Here we go. TA DA! Our first podcasts, exclusive interviews with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein and Strategic Command’s Gen. John Hyten.

Pentagon planners aren’t only worried about North Korean ICBMs, but Chinese hypersonics and medium-range missiles. That means, according to analysts, that an array of distributed systems are needed to meet a wide range of potential threats.

In a hearing this morning, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed, said he’s skeptical about the current plan to retire the JSTARS radar surveillance plane because the Air Force has been inconsistent, not just about JSTARS, but a host of other programs.

It ain’t sexy, but the massive backlog of 730,000 clearance investigations is costing companies money, the Intelligence Community good people and causing headaches for everyone.
The redoubtable Sue Gordon, principal deputy Director of National Intelligence, told some 3,000 intelligence professionals today that “this year we’ll do really great work on reducing the backlog.”

It’s one of the coolest titles in the US military — space architect! Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson announced Tuesday night there will again be a space architect, known as the Chief Architect.

When China published its description of SJ-17, the folks at AGI who track satellites for a living raised their eyebrows. The Chinese said it was an experimental satellite. But “the way they phrased it piqued our interest,” says Bob Hall, standing a dozen feet from AGI’s infamous ice cream stand here.

Pentagon brass are taking a look at what chaff can be cut in order to push along weapons systems like lasers and hypersonics. And they have some powerful Capitol Hill allies.

SPACE SYMPOSIUM: The Air Force, eager to get inside the decision cycle of China and Russia, is pressing ahead hard and fast to substantially speed space acquisition. In what is something of a test case for the service, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson last night committed to building the next generation of missile warning satellites,… Keep reading →

After years of missed deadlines, cost overruns and underperformance the Air Force has split the requirements for the troubled Joint Mission System program’s Increment 3, dividing them between the Coalition Space Operations Center and the National Space Defense Center. In a separate but apparently related action, the Air Force has also partnered with the nation’s spy satellite builder to create a new Space Situational Awareness satellite.

Air Force Gen. John Hyten has always wanted to spend time at the house he and his wife bought years ago in Colorado Springs — but he’s too busy with, among other things, alerts of missile launches around the globe, just in case one is US-bound. You’d think the former head of Space Command, now… Keep reading →