Protecting the nuclear enterprise may be “central” to the new defense strategy, but it won’t be easy as defense dollars continue to dwindle, said Gen. Robert Kehler, US Strategic Command boss, during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations...

Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz and his Polish air force counterpart Lt. Gen. Lech Majewski signed the Military Personnel Exchange Program memorandum of understanding at a ceremony in Warsaw this week during Schwartz’s official visit to Poland. Under the...

On a hot day in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, US soldiers treated their captured enemies with calm professionalism, despite serious provocations. So writes Air Force Magazine Executive Editor John A. Tirpak in his firsthand account of how a group of soldiers handled...

Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter this week urged Congress to prevent the Budget Control Act’s sequestration mechanism from kicking in, which will occur on January 1 and impose additional significant spending cuts on the Pentagon unless something is done beforehand....

Loss of engine coolant caused the crash of an MQ-1 Predator remotely piloted aircraft just outside the perimeter fence of Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, on January 30, announced Air Combat Command officials. The aircraft's coolant pump supply line failed, releasing coolant, and leading to the engine's temperature increasing "excessively," according to ACC's May 30 release citing the findings of the abbreviated accident investigation board report. The temperature increase reduced power output and prevented sustained flight, causing the airplane to fall into an uncontrolled descent, states the release. Remote operators regained control long enough to guide the Predator to a forced landing, it notes. The aircraft was destroyed on impact, along with one Hellfire air-to-ground missile. The damage amounted to an estimated $4.5 million, according to ACC. Among the contributing factors, investigators found that a maintainer failed to detect damage on the coolant supply line during a 60-hour engine inspection four days prior to the mishap. (AIB report; caution, large-sized file.)

Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, NATO’s busiest airfield in that nation, now has an expanded aerial port, according to a release by the 451st Air Expeditionary Wing there. “In a lot of ways, we were limited by our surroundings. This new ramp...

A "flood" of counterfeit electronic parts, overwhelmingly from China, has made its way into the US military's supply chain and threatens both national security and American jobs, according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report issued last month. The report, the result of a year-long investigation, "underscores China's failure to police the blatant market in counterfeit parts—a failure China should rectify," wrote SASC Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in a release coinciding with the report's May 21 publication. SASC investigators documented more than 1,800 cases involving more than one million suspect counterfeit parts– many involving Air Force assets, such as the C-5 transport and RQ-4 Global Hawk remotely piloted vehicle, according to the release. The Chinese government has failed to take steps to stop counterfeiting operations, which are often carried out openly in the country, and even denied visas to SASC staff attempting to investigate the problem, states the release. The rampant theft of intellectual property alone costs the US semiconductor industry more than $7.5 billion annually, and the Pentagon is ill-suited to respond to the challenge, according to the release. (SASC report; caution, large-sized file.)

C-27J and C-130J transports are among the Air Force's weapons systems affected by the prevalence of counterfeit electronic parts in the Defense Department's supply chain, according to the Senate Armed Services Committee's newly issued investigative report on this issue. For example, L-3 Display Systems discovered in November 2010 that the defective rate for a computer memory chip that it uses in cockpit displays in the C-27s and C-130s had more than tripled to 27 percent, states the report. Further testing determined that the chip was "suspect counterfeit," notes the report. "Unfortunately, L-3 Display Systems had already installed parts from the suspect lot on more than 400 of its display units," states the report. Failure of these chips could cause a display to go blank or even lose data, it notes. (SASC report; caution, large-sized file.) (See also SASC release accompanying the report.)

More than 100 Active Duty airmen are beginning to integrate into Air Force Reserve Command’s 442nd Fighter Wing at Whiteman AFB, Mo., according to a wing release. This task is part of the establishment of an active association there with...