Orlando, February 18, 2010—Air Force Secretary Michael Donley chided Congress for continuing to add C-17s to the USAF inventory, saying “it’s a double hit” on the service’s priorities. In a press conference at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium, Donley said Congress not only takes money “from elsewhere in our budget” to buy the aircraft at the expense of things deemed higher priorities. The Air Force must then come up with operations and maintenance funding to operate, fix, and staff the airplanes. “We have more tails than we need” in the C-17 force already, Donley said. “We need to be allowed to manage the force” at the size the Air Force thinks is manageable, he said. (Also see No More Strategic Airlift)
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.