The Air Force has divested its security forces of the responsibility for information protection with the creation of a new Headquarters Air Force-level information protection directorate. The shift of security forces into more combat-focused, globally deployable units drove the change, but Air Force leaders also recognized the need for a single information protection entity that reports directly to the service’s senior security official, the administrative assistant to the Air Force Secretary. That person now is Daniel McGarvey, who heads the new directorate. According to McGarvey, the new focus will enhance protection of today’s “ultimate commodity”—information. In describing the new directorate, he said its subject-matter experts, drawn from all functional areas, would develop and implement security policy and provide oversight, but they also will develop a new service-wide enterprise approach “to protect information from cradle to grave.” The Air Force plans to create similar structures at the major command and wing levels. (AFIPD report by Shadi May)
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.