The Air Force is planning to shift the sustainment of its Minuteman III launch facilities and launch control centers to a depot-maintenance model by 2017, said Maj. Gen. Sandra Finan, commander of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland AFB, N.M. This is one of the efficiency and cost-saving initiatives that the service is adopting across its nuclear enterprise to squeeze “every bit of value out of every dollar,” said Finan on Sept. 17 during the nuclear panel at AFA’s Air and Space Conference in National Harbor, Md. She said the new model will be like the preprogrammed depot maintenance construct that the Air Force uses for its aircraft. “An aircraft goes in for PDM maintenance. It gets overhauled. It comes back out; it is almost like a new aircraft,” she said.
Has China’s Secret H-20 Stealth Bomber Broken Cover?
Jan. 6, 2025
China may be flying its new H-20 stealth bomber, possibly seen in new imagery circulating on Chinese social media. If the imagery is authentic, the aircraft is not the expected flying wing but has large tail control surfaces.