Daily Report

March 3, 2016

Welsh: The Pilot Retention Problem is Here

Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told House appropriators on Tuesday the “long-awaited” issue of pilot retention is no longer a future problem, it’s already here. “In calendar year [2015], major airlines hired about 3,500 pilots, and they expect to...

Congress Pushes to Speed up JSTARS Recap

Members of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel on Tuesday pushed senior Air Force leaders to speed up JSTARS recapitalization efforts, which have repeatedly been pushed back. Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said the biggest hurdle so far was...

Keeping Pace with Russia, China

Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said right now USAF and China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force are roughly the same size as far as personnel are concerned, but USAF has a couple thousand more aircraft. However, by 2030 China...

Hacking the Pentagon

The Pentagon will invite hackers to test the Defense Department’s cybersecurity with the goal of keeping future hackers out. The pilot program, called “Hack the Pentagon,” will allow vetted hackers to find and analyze vulnerabilities on public DOD webpages and...

Making the DOD More Googley

The Pentagon is establishing a Defense Innovation Advisory Board, and has tapped Eric Schmidt of Google and Alphabet to chair it. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and Defense Secretary Ash Carter will work together to select...

Treetop Level in Any Weather

The MC-130J Commando II fleet is finally on track to achieve all-weather terrain following capability to take over from the legacy MC-130H Combat Talon II. “We had fits and starts on that” but decided to use the Silent Knight Terrain...

Replacing Minuteman III

The Minuteman III will have a difficult time surviving in the active anti-access, area denial environment of the future, which makes it critical that the US have the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent fully operational by 2030, Gen. Robin Rand, the commander...

Changing the Culture of the Nuclear Force

Air Force Global Strike Command is making progress toward meeting the recommendations prompted by the nuclear enterprise review, but there is still work to do, the head of the command told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces on...