Daily Report

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be the next Defense Secretary, ending a nearly two-month, contentious approval process that saw most Senate Republicans oppose Hagel as President Obama’s pick to succeed Leon Panetta. Hagel’s swearing-in is...

In testimony before the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel on Tuesday, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh urged lawmakers to pass a defense appropriations bill for the current fiscal year and to prevent budget sequestration from taking effect...

Placido Salazar, a retired airman, earlier this month received the Bronze Star Medal with Valor Device for his heroic actions when his air base came under attack in South Vietnam in 1965. Retired Col. Colin Chauret, a former commander of...

Last fall, as part of jockeying over the Air Force’s force structure, the New York Air National Guard’s 107th Airlift Wing at Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station appeared to be on tap to receive a new mission—operating MQ-1 Predator or...

The Air Force retired its first operational KC-135R tanker from service after more than 50 years of flying it, announced officials at Altus AFB, Okla. This KC-135, tail number 61-0312, first flew on Aug. 14, 1962, received new engines in...

Sixty-six airmen and several C-130Js from Ramstein AB, Germany, are at Powidz AB, Poland, for several weeks of training with members of the Polish military, announced Air Forces officials. This deployment marks the first rotation of Air Force personnel and...

Air Force Space Command awarded Harris and ITT Exelis separate contracts to help define the service's next-generation weather-monitoring satellite. Harris will perform "cost-conscious space-to-ground trades" for the future satellite's ground architecture under the Weather Satellite Follow-on Activities risk-reduction technology project, announced service space acquisition officials on Feb 25. The company's detailed architectures analysis is meant to "generate integrated space and ground solutions" that will yield "the architecture responsive to various satellite constellations, including disaggregated solutions," states the release. ITT Exelis' work will focus on delivering an updated design for the Enhanced Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer sensor, according to a second release on Feb. 25. "ITT's development effort aims to present the government with an affordable, high technology-readiness-level sensor adaptable to current and future ground systems capable of being flown on multiple platforms," states the release. AFSPC said it anticipates awarding multiple contracts for WSFA risk reduction. (See also Weather Satellite Reboot.)

DARPA has launched the VTOL X-Plane program to encourage “the elegant confluence” of rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft designs in order to overcome the performance limitations of current vertical takeoff and landing platforms, announced the agency. “For the past 50 years,...