air force beast pacer forge

Air Force Drops BEAST Week From Boot Camp in Favor of ACE Exercise

By Greg Hadley
After 16 years, the Air Force is caging the BEAST. For more than a decade and a half, future Airmen in Basic Military Training have undergone Basic Expeditionary Airman Skills Training, a four-day-long exercise meant to simulate deployments, particularly those in the Middle East that defined military service throughout the early 2000s. But with the Air Force increasingly focusing on competition with China and the operational concept of agile combat employment, BMT leaders decided an overhaul was needed.

US Remains Committed to Middle East Despite Strategy Shift, Kahl Says

By Chris Gordon
The Department of Defense's senior policy official laid out the Biden administration’s security strategy for the Middle East. In a speech in Bahrain, Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said the U.S. is still committed to the region despite a shift in its security focus away from the Middle East and toward Russia and China in the new National Defense Strategy.
airman afghanistan

CSAF Decorates Airman Who Responded to Suicide Bombing During Afghanistan Evacuation

By Greg Hadley
An Airman who rushed to help in the aftermath of the suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, during Operation Allies Refuge received the Distinguished Flying Cross on Nov. 17—with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. presenting the medal. Brown gave the award to Tech. Sgt. Katherine Rosa Orellana at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., marking the first Distinguished Flying Cross that Brown has presented in his career.

Radar Sweep

North Korea’s Kim Boasts New ICBM as US Flies Bombers

The Associated Press

U.S. B-1B bombers took part in separate joint exercises Nov. 19 with South Korean and Japanese warplanes in response to a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile launch. South Korean and Japanese officials said their respective drills with the U.S. bombers reaffirmed their combined defense postures. North Korea is sensitive to the deployment of U.S. B-1B bombers because they’re capable of carrying a huge payload of conventional weapons. The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for Nov. 21 on North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launch at Japan’s request.

Football-Sized Device Could Transform How Air Force Collects F-35 Data

Defense News

An Air Force test and evaluation squadron hopes a football-sized device mounted in an F-35 fighter′s weapons bay might revolutionize how it collects in-flight data on operational fighter jets. Squadron commander Lt. Col. Nathan Malafa said he hopes to expand the use of these devices to more Air Force fighters and perhaps other aircraft across the fleet, allowing it to collect and “crowd-source” flight data more cheaply than the service used to. 

DOD Wants to Hear From 110K Military Families With Special Needs

Military Times

Service members who have family members with special needs are being encouraged to participate in the first-ever comprehensive Defense Department-wide survey. Personnel enrolled in the Exceptional Family Member Program will receive an email invitation to participate in the 2022 Exceptional Family Member Program survey, which comes from the Office of People Analytics. There are about 110,000 Active-duty service members currently enrolled in the EFMP.

SPONSORED: The Zero-Emissions Aircraft: How the Digital Transformation Fuels Progress

Air & Space Forces Magazine

Siemens is at the forefront of helping A&D companies of all sizes master complexity and build more sustainable products. By leveraging digital technologies—the comprehensive digital twin and digital thread—aerospace companies can transform how they operate, collaborate, and share information across the product development lifecycle.

Lamborn Signals Continuity in House Space Focus, Toes Harder Nuclear Line

Breaking Defense

Rep. Doug Lamborn, the Colorado Republican who is expected to take over as chairman of the House strategic forces subcommittee next year, recently made clear that the Space Force’s congressional overseers would continue their long-standing focus on space acquisition reform. However, he also signaled a slightly harder line on the nuclear weapons issues for which the subcommittee also is responsible.

Air Force Looks to Industry for a New, Improved ABMS

Federal News Network

The Air Force wants to think a little more creatively to help develop its plan to interconnect each of its sensors and weapons systems. It will look to companies, essentially crowd sourcing ideas to improve its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) architecture. The Air Force recently put its existing model on SAM.gov with a Request for Information. It wants industry feedback by the end of December in hopes of improving the user experience through an industry-wide approach using systems engineering or system modeling language.

US, UK Confirm New Plan to Cooperatively Drive Command-and-Control Advancements

DefenseScoop

The United States and United Kingdom formally agreed to deepen collaboration to jointly advance interoperable command-and-control capabilities as the allies each strive to modernize and transform their militaries’ ability to connect their systems. The Defense Department called the statement of intent “a step in achieving collaborative C2 between the U.S. and the U.K.”

One More Thing

RAF Flight Powered by Cooking Oil in ‘Breakthrough Moment'

BBC

A flight powered by cooking oil has taken place in the U.K. for the first time. The RAF Voyager, the military equivalent of an Airbus A330, took off and landed from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. The Royal Air Force (RAF) hopes sustainable aviation fuels will help it reach net-zero by 2040 and reduce its reliance on global supply chains. Defense minister Baroness Goldie said it was "a breakthrough moment.”