Daily Report

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is recommending Air Force Lt. Gen. Craig McKinley, currently director of the Air National Guard, to be the next chief of the National Guard Bureau. Gates made the announcement during a Pentagon press briefing July 16,...

Northrop Grumman will no longer be able to refer to its KC-30 tanker as the KC-45A in advertisements and press releases, an Air Force spokeswoman told the Daily Report yesterday. USAF created the nomenclature KC-45A to refer to its next...

The Air Force’s next tanker was slated to get a more familiar nickname around June 5, but that was the day the Air Force’s Secretary and Chief of Staff resigned suddenly, and “nothing has been done with it” since, a...

The next Presidential Administration would be well-advised to step away from the current Department of Defense stance that “unconventional warfare is the wave of the future” and invest in more F-22s, writes Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute in a...

US and coalition strike aircraft kept up the pressure on anti-government forces in Afghanistan on July 15, flying a total of 71 close air support missions, Air Forces Centralannounced yesterday. Air Force A-10s, B-1Bs, F-15Es, and MQ-1s were all in...

Members of the Louisiana Air National Guard’s 159th Fighter Wing took 10 of their F-15s to Hungary last month to participate in dissimilar air combat training drills against Hungarian Air Force MiG-29 Fulcrums and JAS-39 Gripens. The exercise, dubbed Load Diffuser 2008, took place from June 12-29 at Szentgyörgyi Dezso Air Base in Kecskemet, southeast of Budapest. In all 196 airmen from the wing made the journey, along with the F-15s, marking the first Air Force deployment of this size to the air base. In the 10 days of flying, the wing flew up to 14 sorties a day. "We demonstrated the capabilities of the F-15, and the Hungarian Air Force did the same with the Fulcrum and the Gripen," said Lt. Col. Scott Tyler, F-15 pilot and 159th FW vice commander. "On every sortie, US and HuAF pilots applied lessons learned from previous flights and became better warriors as members of the NATO team." (Kecskemet report by MSgt. Suzanne Chaillot)

Raytheon’s miniature air launched decoy has been approved for low-rate initial production for the Air Force, Michael Spencer, the company’s senior manager for MALD business development, said yesterday. Raytheon expects to build 150 of the radar-spoofing weapons in the first...

The Iraqi Air Force on July 13 reached the milestone of having flown 2,000 hours of training sorties only nine months after its training wing began instructional operations at Kirkuk Regional Air Base. “To go from zero to 2,000 hours...

The Swoose, the oldest surviving B-17 Flying Fortress and the only B-17D model still in existence, is being transferred from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., to the National Museum of the...

Raytheon has completed captive carry testing of its joint standoff weapon extended range system in preparation for free-flight testing in 2009, the company announced yesterday. “This test proved our flush-inlet design provides the JSOW-ER’s engine with enough air to ignite...

Air Sorties in War on Terrorism, Southwest AsiaJuly 14, 2008 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 24 12 36 6,081 CAS/Armed Recon 51 71 122 17,944 Airlift 149 149 24,739 Air refueling 52 52 8,572 Total 359 57,336...