The Air Force expects to complete its two-year transition to the new undergraduate pilot training curriculum by the end of October, the head of Air Education and Training Command recently told reporters. Service officials contend that “Undergraduate Pilot Training 2.5,” a software-heavy, self-paced version of the course, is producing better-prepared pilots faster than before.
Senators are looking to shore up Taiwan’s defenses amid heightened tensions with China and are poised to green-light billions more in military aid to the island to make it happen. Defense policy legislation teed up by the Senate now includes numerous provisions aimed at boosting cooperation with the self-governing island and would authorize upwards of $10 billion in military assistance over five years to arm it.
Uniformed Airmen and Guardians who experience sexual harassment now have the option to file a restricted or unrestricted report with the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response office to access advocacy services and supportive referrals. This change now allows members to seek support services for both sexual harassment and sexual assault from one office.
U.S. arms sales to allies and partners bounced back for a total of about $50 billion in sales cases cleared in fiscal 2022, a big jump from the total of about $35 billion the year before. The boost to Foreign Military Sales deals approved by the State Department—roughly $15 billion over FY21’s totals—brings FY22 in line with annual cleared sales from before the COVID-19 pandemic, said Defense Security Cooperation Agency director James Hursch.
Many Americans believe that military family members should be able to use their professional licenses in any state regardless of where the credentials were received, according to the results of a survey. About 83 percent of 848 registered voters surveyed nationwide said they support rules that allow the use of the licenses wherever military family members may move in the U.S., a policy known as license reciprocity, according to Merit, a web-based identity verification platform that sells professional licensing verification services.
The White House released a long-delayed National Security Strategy that lays out challenges the United States faces in a tripolar world, with China and Russia as the nation’s key competitors. With regard to outer space and its role in national security, Biden’s strategy takes a less combative tone than the Trump administration’s strategy released in 2017.
DefenseScoop Editor-in-Chief Billy Mitchell speaks with Brian Beachkofski, former commander of the Air Force’s Kessel Run; Brian Masters, former director of cloud and AI enablement for the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps; and Meagan Metzger, CEO and co-founder of Dcode about the DOD innovation landscape, challenges that persist, and how the Pentagon can be more supportive of innovators who want to transform the U.S. military and its use of technology.
The U.S. military’s joint command for defending the homeland is not adequately postured to rapidly launch operations in the Arctic should it need to meet ever-increasing threats from Russia and China, according to the chief of U.S. Northern Command. “More than 50 percent of my AOR is in the Arctic. Yet we’re not organized, trained, and equipped to be able to operate in that Arctic environment in a timely manner,” Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck said. “The White House on Friday put out their Arctic strategy, and their No. 1 pillar is defense in the Arctic. So we probably ought to get after that from a department perspective.”
The merger of Leonardo DRS with Israeli radar maker RADA is on track to close by the end of next month, the company’s CEO said. The companies have been going through the regulatory process since announcing the deal in late June. The merger will combine RADA, a public company traded on the NASDAQ, and Leonardo DRS, the wholly owned American subsidiary of Leonardo, the Italian aerospace and defense firm.
Sixteen years ago, the former President of the United States, George W. Bush, dedicated the United States Air Force Memorial with these words: “A Soldier can walk the battlefields where he once fought; a Marine can walk the beaches he once stormed; but an Airman can never visit the patch of sky he raced across on a mission to defend freedom.” So how do you walk the space?