: On Tuesday, the Obama Administration nominated Erin Conaton, who has served with the House Armed Services Committee since 2001, to become the undersecretary of the Air Force, a position that has been vacant since Ronald Sega left the post...

Teams led by Boeing and Raytheon have submitted their proposals for the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the Air Force’s small diameter bomb II program. The Air Force is expected to choose the winner next spring to complete development...

The Senate ICBM Coalition, in a white paper issued on Nov. 6, calls the nation’s Minuteman III force “the most stabilizing part” of the US strategic nuclear triad. As a result, the 10-member bipartisan group of Senators wants the United States to maintain the current inventory size of 450 missiles as one of the outcomes of a new agreement with Russia on nuclear warhead and delivery vehicle caps to succeed the START I Treaty that expires in December. There is “no inconsistency,” the coalition writes, between maintaining a 450-missile ICBM force and pursuing a START follow-on agreement. Arming each of the 450 MMIIIs with a single warhead, the coalition writes, would maximize the benefits of the ICBM leg, such as the “insurmountable challenge” it would pose to Russia or any other potential foe to knock it out completely due to the missiles’ wide dispersal.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz used the occasion of his Oct. 30 address at the 41st Airlift Tanker Association conference in Nashville, Tenn., to convey once again the imperative of successfully completing the KC-X tanker competition and...

The Air Force’s latest list of selective reenlistment bonuses contains 91 specialties. The revised list is meant to place a greater emphasis on retaining active duty airmen with 17 months to six years of service, said TSgt. Christopher Dowlearn, the...

Air Force Reserve Command’s 403rd Wing at Keesler AFB, Miss., on Monday began evacuating its C-130J transports and WC-130J Hurricane Hunter aircraft to locations in Texas to avoid possible damage to them by the heavy winds expected with Hurricane Ida....

Lockheed Martin announced that on Monday it delivered the seventh of 14 planned C-130Js destined for the 37th Airlift Squadron at Ramstein AB, Germany. Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Snodgrass, chief of staff at US Africa Command, accepted the aircraft...

A contingent of airmen from Air Force Reserve Command’s 916th Air Refueling Wing at Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C., departed Andersen AFB, Guam, on Nov. 3 to return home from a two-month deployment that supported the Air Force’s continuous bomber presence...

Members of the J-2 test team at the Arnold Engineering Development Center on the grounds of Arnold AFB, Tenn., have set a record by running a Pratt & Whitney F135 engine continuously for 52.5 hours, the longest period that this...

Margaret A. Hamilton Tunner, a member of the World War II-era Women’s Airforce Service Pilots program, died Oct. 13 at her home in Virginia at age 92. During the war, she flew P-39, P-40, P-47, B-17, and B-24 aircraft, ferrying...

Air Sorties in Southwest Asia, Nov. 1, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 29 31 60 14,168 CAS/Armed Recon 26 78 104 29,666 Airlift 154 154 40,882 Air refueling 47 47 14,627 Total 365 99,343 OIF=Operation Iraqi...