The Air Force on Thursday issued its list of 11 candidate bases that are the potential beddown locations for the first 250 to 300 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that are scheduled to enter its inventory by 2017. On the short list of operational bases are: Hill AFB, Utah; Mountain Home AFB, Idaho; and Shaw AFB, S.C., as well as McEntire Joint National Guard Base, S.C., and the Air National Guard stations in Burlington, Vt., and Jacksonville, Fla. On the short list of training locations are: Eglin AFB, Fla.; Holloman AFB N.M.; and Luke AFB, Ariz., as well as the ANG stations in Boise, Idaho, and Tuscon, Ariz. The Air Force said it selected these candidate installations out of the pool of more than 200 USAF sites using the “deliberate, repeatable, standardized, and transparent” process that it outlined in September. Continue
The Pentagon’s new counter-drone task force will play a direct role in arming Airmen with new weapons to defend Air Force agile combat employment, or ACE, air bases in austere locations against enemy drone attacks, the director of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 said Oct. 14.
