An F-16 from the Wisconsin Air National Guard’s 115th Fighter Wing crashed at about 8 p.m. on Dec. 8, and the pilot’s status was not known as of early Dec. 9. The incident is the latest F-16 crash this year, including a June fatal mishap at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., and a July crash at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M. In November 2019, the Air Force Safety Center and F-16 Program Office said it did not see any systemic safety issues with the jet despite a series of crashes in recent years.

Historic Air Force installations on Florida’s Space Coast marked a modern milestone on Dec. 9 as they were redesignated Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station—the first facilities named as part of the new service. “Today, we start a new era at both Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Patrick Space Force Base, aligning the installations’ names with their critical missions,” Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond said at a ceremony to mark the occasion. Language in the pending 2021 defense policy bill appears set to put guardrails on the process of transferring other bases.

President-elect Joe Biden called on Congress to “swiftly” confirm Lloyd J. Austin III as the next Defense Secretary, rebutting concerns that his plan to nominate the recently retired Army general chips away at civilian control of the military. Introducing Austin at a Dec. 9 event in Delaware, Biden said the civilian-military dynamic has been under great stress during the Trump administration, during which multiple former uniformed personnel have served in top posts. Austin would be only the third nominee in American history to receive a waiver to serve as Defense Secretary, and the first Black man to hold the top civilian job if confirmed.

A B-1B bomber on Dec. 4 released a JASSM stealth missile from its Sniper targeting pod pylon. The demonstration follows a captive-carry dress rehearsal in November, and paves the way for the B-1 to carry a variety of munitions, but especially hypersonic missiles, on external hardpoints that have not been used operationally before. The B-1's external hardpoints were deactivated under the START treaty, but the bomber is now in a purely conventional role, and the new capability could give each B-1 more firepower.

The Air Force saw a total of 33 hypoxia-like events in its T-6A Texan II trainer fleet in fiscal 2020—a nearly 20 percent decrease from the fiscal year prior—Air Force Safety Center data obtained by Air Force Magazine shows. However, the rate of these events—defined as the number of incidents per 100,000 flying hours—within the T-6A fleet increased slightly over fiscal 2019. The Air Force recently made progress on its quest to determine the cause of hypoxia-like events in its T-6A fleet—including ruling out contaminated air as the culprit and putting a greater focus on the potential role of rapid fluctuations in in-flight oxygen levels—but the puzzle has yet to be solved.

Lawmakers want to quash the prospect of buying new armed overwatch planes for special operations troops or the Air Force in the next few years, as part of the final draft of the 2021 defense policy bill released this month. They seek to block SOCOM from buying armed overwatch aircraft in fiscal 2021, as well as the Air Force through fiscal 2023. The bill zeroes out the “armed overwatch/targeting” funding line, which had asked for $101 million and five planes.

As the public awaits the findings of the Department of the Air Force’s recent diversity and inclusion survey, here’s a look at how five Air Force organizations are working to make these departmental priorities the norm.

The Air Force's technology incubator, which doles out more than 1,000 small research contracts worth up to $50,000 each year, unveiled an advance look at its 2021 programs during its virtual Accelerate event, Dec. 7-11—the first organized by the newly relaunched AFWERX 2.0. AFWERX 2.0 will seek to mimic venture capital, leveraging its own spending to generate more investment dollars for open-ended technology research.

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.