The Air Force has approved 78 jobs to receive special duty assignment pay for 2025, an increase from the 70 for 2024, but also coming in a year when the service is planning to cut funding to the program. While the service announced the 78 jobs figure, Air Force officials have refused to disclose details of its bonus program, including declining to share the eligible jobs and outline how the cuts to funding would affect the bonuses, claiming it’s a security risk to disclose how it uses those taxpayer funds. When Military.com obtained the list of career fields eligible for the bonus through a source, an Air Force official confirmed it was authentic and accurate.
A Pentagon program designed to cover a “vulnerable” mental health period for military members failed to reach 70 percent of those enrolled, a federal watchdog found. The program, named inTransition, is charged with connecting service members with mental health services as who are in periods of “transition” like leaving the military or returning home from a deployment.
With multiple allied and partner nations each developing their own loyal wingman-type uncrewed combat aircraft, the head of the U.S. Air Force sees a way to have them all work together while also protecting each nation’s proprietary technology.
The Air Force Research Laboratory is inviting industry to participate in a weeklong series of experiments designed to explore potential software solutions for enhanced command and control.
The Pentagon’s official watchdog is turning its investigative attention to the military’s ability to defend against hypersonic threats, as well as where exactly the Department of Defense is in its pursuit of the global, next-generation uber-battle management system known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2).
Even as NATO pledged more support for Ukraine in its hot war against Russia last week, news broke of the Kremlin’s latest plot elsewhere in Europe—and alliance members wondered whether a key tool for detecting and thwarting such attacks would disappear under a Trump presidency.
A U.S. Navy Standard Missile-6, guided by the U.S. Army’s new missile defense radar and command and control system, intercepted a target in a recent test during Valiant Shield 24 in the Indo-Pacific, Raytheon announced in a July 18 statement. ... The successful test is the latest reflection of the Pentagon’s desire to see the services operate seamlessly in battle.
An active expendable decoy, or AED capability has been tested on U.S. F-35 stealth fighters, resulting in a decision to field this operationally. The move apparently involves the British-made Leonardo BriteCloud, a small active-radar decoy ... which promises to enhance the F-35’s ability to defeat various types of air defense system threats.
Lockheed Martin recently won a settlement worth more than $130 million in a protest with the Air Force. The company completed a contract to update the big C-5 transport places with new engines. But it also had to do thousands of repairs outside the scope of the contract, and that’s where the disagreements started.
The U.S. should embark on a “Marshall Plan” for Western Hemisphere nations still struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic if it wants to keep Russian, and especially Chinese, influence in check in the region, the head of U.S. Southern Command said July 18.
Germany is planning to nearly halve military aid for Ukraine next year, from around €8 billion ($8.7 billion) to around €4 billion, according to a draft budget approved by the government.
Rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, made a special visit to Barksdale Air Force Base on July 18. According to a press release from the base, the visit was part of “Jackson's ongoing commitment to invest in and support the Shreveport community.”
