Russia’s Defense Ministry said a Russian warship on Oct. 15 prevented a U.S. Navy destroyer from what it described as an attempt to intrude into Russia’s territorial waters in the Sea of Japan. The incident came as Russia and China conducted joint naval drills in the area and follows other dangerously close encounters involving Russian and Western warships.
“As dermatologists on Active duty in the United States Air Force, we are appealing to our service’s leaders to re-evaluate the policies prohibiting facial hair growth in male members. Among the authors, it has been widely accepted for years that these regulations do not likely enhance readiness but instead lead to a discriminatory effect against shaving waiver holders that especially affects our Black/African American members,” writes Lt. Col. Simon Ritchie, who leads a small team of clinicians that recently completed a study published in the Journal of Military Medicine regarding shaving waivers in the USAF and their impact on rates of promotion.
For the Taliban, winning was easy, but governing is proving to be harder. Two months after the terrorist group seized control of Afghanistan, fighters who have spent the past two decades as insurgents are struggling to govern the country’s 40 million residents, experts say. If the Taliban government fails to provide for citizens’ basic needs, including food, water and medical care, it, too, could find itself pushed out of power sooner rather than later, said Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace.
Numbers for breast cancer in military women have been high for years, but as veterans returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rumors began to swirl: The cancers are hitting young—and they’re extraordinarily aggressive. From fiscal year 2000 to fiscal year 2015, Veterans Affairs saw the number of women diagnosed with breast cancer increase by five times for women ages 45 to 64.
As the Pentagon looks to increase the power of the F-35 joint strike fighter’s engine while cutting costs, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric could be less than a year away from finding themselves in a rematch over the future of the stealth fighter’s propulsion system.
Defense contractors and their employees in Texas must get the COVID-19 vaccine despite the governor’s executive order banning vaccine mandates, the Pentagon said Oct. 14. The Pentagon said in a statement that federal guidance supersedes local laws, like the executive order issued by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Oct. 11. It pointed to federal guidance issued in September.
An agreement just announced between the U.S. Space Force and a venture capital firm is a pilot project intended to help government buyers understand how investors assess space industry startups. The Space Force would like better insight into how venture investors gauge the potential of technologies developed by commercial businesses, said Gabe Mounce, deputy director of SpaceWERX.
When the U.S. military wanted to define the look of its newest branch, it turned to Tracy Roan and her team of designers in the Air Force Uniform Office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. U.S. Space Force recently unveiled prototypes of its new “service dress” uniforms, the result of more than a year of work by a small crew of 21 people based at Wright-Patterson, the Air Force base with the largest working population responsible for cradle-to-grave management of a huge array of weapons and materiel.
Some Air Force Academy cadets want the service to fund a facility to study farming techniques that could someday be used on the moon to feed U.S. troops deployed in space. The cadet club USAFA Green designed an agricultural testing facility for entry into the Air Force’s annual Spark Tank innovation challenge. While it would be based in Colorado Springs, Colo., it would allow research for “any environment,” they say.
Global shipping and supply chain disruptions are making it harder for corporate planemakers and suppliers to meet resurgent demand for parts, according to industry executives and analysts. Disruptions, which are also hitting commercial aviation, are beginning to drive up costs and risk slowing down the aerospace industry's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
On September 25, 1912, Alberto Salinas Carranza and Gustavo Salinas Camiña received their pilot licenses from the Aero Club of America. The Salinas cousins were the first of a group of five Mexican pilots sent by their government to the United States to study at the Moisant Aviation School at Hempstead, Long Island. Horacio Ruiz and brothers Juan Pablo and Eduardo Aldasoro would soon earn their licenses as well. The photographs and correspondence found in the collection of Shakir S. Jerwan, their “profesor,” provide a unique glimpse into the early history of Mexican aviation.