USAF F-15E Strike Eagles and Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets in separate actions in Afghanistan last week flew close air support missions, aiding coalition ground forces near Dowlet Shah and Now Zad, according to Central Command Air Forces. One F-15E successfully...

When Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of Air Force Materiel Command, visited the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center at Tinker AFB, Okla., last week, he told an auditorium full of ALC personnel, “The real reason I’m here is to tell you...

Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Solomon Ortiz (D-Tex.), chairman of the committee’s readiness panel, have commissioned two studies to address readiness issues and troop levels needed for current and future operations. In a joint...

The Pentagon’s top acquisition official, Ken Krieg, says he’ll “withhold judgment” until he’s had a chance to read the Government Accountability Office criticism that the Air Force didn’t fill all the squares in citing a preference for a hybrid tanker-cargo...

The Marine Corps is looking for a few good [air]men, specifically former Air Force officers being forced out under USAF’s current force-shaping plan designed to trim some 40,000 personnel over the next three years. The Air Force and Army have...

It was the 14th Airlift Squadron of Charleston AFB, S.C., that was flying Vice President Dick Cheney on his Southwest Asia tour last month when the Vice President became the object of a suicide bomber attack at Bagram AB, Afghanistan....

Congressmen Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and Solomon Ortiz (D-Tex.), writing in an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor Monday, sounded an increased readiness alarm, citing a classified briefing they had received last month. They said it provided “disturbing” details and the...

The Warner Robins Air Logistics Center at Robins AFB, Ga., has moved its F-15 depot operations to a new location on the base. Maj. Gen. Tom Owen, ALC commander, marked the completion of the move last week, saying it would enable the 561st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron to accommodate more than $50 million in extra work each year, reports Air Force journalist Damian Housman. Owen also noted that moving the operation into an existing facility eliminated the need to spend some $17 million to build a new hangar.

Key lawmakers, led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, have just introduced the Wounded Warrior Assistance Act of 2007 (HR 1538). Skelton said the measure is “our initial legislative response to address the most compelling of the issues...

Last year’s revelations of recruiter wrongdoings—and little Pentagon oversight—has led DOD to usher in a series of initiatives to help prevent future inappropriate situations, including going so far as to install surveillance cameras in recruiting stations, reports Bryan Bender of...

Lt. Col. Philip Hoover, commander of the 389th Fighter Squadron at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, on March 16 flew the last F-16 Viper mission out of Mountain Home. The squadron is trading its F-16s—the last five of which leave the...

March 15-16, 2007 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 25 13 38 CAS/Armed Recon 86 76 162 Airlift 314 314 Air refueling 65 65 Total 111 89 379 579 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance