Remember this time last year when a sizable portion of the Air Force’s F-15 A-D fleet was still grounded due to the mid-air breakup of a Missouri Air National Guard F-15C in November 2007? The failure of a structural part...

Bruce Lemkin, the Air Force’s deputy undersecretary for International Affairs, announced yesterday that USAF’s leadership has approved the Air Force Global Partnership Strategy and the International Space Engagement Strategy, the two approaches that will drive the service’s outreach efforts with allies and friendly nations’ militaries. Air Force spokesman Capt. Mike Andrews told the Daily Report yesterday that the approval came in December. The AFGPS, which was unveiled last May, will provide the guidance for how the service organizes, trains, and equips itself so that it is able to establish mutually beneficial partnerships and interoperable capabilities, and increase the capacity of partner nations to provide for their own security. The space strategy supports AFGPS by prioritizing the Air Force’s efforts and focusing limited resources for space cooperation and partnerships. “The nature of space operations is global and space-enabled capabilities are essential to successful network-centric coalitions and enable interoperability and unity of effort across a spectrum of capabilities,” wrote Lemkin.

While a great amount of speculation remains about the Air Force’s next bomber, Barry Watts, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, thinks the design that will emerge will be a far-reaching strike platform with less...

Air Forces Central began implementing a new procedure theater-wide in January under which airmen rotating back home do not take their M-9s and M-16s with them, but rather leave them for the airmen arriving to start a combat tour. This...

Two B-52Hs left Barksdale AFB, La., Feb. 1 on a global power training mission called Operation Coronet Dragon that will bring them to Andersen AFB, Guam, and back. On the initial leg of the journey, the two bombers, assigned to...

The Pentagon’s operationally responsive space office at Kirtland AFB, N.M., wants to co-locate a rapid small-satellite assembly facility dubbed the “Chile Works” on the base. This center would support the ORS goal of being able to develop, deliver, and deploy...

Members of the 86th Airlift Wing from Ramstein AB, Germany, spent Jan. 28 at Powidz AB, Poland—about 75 kilometers east of Poznan—with one of their C-130s to show the aircraft to Polish airmen and exchange ideas. The 86th AW contingent...

The Spirit of Los Angeles, a decade-old C-17 that has been serving with the 437th Airlift Wing at Charleston AFB, S.C., arrived Jan. 23 at March ARB, Calif., its new home. The aircraft is the ninth and final C-17 scheduled...

Feb. 4, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 26 14 40 1,350 CAS/Armed Recon 39 73 112 3,446 Airlift 128 128 4,463 Air refueling 46 46 1,606 Total 326 10,865 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance...