Daily Report

For the fourth consecutive year, Congress is acting against the Pentagon’s plan to halt development of the General Electric-Rolls Royce F136 engine for the F-35 fighter. Last week, the House Armed Services Committee’s airland panel earmarked $603 million for the...

Officials at Andersen AFB, Guam, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony June 12 to celebrate the opening of the new hangar that will shelter the base’s RQ-4 Global Hawks when the high-flying unmanned reconnaissance aircraft start arriving there next year for beddown....

The Air Force and Boeing on June 13 successfully fired the high-power laser aboard the advanced tactical laser (ATL) aircraft for the first time in flight during a test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. During the test, the ATL...

Hanscom AFB, Mass., is serving a major hub once again this year for US Joint Forces Command’s annual coalition warrior interoperability demonstration that began yesterday and runs through June 29. Hanscom is the lead Air Force site for the two...

CMSgt. Dwight Badgett is Air Force Reserve Command’s new command chief master sergeant. Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, Air Force Reserve chief, selected Badgett last month for the command’s top enlisted post, saying Badgett has “a depth and breadth of experience...

Pratt & Whitney announced yesterday at the Paris Air Show that it has delivered the first production hardware for the engine enhancement package that it has been developing under Air Force sponsorship for the F100-PW-229 powerplant used on service F-15s...

The $140 million request for a “classified” program in the Air Force’s Fiscal 2010 list of unfunded priorities would fund technology studies on a new bomber, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz confirmed June 11 during an appearance...

Boeing vice president for military business development Chris Raymond said that getting past the Obey Amendment that bars sales of the F-22 overseas is simply the first of many items to consider in the potential export of the Raptor. “We...

Boeing sees US defense procurement, research, and development funding as “under pressure” for the coming years, with the “potential to stay, at best, flat,” Chris Raymond, company vice president for integrated systems business development told reporters at a pre-Paris Air...

Earlier this month, 20 US Air Force Academy cadets deployed to Southwest Asia to spend time with the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing. This time in the war theater is part of the annual program called Operation Air Force that places...

Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott III, commander of 18th Air Force, on June 12 relieved Col. John McDonald of command of the 43rd Airlift Wing at Pope AFB, N.C. According to a June 13 report in the Fayetteville Observer, a statement from 18th AF indicated McDonald was removed "for cause." The statement went on to say that Scott had decided McDonald's "actions rendered him ineffective" as the wing commander. Col. James Johnson, formerly vice commander of the 19th AW at Little Rock AFB, Ark., was to arrive at Pope over the past weekend to replace McDonald, who has been assigned as a special assistant to Scott at 18th AF. Note that Johnson's biography replaced McDonald's Friday afternoon on the Pope Web site.

Air Sorties in War on Terrorism, Southwest AsiaJune 11-12, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 49 37 86 6,625 CAS/Armed Recon 47 116 163 15,841 Airlift 295 295 22,271 Air refueling 87 87 7,344 Total 631 52,081...