At the official rollout of the Air Force's new Unmanned Aerial System Flight Plan 2009-2047, Thursday afternoon, the service's vice chief of staff, Gen. William Fraser, acknowledged that most focus on UAS operations is on the unmanned aerial vehicle itself, but he said, "While the operator may not be sitting in the cockpit, at the heart of these unmanned systems, and really at the core of all of our missions, are highly skilled airmen." (Read our initial coverage, which reports the shift to a future in which UAVs are dominant.) UAS task force commander, Col. Eric Mathewson, cast a slightly different light when he said that one of the strengths of UAVs is its "1-G cockpit," the ground control station in which he "can always have a fresh crew, which enables any sort of persistence." Gen. Dave Deptula, the Air Staff's intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance czar, called that persistence capability "first among equals." He said, "What UAS is bringing to the table is the ability to stay in position or maneuver over large areas for a long period of time, and that's where a person in an aircraft becomes a limitation." The Air Force flight plan, they say, is meant to institutionalize USAF’s vision for developing and resourcing unmanned capabilities for the foreseeable future. Deptula noted: "We are today, with unmanned aerial systems, about where we were in the 1920s with manned aircraft. Lots of potential out there. And, we have to change the way that we think about using these systems across the entire spectrum of military operations." Mathewson said the document does not lay out specific solutions but rather “concepts and possibilities” that will be filled in as the service talks with industry, academia, the other services, and allies. Initiatives underway include the development of multi-aircraft control by a single pilot (currently undergoing testing at Creech AFB, Nev., according to Mathewson) and a “payload agnostic platform” or a modular platform that could accommodate different payloads to perform a range of missions, from ISR to mobility and strike. "We’re thinking about multi-mission in the large sense," he said and added, "We think this is potentially where we are going to go." (Deptula briefing slides)(Mathewson briefing slides) (Air Force UAS flight plan) (Briefing transcript)

The Macon Telegraph has it right that the Senate vote—and subsequent reaction—to kill a provision to build more F-22 Raptors than the Administration-prescribed 187 has “particular consequence” for the Air Force depot charged with sustaining the service’s legacy F-15 fighter...

Work on the Senate version of the 2010 defense authorization bill continued Thursday, with a retreat by the lawmakers in the face of another Administration veto threat—this one targeting the long-held Congressional desire to keep in play an alternate engine for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. For several years, the Pentagon has tried to quash the General Electric-Rolls Royce F136 program it began a decade ago to compete with the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine that now powers the F-35, and each time Congress has restored funding for the F136. However, on Thursday, Senators voted unanimously to support an amendment from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), in whose state P&W builds the F135, to cancel alternate engine funding in the defense policy bill. In a July 23 statement, GE officials state that "the funding battle … is far from over," noting that House lawmakers and the Senate Armed Services Committee favored the alternate engine. They also state that the F136 development program "is 70 percent complete [and] has been executed on schedule and on cost." All will have to await House and Senate conference negotiations.

The Pentagon’s top irregular warfare official told defense reporters in Washington, D.C., Thursday that the current Quadrennial Defense Review is strongly considering the establishment of a dedicated counterinsurgency/IW wing within the Air Force, a concept Air Force Chief of Staff...

Air Force leadership has decided that it's time to standardize—once again—the number of military and civilian personnel that must comprise its wings and groups. According to a news report from Hanscom AFB, Mass., Lt. Gen. Ted Bowlds, commander of Hanscom's Electronic Systems Center, told his workforce recently that new Air Force size standards will force changes in ESC's organizational structure. Under these changes, he said that a wing must have at least 1,000 military and civilian members, while a group must have at least 400. Air Force Materiel Command units, including ESC, just a few years ago adopted a new organizational structure that transformed program offices and such into wings, groups, and squadrons. (Air Force Instruction 38-101, dated April 4, 2006, on manpower and organization eliminated "specific manpower size guidelines.") Unfortunately, AFMC's largely acquisition-centered workforce includes many contract employees, so, in many cases, as Bowlds said, "There is no way we can make the numbers work." The Air Force has decided that contract employees will count as a third of an employee when computing numbers needed to justify wing or group status. The inevitable do-over for AFMC organizations is "a work in progress right now," according to Bowlds, who only talked about the impact on ESC units, but it undoubtedly has ramifications command-wide. (Hanscom report by Chuck Paone) (To understand the earlier shift to a wing structure, read Air Force Magazine's Operational Acquisition)

Northrop Grumman has just completed a fit test for its new Scalable Agile Beam Radar, installing it aboard an F-16 at Edwards AFB, Calif., according to a July 23 company release. Northrop has been flying SABR aboard its own test...

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) told the online journal DOD Buzz this week that the National Reconnaissance Office is overdue for a makeover. Thornberry, who is ranking member of the technical and tactical intelligence panel of the House Permanent Select Committee...

During its latest deployment to Andersen AFB, Guam, for a US Pacific Command Theater Security Package, an F-22 Raptor force from Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, deployed forward again to Kadena AB, Japan, to demonstrate that it can make multiple moves as...

The Air Force and Northrop Grumman successfully demonstrated the B-2 bomber’s new radar can meet both conventional and strategic performance requirements, according to a July 22 company statement. It was the second of two Air Force verification compliance reviews (VCR)...

Lockheed Martin has completed final thermal vacuum testing of the first Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite, which the company expect to deliver to USAF next year. In a July 20 release, the company noted that the test was “one of...

The Air Force has awarded Bronze Star medals to SMSgt. Keith Almand and SSgt. Paul Kelly, both assigned to the 566th Intelligence Squadron at Buckley AFB, Colo., for their actions while deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Almand served as NCOIC of the Joint Expeditionary Signals Intelligence Tactical Reconnaissance Detachment with the Multi-National Corps-Iraq, where, over a six-month tour, he led a team that executed more than 500 combat signals intelligence terminal guidance missions that resulted in detainment of more than 600 suspected insurgents. Kelly deployed as part of Combined Joint Task Force Troy for a year, during which time he completed more than 700 outside-the-wire missions. He helped plan 40 operations, investigating numerous weapons caches and making post-blast analyses, as well as responding to numerous improvised explosive devices and vehicle-born IED reports. (Buckley report)

July 21, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 27 24 51 8,437 CAS/Armed Recon 18 73 91 19,250 Airlift 42 42 26,940 Air refueling 52 52 9,268 Total 236 63,895 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance...