The Department of Defense last week informed Congress of its intent to convert three KC-135R tankers into RC-135 Rivet Joint signals intelligence platforms for Britain under a proposed foreign military sale. If all options are exercised, the pending deal, including...

Nearly 300 airmen and more than five B-52Hs from the 23rd Bomb Squadron at Minot AFB, N.D., have deployed to Andersen AFB, Guam, on a four-month rotation, relieving about 350 airmen and eight B-52s of the 20th BS from Barksdale...

More than 70 airmen from at least 25 career fields will fly to South America on Oct. 26 aboard a C-17 to participate in the first Operation Southern Partner, an Air Forces Southern-led undertaking aimed at providing intensive, periodic subject-matter exchanges with military members of partner nations in Central and South America. This Southern Partner will run through Nov. 7 and include week-long exchanges with members of the air forces of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, AFSOUTH said in a release Oct. 1. There will also be more than 10 outreach and community relations projects during this time. “Operation Southern Partner is a tremendous opportunity for US airmen to work alongside partner nation airmen—learning from each other new processes, tactics, techniques, and procedures to increase the effectiveness of our Air Forces during future operations or natural disaster and humanitarian aid response,” said Lt. Gen. Norm Seip, AFSOUTH commander. Examples of the areas of exchange are: aircraft maintenance, command and control, English language, enlisted/officer professional military education, general medicine, intelligence, logistics, public affairs, and RED HORSE. Southern Partner complements ongoing US Southern Command theater security cooperation activities, AFSOUTH said. Already planning is underway for the second Southern Partner event scheduled for next spring.

The Air Force may be facing additional delays and costs in getting the first space based infrared system early warning satellite, GEO-1, into orbit in December 2009 as planned, the Government Accountability Office warns in a report issued Sept. 30....

The Air Force has created a new specialty code, designated 1W0X2, for special operations weathermen that will provide standardized training for enlisted recruits that enter this field and shorten the time that it takes to train them from four years...

So says Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute in an issue brief dated today. Thompson says the transformational satellite communications program is “foremost” among the visionary networking initiatives that the next Administration will inherit from the Bush Pentagon. (The others...

Lockheed Martin said last week it has handed over the first Gunship Multispectral Sensor System production unit for the Air Force’s 17-aircraft AC-130U gunship fleet and expects to supply three more of them by year’s end. Lockheed is providing the...

After two partially successful flight demonstrations of the full-scale hypersonic strike missile demonstrator that Boeing and Aerojet have designed under the DARPA-Navy HyFly program, DARPA announced Sept. 30 that it will fund one additional flight test to see if the...

The team of DuPont/Smart Fuel Cell has won the Pentagon’s $1 million wearable power prize competition, the Department of Defense announced yesterday. Dupont/SFC was chosen from among the 169 entries by designing the lightest wearable system that provided an average...

Air Sorties in War on Terrorism, Southwest AsiaOct. 3-4, 2008 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 56 31 87 10,002 CAS/Armed Recon 102 91 193 28,381 Airlift 294 294 35,918 Air refueling 96 96 14,019 Total 670 88,320...