The US Air Force Academy has identified 67 known cases of the H1N1 flu, the so-called Swine Flu, and a total of 121 cadets who show flu-like symptoms, as of July 13. Just three days earlier, the academy had positively identified only 15 cadets with the H1N1 virus, which the World Health Organization on June 11 had termed a global pandemic with its spread to 70 countries. Because of the outbreak, Academy officials took the precaution of limiting all cadets to the academy grounds during a traditional downtime known as “Doolie Day Out.” According to the latest CDC data (as of July 4), there have been 211 deaths in the US out of more than 37,000 probable cases of Swine Flu.
The Air Force wants to pump more than $12 billion over the next five years into its new affordable long-range missiles program and recently asked industry to push the flights of some of those munitions beyond 1,200 miles.