Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told lawmakers Thursday that he’s concerned with the “slight increase” in sexual assaults reported across the service in Fiscal 2010 compared to the previous year. (There were 585 reported cases last year, up from 546 in Fiscal 2009; see entry below.) Such unacceptable behavior mostly “reflects airman-on-airman violence, which is absolutely anathema to our core values and completely inconsistent with the respect that we expect airmen to reflect in their daily business with others,” he said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. But the reported cases may not tell the entire story. Donley said the results of a recent Gallup organization independent review that the Air Force commissioned show that “in the last year, as much as three percent of the female population and 0.5 percent of the male population” believe that they have been victims of some sort of sexual assault.
The rate of building B-21 bombers would speed up if the fiscal 2026 defense budget passes. But it remains unclear how much capacity would be added, and whether the Air Force would simply build the bombers faster, or buy more.
