The Senate Armed Services Committee’s mark of the Fiscal 2015 defense authorization bill was slightly more accommodating towards pay and personnel costs than the full House version, which passed last week, but SASC took a tough line on most of...

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said the Fiscal 2015 defense authorization bill, which was approved last week, makes “hard choices necessary to preserve our military readiness and uphold our obligations to our men and women in...

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Richard Cole, one of four surviving Doolittle Raiders, stood behind President Barack Obama in the Oval Office on Friday as the President signed H.R. 1209 into law. The bill awards World War II members of...

Hartford, Conn.—The Pentagon’s new engine initiative—a $1 billion effort slated to start in Fiscal 2015—seems to be aimed at enabling the next Air Force fighter, Pratt & Whitney next-generation engine chief James Kenyon said. “That’s certainly what we’re seeing,” he told Air Force Magazine during a company media event. However, “they’re not real clear what that’s going to be.” He noted that the budget request includes $20 million for “next generation air dominance,” and he suspects it will be used for “studies, analyses of alternatives, requirements studies, [and] trying to determine exactly what the requirements are going to look like.” The trade studies will likely examine “how critical is supercruise? Just how far do I want my range to be? Is it 600 nautical miles … 800 … 1200?” Also to be resolved are issues like manned versus unmanned, how many capabilities will be onboard versus offboard, etc. “The key buzzword is ‘system of systems,’” he observed. All of these answers will “come to define the primary platform, the fighter platform … and that will define what the propulsional problems will be.”

Hartford, Conn.—A fuel efficiency push on Navy versions of the Joint Strike Fighter’s F135 engine could benefit USAF’s version as well, Pratt & Whitney next-generation fighter engine chief James Kenyon said. At a company press conference, Kenyon told Air Force...

Future adversaries will likely strike at Air Force space-based communication, intelligence, and battlefield enablement systems, and the service must be prepared to absorb the blow, Air Force Undersecretary Eric Fanning said. “We cannot assume that our deployed systems will either...

NATO defense chiefs reaffirmed commitment to a continued Afghan training mission beyond 2014 during a summit meeting of alliance defense ministers and heads of states last week in Wales. “The Afghan people, and we, can be justifiably proud of our...

SMSgt. Ray Lewis, a boom operator assigned to Air Force Reserve Command’s 18th Refueling Squadron at McConnell AFB, Kansas, recently passed 6,500 flying hours during his 1,500th mission. “I still get excited each time I’m scheduled to go fly,” said...