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Standoff Jammer Axed, Again
Standoff Jammer Axed, Again: The Air Force has opted once again to cancel its plans to field a powerful standoff jammer capability by fitting large jamming pods on the wingtips of the B-52H. So claims Flight International in a March 3 report, citing an Air Combat Command electronic warfare requirements officer. According to the magazine, the Air Force has removed funding for the core component jammer project from its multi-year spending plan that will be part of its forthcoming Fiscal 2010 budget proposal. This is the second time that USAF has dropped the ax on the idea. In 2005, then Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley terminated the original B-52 Standoff Jammer program after its costs ballooned. The Air Force, saying that a standoff element remained a critical piece of the US military’s future airborne electronic attack architecture, later resurrected the concept, but this time in the form of the more streamlined and disciplined CCJ effort. Now it appears that the Air Force will continue to mature standoff jamming technology, but not be tied to a formal acquisition program at least for now.
3/6/2009
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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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