A Larger Irregular Role?:

Air Force Special Operations Command has proposed establishing a wing to handle counter-insurgency operations, according to Flight International, which obtained an AFSOC White Paper spelling out the proposal. This sounds much like the position espoused by US Special Operations Command...

Making it Formal:

The Air Force has given “formal direction” to the 341st Space Wing at Malmstrom AFB, Mont., to begin deactivating 50 of its 200 Minuteman III ICBMs and five alert facilities. The Air Force publicly identified Malmstrom earlier this year as...

Hooligans Fly First Fargo UAV Sortie:

North Dakota officials announced yesterday that the North Dakota Air National Guard’s 119th Wing Happy Hooligans had flown their first unmanned aerial vehicle mission from Fargo, N.D. The wing surrendered its last F-16s in January, but some of its members...

More Aircraft, Less Noise?:

McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey is gaining Navy and Marine Corps aircraft from the BRAC-divestiture of NAS JRB Willow Grove, including the relatively noisy CH-53E helicopter, however, Kirk Moore of the Courier-Post reports that base advocates say the...

30 Years of AWACS:

Airmen who have flown, operated, and maintained the E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft over the last 30 years gathered at Tinker AFB, Okla., this weekend, along with a host of distinguished officials, to celebrate the milestone. Air...

Dismal Portrait of K-Town Construction:

The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) last week decried the state of affairs surrounding the Kaiserlautern Military Community Center, considered the Pentagon’s largest single facility construction project in the world. Waxman...

ISAF Says Taliban Tactics Backfire:

Despite headlines proclaiming heavy civilian losses and recriminations from Afghan President Hamid Karzai following air strikes in Afghanistan recently, International Security Assistance Forces spokesmen say local Afghani leaders are actively turning against the Taliban. Local officials in the Helmand Province...

Cutting “Other” Training:

The Air Force does plan to reduce ancillary training requirements—training outside an airman’s specialty—to just 90 minutes come Oct. 1. Gen. Michael Moseley, Air Force Chief of Staff, claimed last month that the growth in such training was affecting mission...

Yokota Drops C-21s:

The 459th Airlift Squadron at Yokota AB, Japan, has traded its C-21s small transport jets for C-12J turboprops in a not quite even swap—four for three. Navy Seaman A.C. Rainey reports that the base has flown the C-21 for 21...

Air Sorties in the Global War on Terrorism

June 28-29, 2007 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total ISR 32 20 52 CAS/Armed Recon 134 78 212 Airlift 320 320 Air refueling 100 100 Total 166 98 420 684 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance Airlift includes Horn...