Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula, the Air Staff’s head of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, said it is not unrealistic to imagine an unmanned aerial vehicle as successor to fifth-generation fighters—the F-22 and yet-to-field F-35—in our national military strategy; however, he added...

The Air Force has ambitious plans to build a modular plug-and-play fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles, senior leaders said at the service’s unmanned aerial systems flight plan rollout July 23 at the Pentagon, with the cornerstone being the MQ-X—the successor...

The Senate passed its version of the Fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill—sans more F-22s and sans F-35 alternate engine—late July 23, setting the stage next week for House and Senate authorizers to hash out differences between the version passed by...

The next big tussle facing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who must feel upbeat after Senators acceded to the Administration’s desires to end F-22 fighter production at 187 aircraft and to stop funding the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter engine, is the...

In the just-passed Senate version of the 2010 defense policy bill, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) included language that would preserve the Next Generation Bomber, a program also on the Administration hit list. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has told the Air Force it did not define the NGB program very well and wants more analysis of requirements, but some defense analysts and former officers say the so-called 2018 bomber has been studied to death. Thune and other bomber proponents in their defense of the program invoked the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review which directed USAF to develop the NGB by 2018, but, in justifying its termination, the Obama Administration said that despite the QDR, it believes "the existing fleet of 173 bombers will be able to meet expected threats." As Thune's language in the policy bill points out, "The only air-breathing strike platforms the United States possesses today with reach and survivability to have a chance of successfully executing missions more than 1,000 nautical miles into enemy territory from the last air-to-air refueling are 16 combat ready B-2 bomber aircraft." (The bulk of the bomber force comprises nearly 50-year-old B-52s.) In a July 24 statement, Thune called adoption of his amendment on the new bomber "a step toward preserving this important long-range strike capability."

Aircraft maintainers at Ramstein AB, Germany, just went through their last 10-day isonchronal inspection of an E model C-130 Hercules. The base is shedding its older Herks, making way for the new C-130J variants. The ISO work is only done...

The commander of the San Antonio-based Air Force Intelligence-Surveillance-Reconnaissance Agency, Maj. Gen. Brad Heithold, visited last week with 20-year-old A1C Colton Read and his family at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, where Read, who is an analyst with...

The Air Force on Aug. 5 plans to inactivate the 653rd Combat Logistics Support Squadron, the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center unit that has a 42-year history traveling around the world to repair aircraft that have suffered combat or crash...

An Air Force Reserve Command C-5 lost two of its 28 wheels during a training flight July 22 out of the 439th Airlift Wing at Westover ARB, Mass. There were no injuries on the ground or to the aircrew, which...

Air Sorties in War on Terrorism, Southwest AsiaJuly 22-23, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 49 51 100 8,537 CAS/Armed Recon 44 158 202 19,452 Airlift 73 73 27,013 Air refueling 107 107 9,375 Total 482 64,377...