Pilot Missing After F-16 Crash:

Pilot Missing After F-16 Crash, Saturday Update: An F-16 assigned to the 56th Fighter Wing at Luke AFB, Ariz., crashed Friday about noon some 50 miles northwest of Wickenburg in the Buckskin Mountains, reports the Arizona Republic. According to an...

Give UAV Control to the Air Force?

Former Army division commander Barry McCaffrey said March 12 the Air Force ought to be in charge of coordinating and integrating the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. “I think it is patently absurd to not see that airspace ought to...

Up and Away

The Air Force said it successfully launched an Atlas V rocket into space March 13 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. Onboard the space vehicle was a National Reconnaissance Office payload, according to Vandenberg’s release. The mission was the first Atlas V...

Bond Claims F-35 Nunn-McCurdy

Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-Mo.) thinks the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter program faces an imminent breach of Nunn-McCurdy cost-monitoring thresholds. Bond, in whose state rival Boeing builds F-15s, made the comments during the March 12 hearing of the Senate...

Gunships Under Stress

The unending high operations tempo on Air Force Special Operations Command’s AC-130 gunships in Afghanistan and Iraq is evident on these airframes. “We’re flying the wings off them literally,” Capt. James May, an AC-130 maintenance officer, told the CBS Evening...

Cannon Could Host AC-27 Gunship

Cannon AFB, N.M., Air Force Special Operation Command’s second home since last October, could host the new mini AC-27 gunship that the Air Force wants to develop, Gen. Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff, said during a Congressional hearing March 12....

Seven Years Wasted:

Barry McCaffrey, former Army division commander and national drug czar, laid into the military leadership March 12 for going along with “[former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld’s idiocy” for the last two Administration terms. Speaking at an Air Force Defense Strategy...

Reorganize the Air Fight:

Army and Marine Corps divisions ought to be joint commands, “and the number two guy” in each should be an Air Force one-star general,” Barry McCaffrey, ex Army general and national drug czar, said at a Capitol Hill seminar March...

New UAV Unit:

The Air Force stood up the 556th Test and Evaluation Squadron, its first operational test squadron for unmanned aircraft systems, during a ceremony March 5 at Creech AFB, Nev., its home. The new unit will support UAV operations worldwide, through...

Going MicroGreen:

Air Force Office of Scientific Research-sponsored university biofuel research holds the promise of utilizing hydrogen gas produced by algae and types of bacteria to power future military systems. Princeton University leads a group of eight academic institutions investigating under the...

Air Sorties in War on Terrorism, Southwest Asia

March 11, 2008 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 28 9 37 1,883 CAS/Armed Recon 51 42 93 5,780 Airlift 131 131 8,562 Air refueling 41 41 2,703 Total 302 18,928 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance...