Air Force Academy cadets, who fly primarily in TG-15A and smaller TG-15B gliders, soared to their eighth straight national sailplane racing championship, announced academy officials. They cited results released last week from the Soaring Society of America in the academy’s Dec. 7 release. This year’s racing team posted more than 30,700 total miles, more than any other year in academy’s 43-year soaring history, and nearly twice as many miles as flown in 2011, said Lt. Col. Richard Roller, 94th Flying Training Squadron commander at the academy. “This is the best sailplane racing team in the history of [academy] soaring,” he said. Among their accomplishments, these cadets flew some of the longest flights in academy history, with four flights of 320 miles or more, said Roller. They also broke the team’s record for the longest-duration flight with a sortie of more than seven hours, he said. (Colorado Springs report by Don Branum)
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.