The full House Appropriations Committee included funding for advance procurement for 12 additional F-22 Raptors in its markup (summary) of the 2010 defense spending bill Wednesday morning, less than a day after the Obama Administration cheered the Senate for striking...

As we reported Tuesday afternoon, the full Senate voted to accept the Levin-McCain amendment to cut $1.75 billion Senate defense authorizers had added to the 2010 defense policy bill to keep F-22 production running beyond the 187 Raptors approved by...

Just before the vote on the Levin-McCain amendment Tuesday (see above), Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), speaking on the Senate floor, quoted the Daily Report that had revealed the Pentagon had done no formal studies to justify ending the F-22 line...

The Air Force Inspection Agency has created a “centralized team of nuclear inspectors” to ensure Nuclear Surety Inspections across the Air Force are consistent and standardized. The new team, which is called the Air Force NSI Core Team, will provide...

The Lexington Institute’s Loren Thompson believes House and Senate defense authorizers are poised to dump funding in the 2010 defense bill for USAF’s C-130 avionics modernization program, citing execution problems. In a new LI issue brief, Thompson declares, “The problems...

It’s been just over 20 years since the Spirit of America, the first B-2, took off from Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, Calif., facility on its maiden flight. Air Force and Northrop officials and employees gathered July 17 at the Palmdale facility...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has approved a temporary increase of up to 22,000 soldiers for the Army that would sustain an end strength of about 569,000 for a three-year period. This is over the 65,000 soldiers that Congress previously approved...

A new approach to humanitarian and disaster response being developed by 13th Air Force, headquartered at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, recently got a workout—an operational utility evaluation—over three days of simulations and exercises at Andersen AFB, Guam, capping more than a...

Timore LesteIndonesia Get Humanitarian Assist: Pacific Air Forces' 13th Air Force has been overseeing two humanitarian assistance operations, one in Timore Leste and the other in Indonesia, as part of the Pacific Angel 2009 events that will conclude July 24. The Hickam AFB, Hawaii-based 13th AF plans another event in September in Vietnam. Some 37 airmen from medical and engineering specialties have been working in Timore Leste, where the medics have treated hundreds of residents and the engineers worked with local officials on civic assistance projects. (Report by TSgt. Cohen Young) The team in Timor Leste includes active duty airmen from various PACAF units and Air National Guardsmen from Georgia's 165th Medical Group. (Young report) Another 40-plus team has been working in Indonesia. Providing the airlift for the Pacific Angel force to Indonesia was a C-17 crew from the Hawaii ANG's 204th Airlift Squadron, while a C-130 crew from the Alaska ANG's 176th Wing flew one team to Timor Leste. (Young report) According to a photo release, Royal New Zealand Army engineers have been working with airmen on some civic projects in Timor Leste.

According to a July 20 EPA release, the agency and California agreed to a cleanup plan for Parcel C-6, a 62-acre site on the former McClellan Air Force Base, in a “first of its kind” decision in which DOD ceded...

July 18-19, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 52 49 101 8,335 CAS/Armed Recon 42 144 186 19,073 Airlift 74 74 26,861 Air refueling 100 100 9,161 Total 461 63,430 OIF=Operation Iraqi Freedom OEF=Operation Enduring Freedom ISR=Intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance...