Today marks 50 years since the first KC-135 rolled out of the Boeing plant in Renton, Wash. The aircraft has served as a transport, aeromedical evacuation, flying command post, and electronic reconnaissance platform, but it is best known as the...

Airmen with the 7th Airlift Squadron who made a new airdrop record during their 140-day deployment to Southwest Asia are back at their home base of McChord AFB, Wash. This was the outfit that, in March, dropped some 32,000 pounds...

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the Air Force has raised the number of tanker aircraft it expects to buy initially as replacements for its elderly KC-135s from 100 to 189. The newspaper’s source is Ralph Crosby, chairman and chief executive...

Boeing successfully conducted its first test flight of a USAF E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft equipped with Block 40/45 upgrades. Company officials say this upgrade program is the largest enhancement in the history of the Air Force’s AWACS...

The Air Force has selected Maj. Gen. John T. Sheridan to be the first person to hold the new “crossover” position meant to bridge any gap between the National Reconnaissance Office and the Air Force and run point for the...

The landing gear of a C-5 Galaxy collapsed as the massive airlifter was preparing to take off from Charleston AFB, S.C., on July 14, according to The State newspaper. The Air Force reported there were no injuries to those onboard....

The Air Force Recruiting Service has its first female leader, Brig. Gen. Suzanne M. Vautrinot, who took command on Monday. Vautrinot, who is a 1982 Air Force Academy graduate, has been serving as deputy director of strategic security on the Air Staff. She has replaced Brig. Gen. Robertus Remkes, who is going to US European Command as director of plans and policy.

Col. Timothy Vigil, who is 12th Air Force’s Warfighting Headquarters special assistant, gave his new boss—Lt. Gen. Norman Seip, commander of 12th Air Force—and the head of US Southern Command, Army Gen. John Craddock, a tour of 12th Air Force’s...

Army Gen. John Craddock, SOUTHCOM commander, is on his way to become the head of US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe. First he must pass muster with the Senate, but he already has NATO’s blessing. Craddock would succeed...

The Solar Mass Ejection Imager experiment, orbiting the Earth about 50 miles up aboard the Coriolis satellite, has photographed more than 200 “coronal mass ejections,” since it became operational in January 2003, according to officials at Air Force Research Lab’s...

The Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, has awarded Northrop Grumman a $49.5 million contract for the first delivery of hardware and support in the Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures (LAIRCM) program. Northrop officials say the ceiling for the total five-year...

The Air Force’s Office of Scientific Research is cooperating with Binghamton University on a research project that investigators expect to enhance the “availability and resilience” of command and control networks—ensuring “an operator’s continuous access to battlefield information,” according to Binghamton...

Medal of Honor recipient and US Air Force legend retired Col. Leo Thorsness got to fly the back seat of an F-16 two-ship flying out of Luke AFB, Ariz., recently, reports the Arizona Republic. The base’s 310th Fighter Squadron invited...

First Lt. Michael Seltzer, an F-16 pilot recently returning from a five-hour mission over Iraq with two bombs still onboard discovered a problem with his fighter’s landing gear. His emergency checklist procedure failed to correct the problem as he circled,...

The Los Angeles Times profiles an effort by servicemembers and an anthropologist to excavate the site of an April 9, 1944, crash of a B-24D Liberator in Mojave, Calif.—a crash that claimed all 10 Army Air Forces crew members. Amateur...

July 14-16, 2006 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 42 21 63 CAS/Armed Recon 130 82 212 Airlift 480 480 Air refueling 121 121 Total 172 103 601 876 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance