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Sequester may force USAF to retire entire fleets of aircraft The US Air Force will likely have to cut entire fleets of aircraft to comply with the Congressional sequestration law, says a top service official. In order to retain a force capable of operating across the spectrum of operations, the USAF will have to sacrifice single-mission aircraft in order to preserve multirole machines. “The only way you really save money is to make entire weapons systems go away,” says Gen Mike Hostage, commander of the USAF’s Air Combat Command. That is “so that the whole logistics train, the whole support...

Just announced on Fox

AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy (AFNS) -- They waited patiently each day, week and month checking the news, filing repeals and losing hope. But, Master Sgt. Angela Shunk and Tech. Sgt. Stacy Shunk received the news they had been longing for on Sept. 3, 2013, when the two Aviano Airmen were informed that they had received an assignment together under the join spouse program - the first of its kind in the Air Force since a Supreme Court decision about the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Prior to the June 26 decision, the Shunks were faced with the near...

Updating our earlier report on Senior Master Sergeant Phillip Monk, a Christian serving in the Air Force whose unit is now commanded by a lesbian: according to Monk’s complaint filed with his superiors, he was relieved of duty for refusing his commander’s order to say he supports gay marriage. Now the Air Force has taken the first steps to criminally investigate Monk for talking to the media about his situation. Despite the fact that earlier this year the Obama-Hagel Pentagon said they would never court-martial a service member for their Christian faith, they have taken the first steps to possibly...

A newly declassified CIA history from 20 years ago spills the story about Nevada's Area 51 and its secret mission — which was not to study UFOs, but to test the U-2 and other spy planes. The CIA's story about the legendary test site is contained in "The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: the U-2 and Oxcart Programs." The document was approved for release in June, with just a few remaining redactions, in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by George Washington University's National Security Archive back in 2005.

MOSCOW, August 27 (RIA Novosti) – A firebrand Russian nationalist-turned-senior official said Tuesday that the West was acting in the Islamic world like a “monkey with a hand grenade.” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s former envoy to NATO, did not elaborate on his comparison, made on his Russian-language Twitter page. But Rogozin, who used to head a popular nationalist political party and now oversees Russia’s military industrial complex, has previously lambasted on Twitter the alleged plans of “Anglo-Saxons” to attack Syrian government forces. The United States may launch missile strikes against the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad...

The Stealth Bomber Elite Fewer than 100 pilots climb the ladder to the B-2 cockpit. Crew chiefs from Whiteman’s 509th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron and 131st Bomb Wing give a B-2 a complete inspection, required every 1,000 flight hours. USAF / Senior Airman Nick Wilson “Undetected inbound, unscathed outbound.” That’s how one pilot summarized his mission to bomb targets in Baghdad with the $2.2 billion Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit on the first night of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003. His words capture the reasons the Air Force built such an expensive bomber to launch global-strike missions, which B-2 pilots fly...

A B-1 Bomber has crashed near Broadus Mt. 4 crew ejected with minor injuries.

Upgrades aim to extend B-52 bombers' already long lives Despite the plane's more than half-century of service, the Air Force thinks modifications and overhauls have made the B-52 ageless. For Air Force Capt. Daniel "Swoop" Welch, flying a B-52 bomber has become the family business. His father, retired Lt. Col. Don Welch, was trained to drop nuclear bombs with the aircraft during the height of the Cold War. His grandfather, retired Col. Don Sprague, flew B-52 combat missions in Vietnam. "It is definitely a testament to the robust design of the B-52," said Welch, 28. "Getting to fly the same...

National Security Archive / AP ***************************************************** Newly declassified documents, obtained by George Washington University's National Security Archive, appear to for the first time acknowledge the existence of Area 51. Hundreds of pages describe the genesis of the Nevada site that was home to the government's spy plane program for decades. The documents do not, however, mention aliens. The project started humbly. In the pre-drone era about a decade after the end of World War II, President Eisenhower signed off on a project aimed at building a high-altitude, long-range, manned aircraft that could photograph remote targets. Working together, the Air...

The airman killed in a helicopter crash on Okinawa was a decorated para-rescue veteran whose effort to recover a wounded soldier was captured in one of the most iconic combat photos to come from the war in Afghanistan, the Air Force said Saturday. Tech. Sgt. Mark A. Smith, a flight engineer with the 33rd Rescue Squadron who had deployed twice to Afghanistan, died in the Aug. 5 crash of his HH 60G Pave Hawk helicopter while on a training mission at the Central Training Area on the Marine base at Camp Hansen, Okinawa, the Air Force said.

The U.S. Air Force said that a well-known drag queen group was invited to perform on base during a “Diversity Day” celebration because drag is a “symbol of gay pride and unity. But the performance sparked outrage among some airmen who called the drag show “totally offensive and inappropriate.” Jewels and the Brunchettes performed to a small crowd at the Los Angeles Air Force Base on Aug. 8, the military confirmed. Photographs provided to Fox News show an individual wearing a giant wig and sporting form-fitting dresses performing to a sparse crowd underneath the American flag. “Drag acts to this...

The night-vision image in the rescue helicopter showed a downed pilot in a life raft bobbing 35 miles from the Atlantic shoreline, but when Brian Fogle got ready to plunge down to him, the midnight sky and sea melded into inky blackness. “The hard part was not being able to see anything,” Fogle said. And then he stepped out that door and slid down a line into the rolling dark ocean. The signal had come to the Coast Guard 20 to 30 minutes before 11 p.m. Thursday: A D.C. Air National Guard F-16C was down in the Atlantic after touching...

Chris Anderson said he and his wife, Sue, haven't gotten the answers they deserve, but their plight has received attention from the United States Air Force top brass. "Guess who I just got off the line with? Gen. Mark Welsh, the chief of staff of the Air Force," said Anderson, adding that inquiries from Boise Weekly and the Associated Press are "definitely ruffling some feathers." It was the first sliver of hope that the Andersons have had since the death of their 19-year-old daughter, USAF Airman First Class Kelsey Anderson. She was found shot with her own service weapon while...

A chaplain at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska was ordered to remove a religious column he had written titled, “No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave all in World War II,” because it allegedly offended atheists serving on the Air Force base.

...The Air Force closed Highway 98 west of Panama City and east of Mexico Beach because of possible fires from the crash. Officials said the drone has a limited, 24-hour battery life and would be inactive after the battery depleted.

Eric Fanning, the acting secretary of the U.S. Air Force and the first openly homosexual to hold the post, touted how “gay pride” events were being celebrated around the globe, including in Afghanistan. Fanning said he wanted to give “a shout-out to all the other DOD Pride events” at the Department of Defense’s LGBT Pride Month event at the Pentagon on Tuesday.Eric Fanning, acting secretary of the U.S. Air Force and openly homosexual.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) “This is not the DOD pride event,” Fanning said. “They're all over the world, including in Kandahar and Bagram this week in Afghanistan.” The U.S. State Department’s...

    ~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma Tinker Air Force Base is a major U.S. Air Force base located in Oklahoma City, near the suburb of Midwest City, Oklahoma. Tinker is the home of the Air Force Materiel Command Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC) (FHZ) which is the worldwide manager for a wide range of aircraft, engines, missiles, software and avionics and accessories components. The host unit at Tinker is the 72d Air Base Wing (72 ABW) which provides services and support for the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center and its tenant...

In a story which I can attest is accurate, Gina Loudon at WND.com, formerly WorldNetDaily, reports that the Air Force's 624th Operations Center is warning airmen not to look at the news. That's not exactly what they're saying, but they might as well be. What the "Notice to Airmen" says is that "Users are not to use AF NIPRNET systems to access the Verizon phone records collection and other related news stories because the action could constitute a Classified Message Incident." It's currently pretty hard to go to a news site without seeing a blurb on a "related story," given...

The Air Force's 624th Operations Center has sent an e-mail with a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that prohibits them from accessing and reading news stories related to the current National Security Agency snooping controversy on the Air Force’s NIPRNET (Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) systems. The 624th Operations Center, located at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, is the operational arm for the 24th Air Force’s cyberspace operations capability. The e-mail, first attained by Shane Vander Hart, President of 4:15 Communications, LLC, posted the memo on his site after receiving an e-mail from a mother whose son is stationed with...