NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is visiting Washington, D.C., to meet senior United States officials and lawmakers. On Oct. 4, Stoltenberg met President Joe Biden at the White House to discuss how to further strengthen the transatlantic bond and to prepare for the NATO Summit in Madrid next year. He also met Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and he spoke to Secretary of State Antony Blinken by phone.
A new challenge sponsored by the Air Force’s innovation incubator, AFWERX, aims to help the service and Special Operations Command find and develop a hovercraft. The High-Speed Vertical Take-Off and Landing, or HSVTOL, Concept Challenge imagines an aircraft that can take off from any location and operate at speeds comparable to much larger platforms. The aircraft will need to maximize speed, range, survivability, payload, size, and flexibility. The Air Force could use it for various applications.
The Air Force has been on a multiyear path to redesignate communications squadrons through efficiencies realized by outsourcing mundane IT efforts to private industry, allowing it to redirect its people to conduct cyber defense. As a result, the service has been in the process of building these mission defense teams, which differ from the cyber protection teams that the Air Force, and other services, provide to U.S. Cyber Command.
Virtual reality technology is helping Florida-based Air Force officials confront and counter suicide, which is reportedly on the rise across the U.S. military.
A new organization called the Space Force Intelligence Activity is an interim step before the Space Force stands up a separate National Space Intelligence Center also at Wright-Patterson, according to a memo signed Sept. 24 by Maj. Gen. Leah G. Lauderback and Lt. Gen. Mary F. O’Brien. Lauderback is the Space Force director of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. O’Brien is the Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and cyber effects operations.
Short takeoff and vertical-landing F-35B stealth jets from the U.S. Marine Corps are poised to go aboard the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, or JMSDF, helicopter carrier Izumo, which has been modified for Joint Strike Fighter operations. The plan is to deploy the Marine Corps jets aboard the warship to prove the concept of fixed-wing operations before Japan begins to introduce its own F-35Bs in the next few years.
Between Sept. 10 and 16, Russia conducted Zapad-2021, the latest installment of its quadrennial joint military exercises with the Republic of Belarus—part of which is conducted in the latter nation’s territory. Now, a week later, there are signs that the over 200,000 troops who participated may be not all be heading back home.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff have, figuratively, unsheathed a new sword on the Joint Staff's seal: the Space Force. "The revising of the Joint Staff seal, now including the United States Space Force, demonstrates our commitment to the future and ensuring that we have capabilities in all domains necessary to defend our country—land, air, sea, and space," said Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.