The Air Force will consolidate numbered air forces in Hawaii, Texas, and Germany as part of the service’s broader efforts to shed about $34 billion in overhead and operate more efficiently, said USAF Secretary Michael Donley Wednesday. Thirteenth Air Force at JB Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, will be inactivated and combined with the staff of Pacific Air Forces at Hickam, he said during his Air Force Association-sponsored Air Force Breakfast Series presentation in Arlington, Va. This new combined staff will have a single integrated headquarters and will operate the air and space operations center at Pearl Harbor-Hickam that supports US Pacific Command, he said. The Air Force will also inactivate 19th AF at Randolph AFB, Tex., consolidating its staff with Air Education and Training Command headquarters, also based at Randolph. USAF will also inactivate 17th AF at Ramstein AB, Germany, merging its staff with US Air Forces in Europe headquarters at Ramstein to support US European Command and US Africa Command, he said. The timeline for the consolidations is not yet clear, but could begin as soon as Fiscal 2012, he said.
The U.S. military’s V-22 Osprey fleet is set to receive a slate of improvements to increase safety as the fallout from a deadly crash of a U.S. Air Force Osprey off the coast of Japan in late 2023 continues to reverberate across the fleet. The primary focus of the confirmed…