Air Frame: Year in Review, April 2011: President Obama waits in the White House’s Blue Room on April 28, 2011, before announcing his intent to nominate CIA Director Leon Panetta to replace Robert Gates (second from right) as Defense Secretary and Army Gen. David Petraeus (far right) to lead the CIA. On the day before, an unbalanced Afghan air force officer killed eight USAF air advisors and one US civilian contractor in a shooting incident in Kabul. Earlier in April, Obama outlined plans to cut the defense budget by $400 billion by 2023 to help reduce the federal deficit. April also saw Beale AFB, Calif., named the stateside home of USAF’s MC-12W Liberty surveillance fleet and the Pentagon terminate the F-35’s F136 engine contract, and issue a new unified command plan stressing the Arctic’s growing importance. White House photo by Pete Souza
Suicide rates in the Air Force are starting to drop after back-to-back years of exceptionally high rates as the department enacts new policies to address the problem. There were more than 100 suicides in the Air Force in both 2019 and 2020, causing leaders to order a “tactical pause” to…