Free Republic

We embrace heroes in America. Senior Airman Brian Kolfage defines hero: the triple-amputee veteran of the Iraqi War overcame insurmountable odds to survive his horrific injuries. Kolfage recently sent a powerful – and damning – letter to his commander-in-chief: I nearly died in a war that you and most of your colleagues supported overwhelmingly, including the two presidents who came before you. Many citizens may not agree with waging war in Iraq to free the oppressed Iraqi citizens, but it’s something that warriors like myself have zero control over. I joined to serve my country and to better my life....

The Air Force recently acknowledged that due to a “stigma” surrounding its drone program, many pilots at the controls of the deadly weapons are “less skilled” and officers overseeing them are “less competent” than their manned aircraft brethren, as alleged by the Government Accountability Office. “Let’s be honest, when people dream about flying… People in this generation didn’t grow up and say, ‘I want to fly an RPA [remotely piloted aircraft],’” Air Force spokesperson Jennifer Cassidy told ABC News last week. “They were the ones that watched re-runs of ‘Top Gun’ and said, ‘I want to be a fighter pilot.’…...

TEL AVIV — Israel has been preparing to produce the first components for the U.S.-origin Joint Strike Fighter. The state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries is working on production lines for the wing assembly of the F-35 fighter-jet. The wing assembly was awarded by Lockheed Martin as part of Israel’s order of 19 fifth-generation combat aircraft over the next four years. “This new and advanced production line represents an important milestone for IAI and ensures its involvement in the world’s most advanced fighter aircraft,” IAI president Joseph Weiss said.

A Columbus, Ohio, family said their children were traumatized after what was meant to be a fun trip to the National Museum of the United States Air Force ended with guns drawn on them. Alice Hill, 65, her daughter-in-law, Wendy, and two young grandchildren visited the museum on April 4 and, as they were leaving, were ordered to get out of their vehicle by military police. Hill said the officers pulled guns on the family and cuffed the adults in front of the children, according to an incident report. (snip) The family was detained for about 90 minutes as authorities...

Wow. My daughter is 16, an A student and interested in possibly joining the military. While this fills me with great pride, and my family has a history of male members in the navy and Marine Corp, this kind of blew my mind. Not in a bad way, I guess it's just amazing, wonderful and scary all at the same time coming from MY daughter! I was wondering if anybody would like to share any and everything they know about their daughter or females in general in the military. At this point she is thinking of an eventual career in...

On March 14 Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told members of the House Armed Services committee that there was no war on religious liberty. “The single biggest frustration I’ve had in this job is the perception that somehow there is religious persecution inside the United States Air Force,” the general told lawmakers. “It is not true.” Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) told me the Air Force seems to be the worst offender when it comes to attacks on religious liberty. If that’s true, perhaps Gen. Welsh could explain why a Bible was removed from a POW/MIA Missing Man...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Air Force took the extraordinary step Thursday of firing nine midlevel nuclear commanders and announcing it will discipline dozens of junior officers at a nuclear missile base, responding firmly to an exam-cheating scandal that spanned a far longer period than originally reported. A 10th commander, the senior officer at the base, resigned and will retire from the Air Force. Air Force officials called the discipline unprecedented in the history of America's intercontinental ballistic missile force. The Associated Press last year revealed a series of security and other problems in the ICBM force, including a failed safety...

The hot seat just got hotter for Air Force officials at today’s [March 14, 2014] House Armed Services hearing. With the backdrop of Scripture scrubbing and Christian harassment at the branch’s Academy, a routine budget debate turned into a fireworks display over the Air Force’s growing hostility towards faith in the ranks. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Walsh were originally scheduled to talk about branch spending until conservatives intervened, demanding a detailed explanation of the events that unfolded at the Academy. Representatives from Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) to Democrat Mike McIntyre (N.C.)...

Robert Farley, a political science professor at the University of Kentucky, wants to ground the U.S. Air Force, for good. In his book, Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the US Air Force, Farley argues the United States does not need an independent Air Force in order to effectively wield military air power. Farley, an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, came to his conclusion after studying the conflict between the Army and the Air Force over which military branch was primarily responsible for winning the first Gulf War. “I slowly became more aware that these...

WASHINGTON — Confirming suspicions of Americans and Fox News contributors everywhere, Communist-in-Chief Barack Obama announced today that his plans to downsize the Defense Department in size and spending are singularly rooted in a heartfelt desire to allow the terrorists to win. “I’m doing this because I hate America,” Obama told reporters. “Plain and simple.” Indeed, last week, the president unveiled proposals that would shrink the Army to pre-World War II levels, slash a number of costly programs, and roll back some benefits to service members and their families. Speaking today from the White House briefing room, the president assured Americans...

TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE — Force reduction measures and degradation of military benefits could have an effect on local service members under the Pentagon’s proposed budget cuts. The Pentagon officially unveiled its 2015 budget proposal Tuesday as part of the White House’s total budget request. The first post-Afghanistan war budget calls for a drawdown of Army and Air Force personnel, but invests additional funding in training, new weapons systems and special operations. The budget still requires approval of Congress, where a heated battle is expected. Although the budget calls for the Army to reduce its ranks by 40,000 to 50,000...

Troops based at the Kadena Air Base in Japan know how to party. On Saturday, six gay and straight service members applied some of their finest makeup and lip synced to "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" in what is believed to be first drag queen and king show on an American military base. The show was thrown in support for the base's recently formed OutServe-SLDN chapter, a nonprofit advocacy group for the army's LGBT community.

<p>The 204th fight-jet airbase of the Ukrainian Air Force, which has 49 aircraft in service, has sided with the government of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, a local government representative told Interfax on Monday. "Today the command of the 204th base in Belbek has announced it is taking the side of the Crimean people," he said, adding that the base is more than 800 strong. "The Belbek airfield has 45 Mikoyan MiG-29 fighters and four L-39 trainer aircraft. Of them, only four fighters and one trainer are in good condition," the official said. Thus, "the total number of the Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen, who have sided with the Crimean people, has approached 6,000," the source said.</p>

TUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) - The Defense Secretary announced today that he is recommending the elimination of the A-10, the mainstay aircraft at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, as part of a proposed military budget. Chuck Hagel made the announcement today in at the Pentagon. The Air Force has said it would save $3.5 billion over five years by cutting the entire fleet of 343 A-10s. Hagel said he consulted with the military service chiefs on how to balance defense and budget requirements.

The U.S. Defense Department plans to buy eight fewer F-35 fighter jets in fiscal 2015, according to a news report.The Pentagon will request funding for 34 of the aircraft in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, including 26 of the Air Force’s conventional model, six of the Marine Corps’ vertical-landing version, and two of the Navy’s aircraft carrier variant, according to an article by Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News.That’s down from 42 planes the department previously projected it would buy during the period, but up from the 29 aircraft it’s buying this year, it stated. The Defense Department’s base budget,...

Geneva — No Swiss fighter jets were scrambled Monday when an Ethiopian Airlines co-pilot hijacked his own plane and forced it to land in Geneva, because it happened outside business hours, the Swiss airforce said. When the co-pilot on flight ET-702 from Addis Ababa to Rome locked himself in the cockpit while the pilot went to the bathroom and announced a hijacking, Italian and French fighter jets were scrambled to escort the plane through their respective airspaces. But although the co-pilot-turned-hijacker quickly announced he wanted to land the plane in Switzerland, where he later said he aimed to seek asylum,...

Russia’s Irkut Corp. is well known in the Asia Pacific region because of the mighty vectored-thrust Sukhoi Su-30 series multirole fighters in service with Indian and Malaysian air forces, numbering about 200 aircraft. The maker also supplied Su-27UB operational trainers to China; and a number of Asian nations still operate swing-wing MiG-23U trainers and MiG-27 strike aircraft built at the corporation’s manufacturing site in Irkutsk city, western Siberia. The company has been fostering a very special relationship with India since the mid-1960s, when it supplied Antonov An-12 tactical transports. Today, about half of the Indian air force fighter squadrons are...

WASHINGTON — The Air Force is “disappointed” in the airman who appeared in a photo that is being circulated of her posing with her tongue in the mouth of the prisoner of war depicted on the iconic black-and-white POW/MIA emblem. “We do not yet have all details behind the photo, but it certainly is a concern; it’s a concern any time someone shows disrespect for prisoners of war and those missing in action. They deserve our utmost respect and we must always remember their sacrifice and the legacy they’ve left for us as men and women serving our nation.

In trying to reduce the cost of its specialized AC-130 gunships, the U.S. Air Force may have made them more vulnerable to enemy gunfire. This is the disturbing conclusion reached by the Pentagon’s top weapons testers in their latest annual report on the AC-130J. According to the report, the new AC-130J Ghostrider—a Lockheed Martin C-130 transport with special sensors and side-firing guns—will only be required to have armor for its crew and their oxygen system. And the armor only needs to be thick enough to stop light machine gun bullets, around 7.62 millimeters in diameter. That’s a significant and potentially...

The US military has suspended 34 officers in charge of launching nuclear missiles for cheating on a proficiency test, Air Force leaders said Wednesday. The scandal at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana marked the latest in a series of damaging revelations dogging the country's nuclear force,including a separate probe into illegal drugs that came to light last week. "There was cheating that took place with respect to this particular test," Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told a news conference. "Some officers did it. Others apparently knew about it,and it appears that they did nothing,or at least not enough,to...