Daily Report

Nov. 21, 2016

A Hard Talk About Bombs

Partners and allies have too long counted on a robust US stockpile of precision-guided munitions to be there and available when they get in a jam, and that has to change, Heidi Grant, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for...

USAF Has a Weapon Sales Strategy

The Air Force is working to speed up the Foreign Military Sales process, said Heidi Grant, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs, on Friday. Speaking at an AFA-sponsored, Air Force event in Arlington, Va., she said when...

Vietnam-Era Defense Secretary Mel Laird Dies at 94

Melvin Laird, a former Defense Secretary who led the military through the midst of the Vietnam War, died Nov. 16 at a hospital in Florida. He was 94. Laird became President Richard Nixon’s Defense Secretary in January 1969. During his...

DARPA Wants Real Time Operations in Space

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working to “make space a real time operational domain, which it is not at all today,” the agency’s director said on Nov. 17. Because there “is more and more a real possibility” of...

C-17 Weapons Instructor Course, Squadron Moving to McChord

The Air Force will save $12 million by relocating the 57th Weapons Squadron and its C-17 Weapons Instructor Course (WIC) to JB Lewis-McChord, Wash., according to a press release from Air Mobility Command. Both are currently located at JB McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst,...

Holloman To House Interim F-16 Training Squadrons

The Air Force announced Thursday that Holloman AFB, N.M., is the preferred interim location for two new squadrons devoted to training F-16 pilots. The squadrons will be activated “to increase fighter pilot production as part of an effort to address...

Mosul, Raqqa Not the End of ISIS

Middle East analysts agree that the liberation of ISIS strongholds in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, are “necessary but no longer sufficient” to ultimately defeat the terrorist organization. “We have to stop imagining that once we take Mosul and Raqqa...