Making Peace in the Total Force: Things are strained between the Air Force’s Active, Guard, and Reserve components, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said Tuesday, but the differences aren’t irreconcilable, and the Total Force “is not broken.” In a speech at AFA’s Air & Space Conference, he said that the situation is “nobody’s fault,” and the arguments between the three in terms of force structure and size are being made because “everybody’s trying to do what they think is best.” But the three elements are still “within visual range” of each other, he said. Along with the Guard and Reserve leadership, “we’ll do it as quickly and smoothly as possible … we’ll figure it out, I promise you,” Welsh insisted.
The Air Force on March 12 awarded contract modifications worth a combined $2.4 billion to Boeing to procure an undisclosed number of E-7 Wedgetail as part of the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase and continue work on the airborne battle management aircraft’s radar.