For its part, the Air Force is pursuing a new long-range strike platform, which Michael Wynne, Secretary of the Air Force, said could be manned or unmanned, but he leans toward the latter. “I’m a huge unmanned vehicle proponent,” he said at a Capitol Hill seminar Wednesday. He maintained that the Air Force would continue to make a heavy investment in unmanned vehicles, because they solve a key issue—endurance in the target area. A single-seat manned aircraft can last 11 hours, tops, while a Global Hawk can persist for more than 24 hours.
Air Force Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost—a trailblazer and one of the first 10 women to reach a four-star rank across the U.S. military—retired and passed control of U.S. Transportation Command to Air Force Gen. Randall Reed on Oct. 4, finishing an eventful tenure at TRANSCOM.