SloveniaCroatia Airmen Visit Aviano Units: Members of the air forces of Slovenia and Croatia spent time with US operations, maintenance, and air control airmen at Aviano AB, Italy, recently as part of the US Air Forces in Europe “Building Partnership Capacity” endeavor. (See “Stop Cutting USAFE” above) During an earlier engagement with Slovenia airmen, said Capt. Michael Lake, 603rd Air Control Squadron director of operations, the US and these new allies realized “we had common training needs.” He continued, “The friendship that developed out of that has now resulted in this first visit and will hopefully open some more doors so we can do more training together.” One of the Slovenian officers, Maj. Andrej Jancevski, expressed a desire for “future training here or in Slovenia.” He said, “It’s always great to train with other nations and this visit has been great.” Just a week after the Slovenian visit, airmen from Croatia arrived for their first visit to the base since 2005. Col. Walter Isenhour, 31st Maintenance Group deputy commander, said, “People involved in aircraft flight and maintenance operations share a common language, regardless of nationality; we immediately found common operational and sustainment challenges and issues we could discuss.” (Aviano report by TSgt. Michael O’Connor)
Anduril and General Atomics will develop their Collaborative Combat Aircraft for the Air Force, beating out Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, the service announced on April 24. But any of the non-selected companies can compete to actually manufacture the eventual design, the Air Force said.