The Air Force gets new #QDR director. Maj. Gen. Steven L. Kwast moves fm director of requirements @ ACC , to QDR director in A-Vice’s office colinclarkaol

The missile launched from the wing pylon of a B-52 heavy bomber and streaked over the desert of western Utah. At pre-set coordinates, a microwave emitter installed in the winged, jet-propelled cruise missile blasted a target building. But there was no big bang, no billowing clouds of dust and debris. Instead, the building was struck… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Right now, the Navy is designing the ballistic missile submarine that will provide 70 percent of the nation’s nuclear deterrent until 2080. Yet even as the service prepares to award research and development contracts this December, the submarine community is deeply worried that the rest of the military is neglecting the program — which… Keep reading →

The Air Force plans to reinstate substantial formation flight training for CV-22 Osprey pilots that it eliminated four years ago, AOL Defense has learned. Reinstatement of the training four years after the service ended it is an implicit admission, V-22 aviators said, that better training might have prevented the June 13 crash of a CV-22B… Keep reading →

The Air Force provides the essential capabilities that make America’s joint operations possible and has been involved in nearly every military operation overseas since 1991. As the Pentagon delves into the details of the 2014 budget, getting the Air Force budget right is critical to ensure that the nation can count on its indispensable role… Keep reading →

PENTAGON CITY: Hungry for answers on how to make more effective use of the tens of thousands of hours of video gathered by Predators, Global Hawks and other military eyes in the sky, Air Force officials recently visited NASCAR, the car racing people, to learn better and faster ways of mining video data. “We have… Keep reading →

OSD recently appointed a new acting deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for space policy, and, assuming he keeps the job beyond January, he (or his replacement) might consider shifting his attention to some of the very difficult challenges facing space programs in the Defense Department. First among those would be efforts to build military space… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: Last year’s Libya campaign revealed painful shortfalls in NATO, including intelligence sharing so molasses-slow that French pilots gave up on waiting for target data from US Predator drones. That’s something the allies are anxious to correct. “In Libya we got away with it. We made do, we had work-arounds, [but] we were not… Keep reading →

As China lurches from this summer’s naval standoff with the Philippines to the current war of words with Japan, the US is struggling to reassure its allies without provoking the Chinese. While the administration’s strategic “pivot” or “rebalancing” to the Pacific is framed by some as Cold War II, top military leaders have made clear… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: The most senior officer in the US military read poetry, sang (a little), and commented on issues from inside attacks in Afghanistan to leadership philosophy in remarks here today. Gen. Martin Dempsey is a career Army man, but as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff he overseas all the services, and he… Keep reading →