It’s not yet a wholesale exodus, but another Air Force top civilian official has walked and, according to the Associated Press, has blamed recent leadership changes for his exit. William Anderson, the assistant secretary for installations, environment, and logistics and the service’s point man on its push to embrace alternative fuels for aircraft, tendered his resignation to Acting Air Force Secretary Michael Donley with an effective date of Aug. 15, according to a July 28 announcement from the Air Force. Anderson has served in his current post since 2005. In the terse statement, Donley praised Anderson, saying he “is enormously talented, very experienced, and has superb strategic vision.” Former Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said after leaving office that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others in DOD felt the Air Force was expending too much effort on its initiative to run aircraft on synthetic fuel.
The Air Force Research Laboratory awarded Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems Inc. and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems matching $17.7 million contracts for an "Off-Board Sensing Station,” which is an unmanned aircraft that would extend a manned fighter’s sensing range and also potentially carry additional weapons for that aircraft. The cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts…