Gen. Bob Kehler presented a list of three top priorities for his command that was probably significantly different from how a comparable list would have looked a year ago. The commander of Air Force Space Command, in a Friday meeting with reporters at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, said his top priority is restoring AFSPC’s nuclear enterprise in the wake of high-profile nuclear misteps—before handing it over to the new Air Force Global Strike Command, slated for initial standup later this year. Kehler’s second priority is to improve space situational awareness. This longstanding requirement gained new urgency after a deactivated Russian military satellite recently collided with an active Iridium commercial communications bird, creating a large debris field. Kehler’s third priority is to bring on the cyber warfare mission through the new 24th Air Force. This too is a recent change, as USAF had originally planned to create a standalone Cyber Command before changing course and placing the cyber mission under AFSPC.
The U.S. thwarted a drone attack on U.S. forces at Al Asad air base in western Iraq on April 22, marking the first time that American troops have been targeted since February, U.S. officials said. “We can confirm it was an attack on Al Asad,” a defense official told Air & Space…