Military families are seeing the same shortage of baby formula in military stores that customers are finding in many civilian stores across the U.S. For now, however, overseas and remote commissaries have adequate supplies of baby products on hand. “We will ensure all orders for overseas and remote stores receive priority for baby formula shipments,” said a spokesperson for the Defense Commissary Agency, adding that it would be airlifted to overseas commissaries if necessary.
The single largest military construction contract on record in the Air Force database was awarded to build Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., up to be the Base of the Future. Tyndall officials announced that the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $532 million construction contract to Hensel Phelps to deliver 11 projects that will directly support flight line operations for the F-35A Lightning II aircraft. The jets are expected to arrive at Tyndall in September 2023. Officials say that accounting for contingencies and contract oversight, this represents a $604 million investment in rebuilding Tyndall.
The Pentagon’s Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office has wrapped up a demonstration of high-power microwave technology capable of taking out multiple drone threats at once. Army officials running the effort said the vendors that pitched high-power microwave capabilities were successful in defeating incoming drone threats, including two at a time.
Endless images of damaged Russian tanks show how Ukrainians are putting U.S. Javelin missiles to use—and yet they could be fighting even more effectively if more U.S. advisers were there to help, say two U.S. volunteers who recently returned from the war-torn country. Mark Hayward, a retired U.S. Special Forces operator from Alaska, went to Ukraine shortly after the war broke out and soon found himself training Ukrainians to use the shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank missile. He said the United States is missing a key opportunity by not sending more military advisers to offer training on weapons and help with logistics.
Dozens of fighter jets from across the country have congregated at a center on Georgia's coast this month for "Sentry Savannah," the Air National Guard's largest air combat training exercise. At least 48 combat jets have taken over the runways at the Air Dominance Center, located at the Savannah Air National Guard Base, in an example of how planes from the Active-duty Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as reserve units, use the space. But President Joe Biden's 2023 budget proposal cuts funding for the center, which could put 120 jobs on the line; make a recent $25 million military construction project for a new hangar useless; and, ultimately, close one of the largest regional installations for reserve air combat exercises.
Air Force Special Operations Command is working to embed a chaplain and a chaplain assistant into all of its squadrons to address what Lt. Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife, who leads the command, called "moral injury" in recent testimony to a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. AFSOC comprises a number of squadrons at Hurlburt Field, Fla., elsewhere in the United States, and in various locations around the globe.
The Space Force, in a vision document, calls for the service to invest in infrastructure and a skilled workforce to support the testing of new satellite designs and other systems. In the “Space Test Enterprise Vision,” the service says the traditional methods for testing hardware and software are no longer adequate to evaluate future systems. Satellites typically have been tested for their technical performance but not for their survivability against anti-satellite weapons, said Gen. David D. Thompson, vice chief of space operations.
The Pentagon's research and engineering office is shaking up its organizational chart by redesignating three positions as deputy chief technology officers and shifting the purview of those roles in an attempt to streamline the technology-to-capability pipeline. The changes target the current trio of defense R&E directors within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.
When Michael Brown, a former CEO of cybersecurity firm Symantec, joined the Pentagon in September 2018 to lead the Defense Innovation Unit, his goal was direct: to scale up the work being done by the department’s office dedicated to strengthening ties between the department and commercial technology firms. Brown formally announced his plans to leave DIU at his four-year anniversary. In an interview, he opened up about the challenges the office faces, including what he said was a critical lack of support from Pentagon leadership, the optimism he still holds for the office, and the ways the DOD must course-correct to bring cutting-edge technologies to the military.
A passenger with no flying experience managed to land a small plane at an airport in West Palm Beach, Fla., after the pilot suffered a medical emergency during the flight. The single-engine Cessna 208 with two people onboard landed safely at Palm Beach International Airport around 12:30 p.m. May 10 thanks to the help of an air traffic controller guiding the passenger to pilot the plane.