the Pentagon and OMB to urge them to fund additional C-17s, rather than having the Air Force request help from Congress, which they say had some "utility in the short term" but is "no longer viable" as a strategy to prop up a program that is "critical to the rapid movement of US personnel and critical supplies." They note that the number of C-17s currently authorized to be built supports the "minimum requirement" believed necessary by "numerous studies and military officials." They call that a "minimalist approach" that has forced, for one thing, the US military to hire Russian-built airlifters to help deliver much-needed equipment for the war on terror. Considering the need for rapid mobility and the growth in ground forces, they write, "There is no justification to believe that airlift requirements will decrease and many reasons to believe that currently available capacity is insufficient." Bottom line: "The C-17 must be rightly funded in the President's Fiscal Year 2009 budget." (Letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates)

Work toward development of new technical inspection procedures for the Air Force’s fleet of F-15 A-D models under an extended grounding order became much easier when engineers and technicians at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Georgia put an F-15...

Another defense analyst now says Boeing is the certain winner of the Air Force’s KC-X tanker competition, slated for award in February. Eric Rosenberg of Hearst Newspapers reports (via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer) that Paul Nisbet has joined with Richard Aboulafia...

At the request of two senior lawmakers on the Senate Energy Committee, the Air Force has been exploring whether an Air Force base would be “an appropriate host for a nuclear [energy] facility,” according to William Anderson, the Air Force’s...

Officials at the 45th Space Wing at Patrick AFB, Fla., were to meet with the Air Force’s smart operations boss, Maj. Gen. Paul Selva, to discuss the wing’s reorganization efforts toward paring down the current three-year commercial launch approval process...

Megan Scully of CongressDaily reports that, in crafting the 2008 defense policy bill, lawmakers reduced the “specialty metals” pain delivered by the “Buy America” rule in last year’s defense bill. Supporters of the Buy America provision say the new bill,...

Development of the nation’s largest solar photovoltaic system, which has been under construction at Nellis AFB, Nev. since June, is complete, according to various news accounts. Base officials expect the government-private venture to save Nellis about $83,000 monthly, providing 25...

The Senate on Dec. 14 passed the 2008 defense authorization bill by a 90 to 3 vote. The House had approved the policy bill two days earlier, 370 to 49. We reported earlier on some of its provisions: eight additional...

The Air Force has lost another unmanned aerial vehicle with the crash Monday of an MQ-1 Predator in Iraq. US Central Command Air Forces officials released only the time—about 1:30 p.m. local time—and approximate location—near al Muqdadiya. The Air Force...

Pilots at Minot AFB, N.D., now have a modernized B-52 trainer, part of a three-year, $30 million effort by the Air Force to rehabilitate its three B-52 simulators. Maj. Rob Rodas, with the 5th Operations Support Squadron, calls the new...

Dec. 15-16, 2007 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 49 19 68 CAS/Armed Recon 129 75 204 Airlift 290 290 Air refueling 84 84 Total 178 94 374 646 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance Airlift includes Horn...