First Lt. Ali Jivanjee, an F-15C pilot with the 58th Fighter Squadron at Eglin AFB, Fla., died due to injuries sustained in an aircraft mishap with a second F-15C during a training sortie on Feb. 20 over the Gulf of Mexico.

The pilot of the second aircraft survived, but his name was withheld pending the completion of the accident investigation, USAF officials said.

A B-2A bomber, Spirit of Kansas, from the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman AFB, Mo., crashed on Feb. 23 just after taking off from Andersen AFB, Guam. The two pilots ejected safely, but one of them suffered a spinal compression and required medical attention, Air Force officials said.

This was the first-ever crash of the stealth bomber, which entered USAF’s inventory in 1993. The B-2 fleet now stands at 20 aircraft.

The crash took place as Spirit of Kansas, along with three other B-2s from Whiteman, were leaving the island for home after a four-month deployment. They had been on Guam since mid-October 2007 as part of the now-standard rotation of USAF’s B-1B, B-2A, and B-52H bombers to the Pacific region to maintain a continual presence there as a means of dissuading aggression.

Despite comments from top Pentagon officials that the F-22 and F-35 are comparable—even interchangeable—they are not, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley told defense reporters Feb. 28 in Washington.

The best analogy, he said, is to think of the F-22 and F-35 as being akin to the F-15 and F-16, which pioneered the high-low mix 25 years ago.

"I believe the two airplanes are complementary," said the Chief of Staff. "I believe the two airplanes are required."

The F-22, he went on, "is designed for a specific task," while the F-35 "is designed for a more general task. But together they provide the capability needed for the theater commander."

Both stealthy fifth generation airplanes provide capability "to survive the new integrated air defense systems," such as the Russian-built SA-20, Moseley said. Their stealth, he said, "is very important."

Iran is reportedly taking delivery of the SA-20, which has a 100-mile radius of engagement. It represents a "quantum leap" in capability, making air operations "more lethal" for nonstealthy aircraft, Moseley said.

A Standard Missile-3 fired from the Navy cruiser USS Lake Erie successfully collided with a nonfunctioning, deorbiting US intelligence satellite on Feb. 20 about 153 miles over the Pacific Ocean, Pentagon officials said. The intercept broke the satellite into small pieces, essentially removing the threat that the satellite’s tank of toxic hydrazine fuel would survive re-entry and pose a hazard if it struck near a populated area, they said.

"We have a high degree of confidence the satellite’s fuel tank was destroyed and the hydrazine has been dissipated," Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Feb. 25. Only small pieces of debris remained; they were expected to burn up on re-entry over a period of weeks to several months.

Gen. C. Robert Kehler, commander of Air Force Space Command, said Feb. 21 at the Air Force Association’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., that USAF personnel and space-monitoring assets were "critical and significant players" in the operation.

The Air Staff’s new personnel chief, Lt. Gen. Richard Y. Newton III, essentially told the House Armed Services military personnel panel Feb. 26 that the service’s policy of self-financing weapon system recapitalization on the backs of airmen has come to an end.

The Air Force has been on a planned downslope to reach an active end strength of 316,600 in Fiscal 2009. However, service leaders have indicated that this reduction may be too big a bite given the ongoing in-lieu-of taskings in Afghanistan and Iraq and the demands of new and emerging missions, such as supporting Africa Command, a larger ground force, USAF’s own new Cyber Command, and its Quadrennial Defense Review-directed 86 combat wings, known as the Required Force.

Indeed to prevent "a critical capability gap," USAF asks for $385 million as its fourth top priority on its Fiscal 2009 unfunded requirements list in order to add back nearly 19,000 airmen split between the active duty and reserve.

Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne found himself in a conundrum during a Congressional hearing Feb. 27, having officially to support the President’s Fiscal 2009 spending request that continues the reduction to 316,000, while acknowledging that he personally champions the increase included in the URL.

The last of the Air Force’s F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters are nearing the end of their operational lifetimes—literally. Later this month, the few remaining Nighthawks in the inventory will leave their home of Holloman AFB, N.M., for good and be retired, USAF officials said.

One of the F-117s is being turned into a static display. Shortly after the Nighthawks are gone, Holloman will receive its new tenant: the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter. The base is slated to host two squadrons of Raptors, with the first two aircraft anticipated in June.

The Air Force does not expect to name the permanent location of its new Cyber Command until "closer to the end of the year," the service announced Feb. 13. The decision was supposed to come this spring, before the official stand up of the command on Oct. 1. Now USAF says it needs more time.

Maj. Gen. William T. Lord, commander of AFCYBER (Provisional) at Barksdale AFB, La., said in USAF’s statement that the review continues of the candidate sites. Lord said one of the next major steps is to whittle down the list of candidates to four finalists so that initial site surveys and environmental impact studies may commence.

After completion of the environment studies, which usually takes about six to eight months, USAF said it will announce the winning location. AFCYBER "will be assigned an interim location until the final location is announced," the Air Force said. Full operational capability of the command "will take at least another year," Lord said.

The Air Force is now the nation’s third largest consumer of environmentally friendly renewable sources of energy and remains No. 1 among organizations within the federal government that purchase green power, the service announced Feb. 19.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s quarterly list of the Top 25 green power purchasers, the Air Force increased the amount of energy that it purchased late last year from renewable sources such as biogas, biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind.

The Air Force said it buys more than 899 million kilowatt hours of green power annually, enough to meet approximately nine percent of its purchased electricity use. This amount is enough to power nearly 90,000 average American homes annually.

The Air Force confirmed in mid-February that it is in discussions with Lockheed Martin about a potential new multiyear procurement contract that would start in Fiscal 2010 for combat-delivery C-130J transports and Super Hercules-based tanker derivatives for combat rescue and special operations. If analysis indicates that a new multiyear deal would result in "substantial savings" and comply with federal procurement requirements, the service would then request Congressional approval for it, USAF officials said.

USAF’s current multiyear deal with the company for both Air Force and Marine Corps aircraft concludes this year with the manufacture of the final nine airplanes that will be delivered in 2010. On top of them, the Air Force seeks about 115 new airframes to recapitalize its aged HC-130P/N combat rescue tankers and MC-130E/P special operations platforms starting in Fiscal 2009, with initial operational capability in 2012. It also wants to buy more combat-delivery C-130Js at a rate of eight per year starting in Fiscal 2010, service officials said.

It took 55 years, but the Air Force has recognized retired Lt. Gen. Charles G. Cleveland as an ace for downing five MiG-15s in an F-86 Sabre fighter during the Korean War.

The Air Force Board for Military Corrections confirmed to him in January that, based on MiG flight records unearthed in Russian archives in 2003 as well as eyewitness accounts from his wingman, USAF now accepted one of his probable kills as a confirmed kill, giving him five in total to qualify him as an ace.

"It’s a great feeling to have the Air Force recognize me as an ace," Cleveland said in a USAF release dated Feb. 13. "And it’s a real honor to be included with that great group of men who make up the rest of the aces."

Cleveland flew an F-86 as a lieutenant with the 334th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Kimpo Air Base starting in 1952. West Point colleague Dolphin D. Overton III, a former Air Force captain and himself a Korean War ace, came across the Russian documents in his efforts to help Cleveland be acknowledged as an ace.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. signed a memorandum of agreement Jan. 23 that signals their intent to provide direct liaisons at various levels for dialogue on issues ranging from joint training to equipment interoperability.

The new memorandum also says the services "will seek opportunities to jointly develop doctrine, tactics, techniques, and procedures," working through personnel exchanges at service schools.

The 41st Airlift Squadron from Little Rock, AFB, Ark., became the first active duty C-130J unit to deploy to Southwest Asia, the Air Force announced in February. The unit moved to Little Rock about one year ago from Pope AFB, N.C., where it flew older model Hercules aircraft.

Another C-130 first occurred in early February when the 908th Airlift Wing at Maxwell AFB, Ala., became the first Hercules unit within Air Force Reserve Command to deploy to the region under a new rotation scheme filled by volunteers who serve one-month tours.

Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, affirmed on Feb. 6 that the expansion of US ground forces will exert a direct effect on the future size of the Air Force’s strategic airlift fleet.

Mullen’s statement was made necessary by an earlier remark uttered in public by a key member of his Joint Staff.

Two days prior, Vice Adm. P. Stephen Stanley, the joint staff’s director of force structure, told reporters that the two issues are "not directly related," and that the addition of nearly 100,000 ground forces might not have anything to do with USAF’s strategic mobility capabilities.

Mullen left no doubt that he does see the connection, telling the House Armed Services Committee that the impact of the ground-force growth on airlift "is a legitimate question that we don’t have an answer to yet."

Meanwhile, the Air Force, too, is still crunching the numbers, said Gen. Arthur J. Lichte, commander of Air Mobility Command, in a Feb. 22 appearance at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando.

The current uncertainty is the reason why the Air Force favors keeping the C-17 production line open, said Lichte.

The Air Force announced in late February that it has completed the process of upgrading the guidance sets on the nation’s 450 Minuteman III ICBMs, thus concluding the $2.4 billion guidance replacement program "on time and on budget."

"We are fully operational and capable," said Maj. Gen. Roger W. Burg, 20th Air Force commander, Feb. 25 during a ceremony at F.E. Warren AFB, Wyo.

The project started in 1999 and ended in January with removal of the 1960s-era NS-20 guidance set and addition of the new NS-50 on the last missile at Minot AFB, N.D.

The remains of three airmen missing since the crash of their A-20J bomber in December 1944 over Germany have been identified, the Pentagon announced Feb. 15. They are 2nd Lt. John F. Lubben, Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.; Sgt. Albert A. Forgue, North Providence, R.I.; and Sgt. Charles L. Spiegel, Chicago. They left Coullomiers, France, on Dec. 12, 1944, crashing near Cologne, Germany.

The three airmen will be buried April 18 in Arlington National Cemetery, DOD said.

While the quality of USAF’s recruits is good, Lt. Gen. Richard Y. Newton III, head of personnel on the Air Staff, said Feb. 26 on Capitol Hill that enlisted retention in 2007 "fell about eight percent below the goal."

This was offset, however, because officer retention was about 11 percent over its goal, Newton said.

The Bush Administration’s $93.7 billion request in Fiscal 2009 for Veterans Affairs—$3.4 billion more than 2008 spending levels—is simply not enough when "basic factors, such as medical care inflation and other increases in VA’s operational costs, are taken into account," said Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, in February.

Akaka said the VA budget doesn’t provide for "needed increases" in areas to support veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury or posttraumatic stress disorder. His counterpart in the House, Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), has similar complaints, saying in February the Administration’s planned increase in medical care "has come at the expense of other VA programs," including construction and medical and prosthetic research.

The Department of Defense in February unveiled a project—named Blackswift—to mature technologies that would enable aircraft to cruise at many times the speed of sound.

Blackswift is an outgrowth of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Falcon initiative under which the agency is developing hypersonic technologies applicable to future Air Force long-range strike and space-access systems.

Under Blackswift, engineers are creating a reusable flight vehicle, about the size of an F-16 fighter, that is known as the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 3X, or HTV-3X. They will use it to conduct flight tests that will "allow for the study of tactics for a hypersonic airplane that includes a runway takeoff, Mach 6 cruise, and runway landing."

HTV-3X will be powered by a combined-cycle propulsion system comprising a high-speed turbine engine for the lower echelons of speed and a supersonic combustion ramjet to achieve the hypersonic rates.

During a Senate oversight hearing on Feb. 7, members of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves adamantly disputed that their final report, issued Jan. 31, recommends converting the National Guard into a domestic-only force and cutting reserve pay in half. But they acknowledged using "probably a poor choice of words" in some passages, thereby creating confusion.

"We absolutely do not recommend converting the National Guard into [a] domestic crisis response force only," retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold L. Punaro, head of the commission, said in discussing the 448-page report.

Commissioner Patricia L. Lewis, a former Navy civilian and Congressional staffer, said the panel did not recommend a cut in reserve pay, but rather a streamlining of the current 29 duty status categories to just two: either on active duty or not. In fact, the commission champions changes to "put additional money in reservists’ pockets," she said.

The release of the report caused consternation both in Pentagon and Capitol Hill circles. For example, Army Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, NGB chief, declared on Feb. 1 that a domestic-only reserve would "unhinge the volunteer force" and break the Total Force.

The Air Force wants to do in Fiscal 2009 what it hasn’t been able to do in past budgets: include funding for the future helicopter that will replace its Vietnam War-era Huey UH-1Ns.

USAF has sought for years to retire these Hueys, which help protect the nation’s ICBM fields, shuttle VIPs, and perform civil rescue missions, with a new more capable helicopter provisionally called the Common Vertical Lift Support Platform. But it hasn’t had the money to do so, given the long list of more pressing recapitalization and modernization needs such as a new tanker, bomber, and combat rescue helicopter.

Now, however, CVLSP appears to be emerging out of the shadows, as the service seeks $3.87 million to launch the helicopter program next fiscal year and lay the groundwork for fielding the platform in Fiscal 2015.

The Community College of the Air Force, part of Air University at Maxwell AFB, Ala., in January gained its first enlisted vice commandant, CMSgt. Joseph Thornell, an Air National Guardsman from South Dakota.

Thornell, who had been serving as the CCAF’s senior enlisted manager, took the post, which had previously been reserved for an active duty lieutenant colonel, USAF said.

According to Air Education and Training Command, this is one of the initiatives by Air University to transform and enrich enlisted education and training. AU also plans to install a chief master sergeant as CCAF commandant to align all of the enlisted programs for education, militarily, with a chief master sergeant at the helm.

The Air Force expects to stop using the Space Based Visible sensor "for operational purposes" later this year, according to Gen. C. Robert Kehler, commander of Air Force Space Command.

Kehler told reporters Feb. 21 at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando that the visible-band optical sensor, which was the United States’ first on-orbit space-surveillance asset, "is to the point that it has significant technical issues and it is not going to get better." SBV is part of the Midcourse Space Experiment satellite that the Department of Defense launched in 1996. Built to operate for five years, the satellite has already lasted more than twice as long.

Replacing SBV’s on-orbit monitoring capabilities will be the Space Based Space Surveillance satellite, due for launch around 2009.

Retired Brig. Gen. Gustav E. Lundquist, who served as a test pilot before and after World War II and ended his Air Force career in 1969 as commander of Arnold Engineering Development Center, died Feb. 5 in San Antonio. He was 88.

Lundquist entered the service as an aviation cadet in 1940 and graduated from test pilot school in 1942, flying prototypes out of Wright Field, Ohio. He flew P-51s from England but was shot down over Germany and interned as a POW for almost a year. He returned to Wright Field, where he led the fighter test section and flew the F-80, winning the Thompson Trophy air race in 1946.

He also served as one of three test pilots for the X-1 rocket airplane. Lundquist subsequently had a variety of senior staff and command positions, primarily in research, development, and engineering. He took command of AEDC in August 1967.

News Notes 

• Lt. Gen. Edward A. Rice Jr. assumed command of US Forces Japan and 5th Air Force during a ceremony Feb. 25 at Yokota AB, Japan. Rice, most recently vice commander of Pacific Air Forces, replaced Lt. Gen. Bruce A. Wright, who retired after nearly 35 years of service.
• An F-16 crashed during takeoff in July 2007 at Balad AB, Iraq, due to an underinflated nose gear tire and the pilot’s misinterpretation of the situation, Pacific Air Forces announced on Jan. 30, citing the findings of the accident investigation board. The F-16—assigned to the 35th Fighter Wing, Misawa AB, Japan— was completely destroyed; the pilot safely ejected.
• The Air Force on Feb. 22 celebrated the 30th anniversary of the first Global Positioning Satellite signal from space. The first GPS satellite was launched into orbit in February 1978.
• One C-17 from Hickam AFB, Hawaii, and a second Globemaster III from Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, delivered about 226,000 pounds of humanitarian supplies to Shanghai, China, on Feb. 8. The US sent the supplies after severe winter storms hit 19 of China’s provinces.
• A remotely controlled unmanned QF-4 full-scale aerial target drone launched an air-to-ground missile during a test in January at Holloman AFB, N.M. The test marked the first time that the Air Force fired an air-to-ground missile from a full-scale target.
• Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Carrol H. Chandler redesignated 7th Air Force as 7th Air Force, Air Forces Korea, during a ceremony Jan. 30 at Osan AB, South Korea. Lt. Gen. Stephen G. Wood, former 7th Air Force commander, remains in charge of the new Korean command.
• Lt. Col. James Kromberg on Jan. 30 became the first USAF pilot to fly the F-35. Kromberg, director of operations with the 461st Flight Test Squadron at Edwards AFB, Calif., flew a sortie with aircraft AA-1, the first F-35 test aircraft, at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Fort Worth, Tex.
• Engineers completed installation of all six Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser modules aboard the Airborne Laser aircraft, the ABL industry team announced Feb. 25. Overall integration of the megawatt-class laser on the modified 747-400F platform is now more than 70 percent complete.
• The Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Fighter Wing flew its final F-15 mission in late January. Per BRAC 2005, it will become the 102nd Intelligence Wing and operate one of USAF’s Distributed Ground Stations.
• The Air Force launched its new "Above All" advertising campaign in February. Print, TV, and Internet ads feature airmen at work. It’s "a great slogan because it says how we shine in what we do to defend our nation and accomplish our mission," said SSgt. Lee Jones, an airman in the first ads.
• The National Museum of the US Air Force has put an F-22A Raptor stealth fighter on display at its facility in Dayton, Ohio. The aircraft, #91-4003, was one of nine Raptor test aircraft built and the first to launch an AIM-120 air-to-air missile at supersonic speeds, USAF said.
• The Civil Air Patrol has embarked on a pilot program at Randolph AFB, Tex., and Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, to provide additional assistance to the Air Force. The new Volunteer Support of the Air Force initiative will enable CAP volunteers to aid airmen and their families.