Three 
new jet-propulsion fuel tanks are expected to go operational next month at Travis AFB, Calif., increasing mission efficiency and safety at the West Coast air mobility hub. The $58 million construction project took 18 months to complete under a partnership with Kinder Morgan of Houston, a major builder of fuel pipelines and terminals. Each tank is capable of holding approximately six million gallons of JP-8 fuel, the type used by Travis’s C-5s, C-17s, and KC-10s. Previously, a 28-mile-long pipeline supplied Travis’ fuel tanks. The pipeline for the new tanks is only about a mile long, decreasing the chance of a fuel leak, according to Travis officials. The tanks’ massive size will improve mission continuity since “even if the fuel line went down, we would be able to continue the mission,” said MSgt. Scott Smith of the 60th Logistics Readiness Squadron. (Travis report by A1C Madelyn Ottem)
Australia’s military will help the Pentagon pursue so-called “air-breathing” hypersonic weapons and more under the U.S.-run Allied Prototyping Initiative, the U.S. Defense Department said Nov. 30. The Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE) initiative “will be essential to the future of hypersonic research and development, ensuring the U.S. and…