Orlando, February 18, 2010—Improving the Air Force’s ability to monitor objects in space remains an imperative, Gen. Norton Schwartz, Air Force Chief of Staff, told attendees at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium. Enhanced capabilities in this realm will allow the US to gauge more accurately if the activities of other spacefaring nations are threatening, he said. They would also enable the Air Force to understand better anomalies in its own space systems, he said. An essential part of this space situational awareness entails continuing to foster the resurgence of “space intelligence analytical and collection capabilities,” said Schwartz. But this process will take time as knowledge accumulated over decades by the old generation of intelligence experts transfers to the incoming cadre of specialists, he said.
The Air Force is on track to reach its annual goal of graduating 1,500 new pilots that had proved elusive to this point, one year after the service launched a sweeping overhaul of its undergraduate pilot training program, Air Education and Training Command said Sept. 14.
