The Air National Guard will fall approximately 1,000 personnel short of its authorized end strength of 107,500 at the end of fiscal 2020 due to a drop in retention, despite recruitment being slightly on the rise, ANG Director Lt. Gen. Scott Rice said. While the Air National Guard is working to determine the cause of the retention issues, Rice said he suspects the uncertainty and activation tempo associated with COVID-19 are contributing factors. “We had orders in hand in March and April just for 30 days, 31 days, and then those are extended to the end of May, and to the end of June, and now we have the authorization to extend them through August,” Rice said during a June 10 Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies virtual event. “That's, you know, pretty impactful on people, as we look to the future.”

The Air Force Inspector General wants to hear from a broad range of Airmen as it tries to identify racial biases in the service's justice and professional development systems. Officials will first focus on policies and processes that may have largely disadvantaged black Airmen, after multiple outside reports showed the Air Force disproportionately doles out punishment to young black personnel. The IG created a Senior Leader Advisory Group composed of 10 black general officers, 10 black enlisted chiefs, and four black members of the Air Force's senior executive service. Airmen from all major commands will be selected to join the team as well. The service's watchdog will use interviews, group discussions, and targeted and anonymous surveys to root out discrimination in how the Air Force both punishes and advances Airmen, the Air Force detailed in a June 10 release.

U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors, with help from KC-135 Stratotankers and an E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System, intercepted two separate Russian bomber formations off the Alaskan coast on the morning of June 10, North American Aerospace Defense Command said in a release. NORAD intercepted the Russian aircraft as they traveled into the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, but they never entered sovereign American airspace, the command noted. The intercepts come less than two weeks after Russia sent Su-27P and Su-30SM fighters to intercept USAF B-1B Lancers “in neutral waters” in response to a May 29 Bomber Task Force training mission over the Black Sea region.

Despite a framework for peace in one theater and declarations of upcoming troop withdrawals in another, the head of U.S. Central Command said June 10 that there’s no finish line or concrete withdrawal in sight in either Afghanistan or Syria. CENTCOM boss Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, speaking at a virtual Middle East Institute conference, said the U.S. is ahead of its timeline to reduce its troop level in Afghanistan to 8,600 by next month, as outlined in a February deal with the Taliban. However, the Taliban is not holding up its end of the agreement and has continued to “aggressively” attack Afghan forces, he said. In Syria, the Islamic State group has largely moved underground and focused on cyber operations, plus launching some local attacks, McKenzie said.

Just a day after the Air Force announced that a full-rate production decision on the KC-46 tanker will have to wait until late fiscal 2024 due to extended testing of the redesigned Remote Vision System for tanking operations, the service’s acquisition executive offered his hope that the timetable may be accelerated by laboratory testing of RVS elements. The service and Boeing will work with the new and improved Remote Vision System in hardware-in-the-loop laboratories—one at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, and one at Boeing’s Everett, Wash., facility, Air Force acquisition boss Will Roper said June 10. The new system—called RVS 2.0—will have 4K cameras, a LIDAR system for three-dimensional visualization and distance measuring; all to correct perception and distortion problems with the existing RVS. “I’m … nursing hope that this hardware-in-the-loop environment may let us squeeze more time out of the testing,” he said.

U.S. forces in the Middle East are not prepared enough to defend against swarms of small drones, and the Pentagon needs to work harder to get ahead of the enduring threat, the head of U.S. Central Command warned. Small unmanned aerial systems, which can be purchased online or in a typical department store and easily outfitted with weapons, have proliferated to the point where it is costlier and harder to defend against than it is for adversaries to buy them, CENTCOM boss Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said. Troops have seen a variety of those aircraft in the region for years, and they won’t go away any time soon. “I argue all the time with my Air Force friends that the future of flight is vertical, and it is unmanned,” McKenzie said during a June 10 Middle East Institute event. “We are seeing it now.”

On March 23, the Air Force Association's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies will host a virtual Nuclear Deterrence Series event featuring Scowcroft Group Principal Frank Miller. At a time when nuclear modernization programs are accelerating around the world, proposals to recapitalize the U.S. nuclear arsenal are at the forefront of debates over defense spending. Miller will share his insights into the prospects for U.S. nuclear modernization programs and the value of nuclear deterrence in today's competitive security environment. The think tank will post event video on its website and YouTube page after the live event.