Former Deputy Secretary of Energy Charles B. Curtis, whom the White House had planned to tap as its next nominee to be Secretary of the Air Force, withdrew his name from consideration for the post.
Curtis had become concerned that his confirmation hearing in the Senate would focus on lax security at Energy Department labs, said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon on April 9. The result would be "a lengthy, protracted confirmation hearing" that would "deny the Air Force a permanent Secretary," said Bacon. At least one DoE lab has allegedly been the source of leaks of sensitive nuclear weapons technology to the Chinese.
Curtis, a Washington lawyer, was a classmate of Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen's at Boston University's law school. He had been involved in security matters as a deputy secretary at the Energy Department and "has been cited for his zeal in dealing with [security] problems," insisted Bacon, when asked about the withdrawal.
Lax security at DoE labs has become a controversial subject in Washington, with Republicans charging that the Clinton Administration did not react quickly enough to reports of Chinese espionage. Recent reports indicate that, among other things, the Chinese may have obtained data on the exact shape of the Trident II W88 nuclear warhead.
The F-22 is back in the skies after a planned three months of ground tests and system updates. On April 8, Lockheed Martin test pilot Jon Beesley flew Raptor 02 to an altitude of 50,000 feet and performed both flutter tests and flying quality maneuvers.
"The entire F-22 team is excited about moving into the next phase of test activity," said Tom Burbage, president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems. "The tests and modifications performed on the F-22 over the past three months will pave the way for expanded flight activity the rest of this year."
The flight hiatus started at the beginning of 1999. Technicians swarmed over the two F-22s assigned to the Combined Test Facility at Edwards AFB, Calif., trying out maintenance tasks and completing support equipment validations. Among the changes the ground tests produced were modifications to landing gear support equipment and reduced tool requirements.
"Testing a fighter aircraft today is really a combination of ground tests and flight tests," said Maj. Gen. (sel.) Michael C. Mushala, director of the F-22 Systems Program Office. "The F-22 has performed extremely well in both areas, demonstrating 25 percent more flight test points and 20 percent more logistics, or ground test, points than originally planned."
The ground team also carried out a number of planned modifications to the aircraft themselves. These included new brakes, new fuel pumps and fuel system probes, and new flight control actuators and horizontal tails to meet stiffness requirements.
Raptor 02 also received a spin recovery chute for use in upcoming high-angle-of-attack testing.
During the coming months, flight tests will attempt to push the F-22 past Mach 1.8 and demonstrate supercruise, or the ability to cruise faster than the speed of sound without use of afterburners. If all goes well the Department of Defense will likely award contracts for the first six production F-22s in November.
The Pentagon has asked the two contractors vying to build the Joint Strike Fighter, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to submit reworked plans to make sure they can finish the demonstration phase of the program without busting their $1.1 billion budgets.
The Pentagon requested both companies to submit their revised plans, detailing how they propose to remain on budget and on schedule through the concept demonstration phase to downselect in 2001, by the end of April.
The move came in response to a $100 million cost overrun by Lockheed and an aircraft redesign by Boeing, which might add cost in the future. The JSF concept demonstration program began in November 1996 and will end when a contractor is selected in 2001. Boeing announced April 7 that it has begun final assembly of its model, the X-32A, two weeks ahead of schedule.
DoD program officials had not set a date for completing a review of the revised plans.
An investigation looking at the causes of a series of crashes at Luke AFB, Ariz., has found significant engine cracks in 18 F-16 fighters, the Air Force stated in late April after completing inspections of the 190 F-16s located at Luke.
The cracks were found in relatively old Pratt & Whitney 220 engines. They were located in augmenter ducts, which help boost engine thrust by channeling exhaust from the engine's nozzles. Some of the cracks were up to an inch long, said officials.
Luke has been bedeviled by accidents, with six base F-16s crashing since last October. Air Force officials temporarily halted flights at the base after a March crash near Phoenix. Flights were halted once again after the sixth crash, which occurred April 26 near the White Tank Mountain Range, northwest of the base.
Service officials announced three days later that faulty landing gear was the probable cause of the latest crash, involving an F-16D which had passed the engine inspection. It was the first instance of a landing gearrelated crash and prompted an inspection of 100 of the fighters with similar equipment.
However, with four of the six crashes engine-related, the Air Force has become increasingly concerned about the older F-16 power plants. The problems now stretch from cracks to bearings to compressors and turbines.
Many F-16s are now powered by a newer, updated Pratt & Whitney engine, the F100-PW-229.
"The Air Force has never lost an F-16 equipped with a 229 engine," said company spokesman Tim Burris.
The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization has postponed the first scheduled intercept test in the National Missile Defense program from mid-June until mid-to-late August, officials said April 14.
The move is apparently precautionary, not the result of any specific problem. Officials do not want NMD-which would be the heart of any planned missile defense of the United States homeland-to suffer through the same growing pains as its troubled little brother, the Theater High Altitude Area Defense system.
The planned experiment will involve launch of a target missile from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., and a prototype interceptor from Kwajalein atoll in the central Pacific. "Additional time is needed to complete detailed systems checks and inspections prior to the test," said a Pentagon statement on the decision.
Even with the delay the NMD program may be rushing things somewhat, according to a report from DoD's director of operational test and evaluation, Philip E. Coyle III.
Over the next six years NMD has scheduled an average of three intercept tests per year, Coyle said in a report to Congress. That does not leave enough time between shots to apply lessons learned, he said.
This spring both the House and Senate passed legislation calling for deployment of a National Missile Defense "as soon as technologically possible."
NMD proponents say the bill ensures that deployment of such a system is now a matter of when, not if.
The Clinton Administration disputes that interpretation, saying that the legislation makes clear that NMD is still subject to the annual military appropriations process, and thus liable to cancellation, as are other proposed new weapons.
Acting Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters is defending the service's decision to channel $1.4 billion into key modernization accounts rather than use the funds to keep the 2002 launch date for the Space Based Infrared System High.
SBIRS High would be a crucial set of eyes for any National Missile Defense effort and space-minded lawmakers have objected to past reductions in the program.
When the Air Force received an extra $1.4 billion in funds from the Clinton Administration this fall, Sen. Bob Smith (R) of New Hampshire questioned why part of the money was not used to prevent the first SBIRS High launch from slipping to 2004-a prospective delay first revealed in budget papers this year.
Such items as F-16 aircraft, precision air targeting pods, and an extra Joint STARS radar airplane were simply much higher priorities, said Peters in a letter to senators this April.
"If you will look at the Air Force's unfunded priority list, you will see that there are many high-priority items that could not be funded," Peters said. "Given these circumstances, we could just see no way to divert funds from other high-priority programs in order to restore the 2002 launch."
Phoenix Aviator 20--the Air Force's new pilot retention program--has been highly successful so far, say Air Force personnel officials.
Nearly 400 of the 1,500 service pilots eligible for the program have signed up since it began Oct. 1, says Lt. Col. Philip Barbee, head of the PA-20 program office at the Air Force Personnel Center at Randolph AFB, Texas.
"This is a great program," said Barbee. "It offers several benefits to pilots in turn for a commitment to stay on active duty past 20 years of service."
The basic aim of PA-20 is to help retiring pilots make the transition to commercial airlines. Among other incentives, it promises enrollees a flying job their last two years in the Air Force and guarantees an interview with one of its participating airlines.
As of mid-April, 31 enrollees had gone through the interview process. Thirteen had received job offers.
"The biggest carrot of the program has turned out to be the interview. Interviews with a commercial airline are hard to come by," said Barbee.
Lt. Col. John C. O'Donnell was one of the PA-20 participants offered airline employment. He recently finished his USAF career with an assignment as an advisor to an Air National Guard KC-135 unit. O'Donnell says that PA-20 will be an effective way for the service to try and entice pilots at the 15-to-16-year mark to stay.
"Many aircrew members just want to fly," he said. "The opportunity to go from a staff job back to the cockpit for your last two years in the service certainly sweetens the pot."
Missile Crew Assignments Extended
The first tour of duty for new missile combat crew officers has been extended from three to four years, Air Force Space Command officials said.
The move will provide the officers in the space and missile operations career field with more opportunities to gain experience, according to AFSPC.
"This is a winwin situation for everyone," said Col. Perry N. Karraker, chief of the operations and training evaluation division for AFSPC.
"New officers in a four-year tour will get a chance to grow and take some of those desirable jobs, such as flight commander and assistant flight commander, that many of the officers in a three-year tour miss out on."
The change took effect March 25 with Class 99-11 of Undergraduate Space and Missile Training, held at Vandenberg AFB, Calif. Reaction seems positive so far.
"I'm excited about the change," said 2d Lt. Timothy Koczur, a 99-11 student. "It will provide stability for my family and give me a chance to grow as an officer."
On the downside, the change means an extra year at a northern-tier USAF base where winter can close around you like a clenched fist and large metropolitan areas are a long ways away. It is an experience that can be particularly hard on single officers.
But that is a problem that was pre-existing. The added year does not make it significantly worse, said some single students.
"I already considered this when I came to missiles," said 2d Lt. John Bales, another 99-11 student. "I have my four-wheel-drive truck and plan to make the best of it."
C-17s rolling off Boeing's production line in Long Beach, Calif., will now have a new, lighter horizontal stabilizer, thanks to a joint militaryindustry improvement effort.
The new stabilizer is a hybrid composite/metal structure that is 20 percent lighter than the C-17's existing all-metal tail.
The new stabilizer also uses 90 percent fewer parts and 81 percent fewer fasteners than its predecessor.
All C-17s from No. 51 onward will have the new structure, which was designed under the Military Products Using Best Commercial/Military Practices pilot program.
The pilot effort was a combined program funded by the Aeronautical Systems Center, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and C-17 contractors.
The program's overall goal is to take the best acquisition and design practices it can find and extend their usage throughout the weapons building process. Specific goals for the tail redesign were to demonstrate a 20 percent weight saving and 50 percent cost saving over the metal tail baseline.
"The lessons learned from this program will benefit Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and many other aerospace companies as our industry continues to search for more efficient ways to design and produce structural components," said Mark Wilson, chief engineer for ASC's C-17 System Program Office.
The Joint Air to Surface Missile crashed on its first test flight April 8 at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. Flight Test Vehicle No. 1 struck the ground 40 seconds after separating cleanly from an F-15.
Air Force program officials said an electrical glitch caused the missile to go into safety mode after it was dropped. That means its wing and tail never deployed.
The JASSM program is supposed to deliver the first of its stealthy cruise missiles to the force beginning in 2002. The program remains on schedule, according to program officials.
Air Force officials say they have a pretty good idea what caused an F-117 stealth fighter to crash in Yugoslavia on March 27--but that they will not publicly disclose the causes while operations against the Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosevic remain ongoing.
Officials did say they had ruled out an act of God or loss of consciousness on the part of the pilot. Mechanical failure has not been entirely eliminated as a cause, but indications are the aircraft was brought down by a Serbian surface-to-air missile.
"It's not invisible," said Maj. Gen. Bruce A. Carlson, USAF's director of operational requirements, at a Pentagon briefing. "It never has been invisible. We know [there are] radars that can track our stealthy airplanes. They can sometimes find us. The key is that that zone of detectability or lethality is shrunk by orders of magnitude, but it's still not invisible. For instance, the F-117's radar signature increases when its bomb bay doors are open, said Carlson.
Operational changes have attempted to minimize the amount of time the doors are open during bomb runs.
Reports indicated that among the possible causes of the Serb's unexpected anti-aircraft success were the undetected shifting of a surface-to-air missile battery, a predictable flight path by the F-117, and a US electronic jamming aircraft that was flying too far away.
Of 60 F-117s built, according to Carlson, seven have now been lost. Six were destroyed in accidents.
DoD Updates Funeral Commitment
Every US military veteran who has honorably served will be entitled to the presence of two armed services representatives, plus the playing of "Taps," at his or her funeral, according to a Pentagon proposal announced April 21.
The Defense Department has been besieged by complaints about funerals from veterans' families in recent years. Many say they have been unable to have Taps played at funeral ceremonies or have a military representative present the family with a flag.
Under the new proposed rules, the military representatives would conduct a flag folding and presentation ceremony. Taps would be played by either a bugler or a "high-quality audio recording," according to DoD.
"Our heartfelt, shared goal was to honor appropriately and consistently those veterans who have faithfully defended all Americans and our national interests," said Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Rudy de Leon. "These proposals accomplish this important goal."
Critics of DoD funeral practices may find the new rules--which must be approved by Congress--inadequate.
Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D) of Maryland introduced legislation which would mandate a five-person military detail at veterans' funerals, for instance.
But on this as on so many matters, the Pentagon is caught in a squeeze between increased demand and a shrinking active force.
Since 1989 the number of veteran deaths per year has increased 18 percent. Yet during that time the size of the military has shrunk about 35 percent. And demand for funeral honors is sure to increase further.
Currently, the Pentagon provides honors at about 37,000 funerals per year. Officials estimate that about 250,000 families per year could eventually request funeral honors in the coming years.
The rising demand will present geographical challenges, as well.
With the closing of more and more bases, "funeral honor guard details must often travel greater distances than in years past to provide support," according to DoD.
The Defense Department also said that it will streamline the process for requesting honors, via a toll-free request number and a Web site for use by funeral directors.
The Tailwind affair has claimed its highest--profile journalist--Peter Arnett.
Cable News Network has parted ways with perhaps its most recognizable correspondent, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Arnett, at least in part because of his role in a CNN special report that falsely charged the US military with using nerve gas during the Vietnam War.
Arnett was chief correspondent for the so-called Tailwind report, broadcast last June 7. Following an internal CNN report last summer that found that the story was unsupported by the evidence, Arnett argued that his role in preparing the broadcast was in fact minimal. He was allowed to keep his job but was placed in limbo. He had appeared on air only once since last July.
Now CNN plans to exercise an exit clause in his contract, Arnett said April 18. The move effectively removes him with two years remaining on a five-year employment pact.
Arnett has long been one of the most recognizable faces on TV. He won a Pulitzer for Vietnam coverage in 1966, when he was a writer for the Associated Press. He broadcast live from Baghdad in 1991, when US airstrikes began the Gulf War. His future journalistic plans are uncertain.
In a reorganization that began May 1, Air Combat Command is aiming to reduce its current 4,849 headquarters job slots by 1,000.
Too-large headquarters staffs at Langley AFB, Va., are taking up money and personnel that could be put to better use in stressed frontline units, said ACC officials. A streamlining of headquarters organizations could also speed decisions on everything from training to parts resupply.
Col. Perry Lamy, director of a 35-person re-engineering team, said the effort will force specialists, such as logisticians, intelligence experts, and communicators, to work in multidisciplinary teams instead of their own specific specialities. Military jobs can be reassigned to squadrons and other field units. The first reductions will not begin to take hold until next year.
Readiness Challenge VII was supposed to start April 19 at Tyndall AFB, Fla. But the biennial, multinational combat support competition was canceled. Teams that had planned to take part were needed to augment NATO's Operation Allied Force in the Balkans, said Air Force officials.
"It's only prudent to free up our combat support resources in case they're needed," said Col. Bruce McConnell, contingency support director, Air Force Civil Engineer Support Agency. "The competitors ... and all involved with Readiness Challenge will now focus their attention on real-world contingency operations."
Civil engineering, public affairs, and chaplain services are among the support groups that take part in Readiness Challenge competitions. Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, and Japan were all scheduled to send competitive teams.
Events test a range of skills from setting up tent cities with sanitary water supplies and electricity to pumping out press releases.
Canada was the first to cancel, when the Canadian team was placed on standby for deployment to the Kosovo area. The team from US Air Forces in Europe also withdrew-at which point officials decided that perhaps other challenges took precedence over their scheduled contest.
The Air Force's Airborne Laser program passed another major milestone April 13 when its primary optical mirror was delivered to the contractor who will polish it to the needed optical quality.
The mirror--62 inches in diameter and 8 inches thick--was built by Corning Glass, N.Y. Design and fabrication took two years and included use of a unique water-jet machining technique to reduce the weight of the mirror core by over 90 percent.
Now Contraves Brashear Systems of Pittsburgh, Pa., will take another year to polish the mirror to the optical quality necessary to direct a high-energy laser beam to a target hundreds of miles away.
"This event represents another successful milestone in the effort to develop and demonstrate this revolutionary weapon system," said Col. Michael W. Booen, director of the ABL System Program Office at Kirtland AFB, N.M.
On April 9, the Department of Defense announced that Gen. Richard E. Hawley, commander of Air Combat Command, will retire July 1. His replacement will be the current Air Force vice chief of staff, Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart.
A change of command ceremony was tentatively scheduled for June 11. Hawley has headed ACC since April 1996. He first entered the service in 1964 after graduating from the Air Force Academy and has more than 3,000 flying hours, including more than 430 combat missions in the O-2A, A-10, F-4, and F-15.
Prior to his assuming the ACC post, Hawley was the commander of US Air Forces in Europe and Allied Air Forces Central Europe at Ramstein AB, Germany.
Eberhart is a fellow graduate of the academy and received his commission in 1968. He has accumulated more than 4,000 hours in a variety of Air Force aircraft and flew 300 combat missions as a forward air controller in Vietnam.
On April 7, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Eric W. Benken announced that he will retire from the service after wearing his nation's uniform for more than 29 years. His formal retirement ceremony will be July 30 at Bolling AFB, D.C. Benken admitted that part of him still wanted to stay on the job. He likely could have remained on until the end of Chief of Staff Gen. Michael E. Ryan's term.
But at three years-plus Benken's time in the top NCO job has already been longer than most. And he has strong feelings about extending past the 30-year mark.
"There are many Vietnam-era chiefs like myself who would like to stay beyond 30 years," he said. "I have asked them not to do that, so we can make room for the younger troops to move up. It would be inappropriate for me to do something I have asked my fellow chiefs not to do."
The chief began his career in 1970 after noticing a recruiting poster emblazoned with what he now jokes he thought was a direct order: Join the Air Force. He began as an administrative specialist, now known as an information manager.
Besides Vietnam, his overseas postings included Taiwan, Korea, Belgium, and Germany. He assumed the post of Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force in November 1996, after serving as USAFE senior enlisted advisor.
"Knowing he was my advisor on enlisted issues has meant peace of mind for me," said Ryan. "He tackled many tough issues in particularly tough times for our Air Force."