It Must Be Election Year or How I Saved the B-1B: The Air Force lost its bid to remove B-1B bombers from Ellsworth AFB, S.D., when the BRAC commission overturned the recommendation to consolidate them at Dyess AFB, Tex. However,...

And for North Dakota, Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan said he has glommed $1 million in the 2006 defense spending bill to create a center of excellence at the University Of North Dakota to support the new unmanned aerial vehicle destined...

The Office of Management and Budget is getting up a full head of steam—ready to ram the 2006 defense appropriations measure for cutting $7 billion from the President’s budget request. OMB claims the money will go to fund “non-security-related accounts.”...

The GAO says the Pentagon is not maximizing the load capability for the USAF airlift fleet, including dual use tankers. The reason, says the Congressional watchdog agency in a new report, is that Air Mobility Command doesn’t collect enough data...

According to GAO’s analysis of nearly 15,000 strategic airlift missions for Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, AMC underutilized C-5 and C-17 aircraft on more than 97 percent and more than 81 percent of their missions, respectively, based on DOD's standard payload planning factor. While the data would seem to indicate a glaring misuse of airlift capability, GAO emphasized that had AMC collected data on operational factors, these payloads might “indicate efficient use of an aircraft’s capacity.”

The Culture Friendly Air Commandos: Airmen from the 6th Special Operations Squadron, Hurlburt Field, Fla., are culturally and linguistically trained to fit right in to Niger in Africa when they deployed there recently to work with the Nigerian air force....

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) thinks Congress should have more of a voice in picking who runs the agencies that control a major portion of the nation’s intelligence funds. Mikulski, who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has introduced...

A duo of US Air Forces in Europe C-130s on Oct. 2 returned an estimated 80 African Union peacekeepers from the Darfur region of the Sudan to Rwanda, where the troops are the first of 200 scheduled for redeployment by...

Helping the 86th AEG deploy African peacekeepers, eight members of Ramstein’s 1st Combat Communications team provided critical tactical communications—necessary for such short-notice missions and bare base operations. The comm team comprised a communications officer, tech controller, and data, power production,...

Darleen Druyun was released Friday from her nine-month stay at the medium-security federal correctional institution in Marianna, Fla. Druyun also paid a $5,000 fine for violating federal conflict-of-interest laws and must perform three years of community service. If you’re not...

According to the head of US Northern Command, Adm. Timothy Keating, a lack of adequate communication between military and civilian relief agencies responding to Hurricane Katrina made it extremely difficult to discover what was being done and where to send...

US Transportation Command has extended Patriot Express flights throughout Japan for an additional year. They will continue to fly through Sept. 30, 2006, following a new agreement US Pacific Command reached with TRANSCOM.

Did the Air Force Really Sponsor “The Shadow” The Department of Veterans Affairs and ABC Radio News have teamed to produce a series of public service announcements alerting veterans to the various benefits available to them. Officials said that ABC...

Officials at Robins AFB, Ga., say they are ahead of the game when it comes to cleaning up environmental pollution at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center. The Air Force has given its ALCs until 2014 to restore sites contaminated...

September 30-October 2, 2005 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 30 17 – 47 CAS/Armed Recon 108 62 – 170 Airlift – – 500 500 Air refueling – – 86 86 Total 138 79 586 803 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom...