A Massachusetts Air National Guard member was arrested April 13 in connection with the disclosure of highly classified military documents about the Ukraine war and other top national security issues, an alarming breach that has raised fresh questions about America’s ability to safeguard its most sensitive secrets. The guardsman, an IT specialist identified as 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, was taken into custody without incident after FBI officers converged on his Massachusetts home. Attorney General Merrick Garland said he is to be charged with removing or transmitting classified national defense information, a crime under the Espionage Act.
The leak of secret military documents last week sent shockwaves through the Pentagon, but Defense Department officials are less surprised by the revelation April 13 that the Justice Department has arrested a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman in connection with the case. It’s not uncommon for relatively junior officials to have access to top-secret information, according to DOD officials and experts.
The Air Force is seeking what it's calling Next Generation Countermeasures for its current and future reentry vehicles for the LGM-35A Sentinel nuclear missile system, according to an online posting from the service. The request for information itself is classified as secret, but the post says key attributes could include “enhancements in accuracy, lethality, survivability etc.”
Two years after a Japanese air force pilot and his American instructor died in a military jet crash in Alabama, officials are mulling whether a U.S.-run program that teaches English to foreign aviators is partly to blame. The incident has prompted U.S. Air Force leaders to take a closer look at the quality of the instruction they provide, and consider how to better accommodate foreign students. It has opened fresh discussion of how much time and money the program needs to succeed.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has defined seven Operational Imperatives for the Department of the Air Force to work on, warning that “if we don't get them right, we will have unacceptable operational risk.” From a resilient space order of battle to the development of next-generation tactical air dominance and global strike platforms, these imperatives will define the Air Force for decades to come—Dive deeper into each one with our new “Operational Imperatives” pages highlighting all the latest news and developments on these critical efforts.
A sustainment plan for the Space Force’s global network of 19 parabolic antennas and ground systems used for controlling satellites is in the final stages of an update but still has hurdles to clear before it’s finalized, a Space Force official told Breaking Defense. The sustainment strategy, known as the program’s Life Cycle Sustainment Plan (LCSP), was highlighted in a Government Accountability Office report hat knocked the Space Force for not having updated the plan in 2022 when it was obligated to, five years since the 2017 plan. ... The new LCSP “is near completion,” according to Shawn Sawyer, director of data transport for product support for Space Systems Command’s Battle Management Command, Control, & Communications.
The German defense ministry on April 13 approved the re-export of five Polish MiG-29 aircraft to Ukraine, deciding the matter on the same day that Warsaw asked for permission. Defense officials in Berlin, eager to shed Germany’s reputation as sluggish on Ukraine, trumpeted the speedy approval. “The request only arrived today,” Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was quoted as saying in a statement, proclaiming that “Germany can be relied upon.”
Anyone who must enroll in MHS Genesis or wants a new DOD credential, known as a DS Logon, to access the military pay system or their medical records must have a credit card. It appears that the new requirement went into effect DOD and Veterans Affairs-wide within the past five months.
As space technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, the role of commercial industry in national defense has become a hot topic, the chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force Gen. B. Chance Saltzman said April 13. Saltzman spoke at the Explore 2023 conference hosted by the satellite imagery provider Planet in a fireside chat with the company’s chief strategist Robert Cardillo.
For too long, America’s competitors have been largely unchallenged below the threshold of armed conflict. The Air Force, for its part, recognized this and sought to address it directly in a new strategy. “One of the main reasons we started looking at that is, this has been territory that our adversaries have been operating in with impunity lately,” Maj. Gen. Daniel Simpson, assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, A2/6, told DefenseScoop in a recent interview.
Earlier this month, an A-10C Warthog ground attack jet arrived at the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. This jet is the first to head into retirement in years and is part of a batch of 21 the U.S. Air Force expected to divest in the coming months. This is in line with the service's desire to retire all of its Warthogs before the end of the decade, an effort that is now starting to move ahead after years of members of Congress blocking such plans.
History is replete with examples of how weather directly affects the outcomes of military operations and causes planners to attempt to negate and avoid those effects. … Weather is still such an important military factor today that the U.S. Air Force has Special Operations Weathermen Teams (SOWT)– meteorologists with unique training (HALO parachuting/scuba, etc.) to operate in hostile or denied territory. They gather, assess and interpret weather and environmental intelligence from forward deployed locations, working primarily with Air Force and Army Special Operations Forces.