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Looking Forward to Raptors
Looking Forward to Raptors: The Hawaii Air National Guard's 199th Fighter Squadron still expects to receive its first two of 20 new F-22 Raptors beginning in June 2010 and plans to send off the last of its F-15s in September 2010, reports the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The 199th FS will share operation and maintenance duties with the active duty 531st FS at Hickam Air Force Base, but it will be the first—and so far only—F-22 force led by the Air Guard. The airmen of the two units have eyeballed the F-22s that stopped over at Hickam this week on their return from stints in the Pacific—a force from Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, to Guam and one from Langley AFB, Va., to Okinawa. In a report by the Honolulu Advertiser, SSgt. Robert Rabacal, an Air Guard F-15 crew chief, said of the 199th's elderly F-15s, "We've tried to keep a lot of pride in them, keeping the aircraft flying as much as possible." He added the airmen would do the same with the F-22s, saying, "There's a lot of pride invested when the Hawaii Air National Guard has those jets."
4/23/2009
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Verbatim
Preemptive Action
"Since the [Defense] Department's acceptance of the independent estimates last fall, we've been, in just about every respect, acting as if the program were in a Nunn-McCurdy breach. ... We've been taking all of the mitigating and corrective action that we would take as if there were a Nunn-McCurdy breach."
—Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, discussing with reporters the restructure of the F-35 strike fighter program announced in February 2010 and the probability that the program will soon exceed Nunn-McCurdy cost-monitoring thresholds that would necessitate, per US law, a program review and corrective steps, Washington, D.C., March 2, 2010. |
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Verbatim
Message for Grandma
"She has working for her as a citizen in the United States an Air Force Reserve that has some very talented, capable, patriotic, and willing individuals doing the business to keep this nation free. Just like her generation—the 'Greatest Generation'—was, I am very proud of the folks that we have got. If not the second greatest, then they are an extension of the greatest generation and they are ready, willing, and able to do the things that she would want them to do to make sure we keep our freedoms."
—Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, Air Force Reserve chief, responding to a reporter's question on what the reporter should tell his 85-year-old grandmother to convey to her the importance of Air Force Reservists to the nation's security, Orlando, Fla., Feb. 19, 2010.
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