Daily Report

The alternative plan that Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve officials have been working with USAF would temporarily rather than permanently transfer some reserve component C-130s to the active force, Lt. Gen. Harry Wyatt, ANG director, told the House...

After hearing about the proposed alternative C-130 plan that would loan some reserve component C-130s to the active Air Force for possibly five years (see Just a Five-Year Load above), Rep. Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) posed a key question: “Doesn’t...

The Air Force “intends to retain” 89 of the 111 C-5 transports currently in the fleet, along with 223 C-17s, for strategic airlift, service officials tell the Daily Report. This means retiring five additional C-5A aircraft at some near-term point...

The Air Force has cut by 20 the number of C-5 transport aircraft scheduled to receive a new avionics suite, according to the Pentagon’s latest selected acquisition reports issued earlier this month. They show that the service now intends to...

According to Lt. Gen. Harry Wyatt, Air National Guard director, US Northern Command officials are “conducting a study on their current requirements” to cover the air sovereignty alert mission, currently met by 18 alert sites, 16 of them covered by...

Lockheed Martin announced Wednesday it had received a contract from Boeing to continue developing system requirements to employ Lockheed’s IRST sensor system on USAF F-15C legacy fighters. The company already has the sensor in development for the Navy’s F/A-18EF. Ken...

The Air Force officially activated the 79th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, April 22, but the airmen deployed to the unit from Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., set up alert operations April 8 and flew their first alert sortie April...

Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz has approved the new cyberspace badge, including guidelines for officer eligibility. Guidelines for enlisted airmen in the new cyber career fields will follow “in a future message,” according to an April 27 Air Force...

President Obama on April 26 signed the legislation sponsored by Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) to ensure the Administration’s new health care reform law would not adversely affect Tricare. Both the House and Senate passed the Tricare Affirmation Act (HR 4887)...

A group comprising 15 Medal of Honor recipients and 120 former POWs have partnered with The Collings Foundation to return an F-105 to airworthy status, making it part of the foundation's Vietnam Memorial Flight, according to an April 27 release. Retired Col. Leo Thorsness, both an MOH recipient and former Vietnam War POW, said, "It is one thing to see 'my' aircraft mounted on a pole or gathering dust in a museum, quite another to see it roar down the runway and take to the sky." The group has to obtain Congressional authorization, and, per the release, Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.) has taken the matter up with the House Armed Services Committee. Former AFA Chairman of the Board Gene Smith, a POW and F-105 pilot, said, "Getting an F-105 back into the skies means a great deal to me—we gave a lot to this country." (For Thorsness background, read Full Day and Valor: Wild, Wild Weasel from Air Force Magazine archives.) (Also see The Collings Foundation Web site)

The National Museum of the US Air Force has added several items to its Korean War Exhibit, which is undergoing a redesign to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War, courtesy of Gen. Lee Kae Hoon,...

Air Sorties in Southwest Asia, April 22, 2010 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 19 44 63 6,872 CAS/Armed Recon 16 67 83 10,363 Airlift 175 175 19,049 Air refueling 49 49 4,765 Rescue 23 23 1,452 Total...