Air Force Research Laboratory Commander Maj. Gen. William Cooley was fired from his post Jan. 15 as USAF investigators look into allegations of misconduct. Air Force Materiel Command boss Gen. Arnold Bunch removed Cooley from his job “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to lead,” according to the Air Force. Cooley, who is the fourth high-profile USAF general officer to be fired in less than a year, took over at AFRL in May 2017 but is now reassigned as Bunch’s special assistant.

The US military is in “daily conversations” about resuming anti-Islamic State group operations in Iraq, but the pause has not yet been lifted despite reports of American forces targeting ISIS this week. The US-led coalition suspended its anti-ISIS operations in Iraq earlier this month citing Iranian threats after the Jan. 3 drone strike killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. Pentagon spokesman Jonathan R. Hoffman said Jan. 16 US forces are still co-located with Iraqi forces, and planning for operations can continue though “specific field activities do not take place,” he said. Regular operations inside Syria are continuing, he added.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper will travel to NAS Pensacola, Fla., next week to announce new safety measures and restrictions on foreign military access to US bases in the aftermath of last month’s shooting that killed three sailors and injured eight more, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan R. Hoffman said during a Jan. 16 briefing. “We’re looking at ways to ensure that … we’re taking all appropriate steps. We owe that to our people, we owe that to the families,” Hoffman said. “But we also want to ensure that this program continues. We believe that the international military student-training program is incredibly valuable.”

Extending the service live of the Air Force’s B-61-12 nuclear gravity bomb remains on schedule a year after officials acknowledged life-cycle testing of a commercial-grade replacement part would delay the program by 16 to 18 months. So daunting are the nation’s nuclear modernization challenges, says Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, that simply enabling modernization is the primary task; as for the finer work of actual weapons modernization, she says, “We’re not ready to do that.” At least not yet. Gordon-Hagerty laid out the 10-year plan to return production of critical nuclear pits to 80 per year. “We are waking up our system,” she said.

The Air Force is creating a Navigational Warfare Laboratory to study how military aircraft could still get around if an adversary attacks their GPS signal or other positioning, navigation, and timing systems. Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, will host the lab, which is slated to be up and running by May 2021. Their research comes as the military focuses on competition and possible conflict with Russia and China, and the advanced technologies those countries might wield to render US combat power useless. Jamming and other threats on the electromagnetic spectrum are a key piece of those considerations.