Maj. Gen. James Hecker, director of plans, programs, and requirements at Air Combat Command headquarters, has been named the next 19th Air Force commander. Hecker will replace Maj. Gen. Michael Keltz, who resigned from the position on April 30 after making an “inappropriate comment” in during a public nonjudicial punishment proceeding, officials announced. The service also announced that Greg Zacharias will replace outgoing USAF Chief Scientist Mica Endsley, who has served in the position since June 2013. Zacharias currently works as the president of Charles River Analytics in Cambridge, Mass. Zacharias worked as senior scientist for Raytheon BBN Technologies, as a research engineer at CS Draper Labs, and as an Air Force attaché for the Space Shuttle program at NASA Johnson Space Center, before he founded Charles River, according to his company bio. The Air Force is slated to release a new technology forecast, dubbed “Autonomous Horizons,” a subject Endsley spent a lot of time on during her tenure, in the next few weeks.
The Air Force’s airlift fleet is in desperate need of modern connectivity, spare parts, and other innovations to keep going amid growing demand and modernization plans still in their infancy, according to a former senior leader and a new research paper from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
