As Airmen and Guardians pause their daily routines to consider the spread of white supremacy and other far-right ideologies in their ranks, their discussions will fuel department-wide changes to how the Air Force responds to extremism. “There are many offices involved with creating the content for … this stand-down day, to include the Department of the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s office, the Diversity and Inclusion office, the Profession of Arms Center of Excellence, and the Inspector General’s office,” Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Col. Lindy Singleton told Air Force Magazine. The department could find new ways to track and respond to extremism among troops as result of the talks.

U.S. officials are threatening a military response after a Feb. 15 rocket attack on a base housing Americans in Iraqi Kurdistan killed one person and injured nine others. About 14 107mm rockets were fired near Erbil late on Feb. 15, with three impacting the air base, according to Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. The rockets killed one non-American contractor and injured nine—eight civilian contractors and one U.S. service member. It's not clear if any of the wounded civilians are American. The base in the city of Erbil is one of the largest remaining U.S. outposts inside Iraq and a launching point for operations against the Islamic State group.

The Defense Department Office of Inspector General is ending its analysis of U.S. Central Command’s ability to protect key assets under its purview from missiles and drones due to COVID-19-related travel rules, it announced in a partially redacted memo published Feb. 11. The pandemic’s persistence impedes the DODIG’s “ability to perform the project efficiently due to security classification concerns,” wrote Andre M. Brown, acting assistant inspector general for evaluations programs, combatant commands, and overseas contingency operations, in the memo.

Air Force Special Operations Command expects to conduct an armed overwatch flying demonstration “in the coming months” and U.S. Special Operations Command may make a procurement decision as early as 2022, AFSOC boss Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife said Feb. 16. “I think we can do that at relatively low risk based on what we've seen from the vendors who have indicated that they intend to bring platforms to demonstrate for us in the coming months,” he said during an AFA Mitchell Institute “Aerospace Nation” virtual event.

Northrop Grumman’s design for a new nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile is moving forward after the Air Force signed off on the latest development milestone in November, the company announced Feb. 16. The company passed a benchmark known as the engineering and manufacturing development baseline review, which looks at whether a program is on track to meet a basic set of technical user requirements, data, and configuration specifications. The review is the first step toward handing over responsibility for those criteria to the Air Force.

The Air Force’s first overseas F-35A unit has a nickname: the Valkyries. The 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath, U.K., announced Feb. 16 that Valkyries is the winning nickname for the 495th Fighter Squadron, picked from about 700 different suggestions submitted by the public in fall 2020. The list was whittled down to five finalists, with Valkyries beating out Archangels, Sabres, Sentinels, and Swordsmen, according to a wing release.

In commemoration of the 30th Anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, Air Force Magazine is posting daily recollections from the six-week war, which expelled Iraq from occupied Kuwait.