SMAC Talk
A new planning cell at Air Force Global Strike Command’s 8th Air Force is in charge of coordinating standoff weapon assets across the Department of Defense, from JASSMs to Navy Tomahawks, in order to get better results in the opening...
Reforming Strike Command
Maj. Gen. Scott Vander Hamm, 8th Air Force commander, has watched the Force Improvement Program lead to bottom-up changes in 20th Air Force’s ICBM units, and is now seeing FIP teams fan out to his own units for interviews and...
Fighters Crisscross the Pacific
Three Active Duty and Air National Guard fighters units rotated jets on routine theater security packages to bolster Pacific Air Forces in the Asia-Pacific region. Ten F-15E Strike Eagles from the 366th Fighter Wing left Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, bound...
PACAF: Combat Sent Intercept “Isolated Incident”
In May, Pacific Air Forces boss Gen. Hawk Carlisle detailed “increasingly active” Russian military maneuvers in the Asia-Pacific in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis, particularly air and naval activity. The environment has led to at least one tense incident...
At Last, 65 CAPs
Remotely piloted aircraft operators began flying the 65th around-the-clock combat air patrol orbit, finally reaching the Defense Department’s end-strength goal, on May 28. “This is a culmination of an Air Force-wide effort to achieve Secretary of Defense [Robert] Gates’ initiative...
Northrop Grumman Delivers 150th F-35 fuselage
Northrop Grumman recently delivered its 150th F-35 center fuselage to prime contractor Lockheed Martin. It took about eight and a half years, from start to finish, to build the first 100 center fuselages, but the June 2 delivery of AF-68...
Brave Riders
Three wounded airmen participating in the 2014 Air Force Association Cycling Classic shared their stories of overcoming wounds, severe illness, and disability during a Friday lunch discussion sponsored by AFA’s Wounded Airman Program. “I got invited to the first Air...