Various news reports said union members were expected to vote Monday on a tentative agreement reached over the weekend with CSC Applied Technologies, which holds the aircraft maintenance contract at Vance AFB, Okla., that could end the two-week strike that prompted Air Education and Training Command to transfer some pilot training from Vance to other AETC bases. Oklahoma lawmakers are concerned that the strike could affect the viability of the base itself. A report by the Enid News said that if members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local Lodge 898 voted in favor of the agreement, the striking workers could return to work today. However, a Vance spokesperson told the newspaper that a period of “reconstitution” would have to take place, noting that flying training operations would begin again “as soon as it is safe to do so.”
Unlike nearly every other innovative technology throughout history, Maj. Gen. DeAnna M. Burt believes the space enterprise emerged backward. “Every other domain started with an entrepreneur who built something,” Burt, the special assistant to the Chief of Space Operations, told an audience at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.