The 737th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, a C-130H unit made up of airmen and machines from Dyess, AFB, Tex., and Yokota AB, Japan, flew more than 10,000 missions in Southwest Asia in 2009 supporting operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. One of...

A team of Air Force Space Command-led inspectors deemed 24th Air Force, the service’s new cyber operations arm, “ready” after an initial assessment in December of its ability to conduct Air Force network operations and control USAF’s network. This score...

Air Force Reserve Command officials plan to formally reactive the 45th Fighter Squadron during a Jan. 7 ceremony at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., where the 45th FS will form a classic associate arrangement with the active-duty 355th Fighter Wing to help...

The 100th Air Refueling Wing at RAF Mildenhall, Britain, in 2009 acquired mobile maintenance platforms to make the job of performing isochronal inspections on the unit’s KC-135 tankers go more quickly, thereby improving the tankers’ availability. The wing is the...

BF-2, the second F-35B test aircraft, arrived in late December at NAS Patuxent River, Md. It joined BF-1, the first test aircraft in the short-takeoff/vertical landing configuration, that arrived there in November, but only recently returned to the air due to downtime for repairs. With both test aircraft now there and more to come, “Pax River is ready to begin the extensive four-year flight test campaign to help field the future of Marine Corps and Navy aviation,” said Dan Crowley, Lockheed Martin's F-35 program general manager, in the company's release. Marine Corps Maj. Joseph Bachmann piloted BF-2 nonstop from Lockheed's F-35 assembly plant in Fort Worth, Tex., during its 3.5-hour flight to Pax River on Dec. 29, a sortie that included one in-flight refueling. Testing of the Air Force F-35A variant is also expected to ramp up in 2010 at Edwards AFB, Calif.

Air Force Space Command reacted fairly quickly to stamp out the latest “declining GPS sats” story, using Twitter to clear up a Dec. 28 Associated Press report picked up by Fox News and making the Internet rounds that attributed the...

Air Sorties in Southwest Asia, Dec. 22, 2009 Sortie Type OIF OEF OIF/OEF Total YTD ISR 28 30 58 17,018 CAS/Armed Recon 22 90 112 34,449 Airlift 162 162 48,333 Air refueling 45 45 16,797 Total 377 116,597 OIF=Operation Iraqi...