The top acquisition priority in the Air Force - acquiring a new aerial refueling capability - is proceeding "on track," Maj. Gen. John Thompson, the program executive officer for Tankers, said.

Two years and several key milestones after the contract was awarded, a great deal of progress has been made. The preliminary design review completed last year ensured the basic design would meet the key performance parameters required by the Air Force. Now, the program is steaming toward the completion of the critical design review later this year setting the stage to build and fly the first KC-46A Tanker in 2015.
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If you married, have a new address or experienced significant life changes in March, you should review your emergency contact information to ensure it is accurate, Air Force Personnel Center officials advised.

The Military Personnel Data System manages such military personnel and pay information as accessions, separations, retirements, promotions, reenlistments, training, mobilization and casualties. Because the system was outdated and required a complete upgrade, officials shut down the system for 17 days in March.
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This week's photos feature Airmen around the globe involved in activities supporting expeditionary operations and defending America. This weekly feature showcases the men and women of the Air Force.

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The April issue of Airman magazine is now available to download.

In this issue, our cover story, titled "Growing up Military," tells the story of military children living overseas, and provides an inside look at the unique challenges they face. 

There's also a feature that follows an Airman who is living out his childhood dream as a pro wrestler, and an article that highlights a civil engineer unit with special capabilities that allows them to build roads and runways anywhere around the world.
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Fifty Air Force athletes are one step closer to gold after being chosen to represent the service at the 2013 Warrior Games.

The Warrior Games is an Olympic-style competition open to all wounded, ill and injured military members and veterans. Each branch of service sends a team to represent their branch and compete against the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, Special Operations Command, and the British warrior team. This year's event takes place May 11-17 in Colorado Springs, Colo. This will be the first year the Air Force will be represented by a 50-member team, the max for team size for all branches of service.
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The 40th Flight Test Squadron completed another first in February when an A-10 Thunderbolt II fired a guided rocket that impacted only inches away from its intended target.

The 2.75 diameter, 35-pound, laser-guided rocket is known as the fixed-wing Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II. Before the Thunderbolt test, the rocket had proved effective in Afghanistan combat operations when fired from Marine helicopters.

"Rockets are a staple close-air support weapon, but their weakness has always been their poor accuracy when shot at range," said Maj. Travis Burton, the 40th FTS A-10 pilot who performed the APKWS tests. "In improving rocket accuracy by several orders of magnitude, the APKWS makes the rocket a better weapon for today's low intensity conflicts, where minimizing collateral damage is a top priority."
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April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. We feature the story of Master Sgt. Michelle Blake, who overcame tremendous adversity and has finally found the courage to tell her story.

It's often said that joining the military can change a person's life. For Master Sgt. Michelle Blake, flight chief for medical readiness with the 48th Medical Group, joining the Air Force not only changed hers, but it saved her life as well.

Blake has endured things in her life that most people cannot imagine--things that began at the young age of 4, when she was sexually abused by a family friend. She said that after the abuse was discovered, it wasn't dealt with. "I'm not sure if it was to hide it or to avoid embarrassment ... either way, it was kept quiet," she said.
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Most Airmen have accomplished computer-based suicide prevention training and are familiar with the "typical" scenario - a bold Airman asking the right questions to someone who isn't acting "right." In these training modules, the interaction is almost always in person, face-to-face. But, as one Incirlik Airman recently learned, this is not always the way it happens.

Staff Sgt. Leilani Bass, 39th Aerospace Medical Squadron service technician, was recently on a video-conference call with her best friend from a state side Air Force base when she knew something wasn't right. Based on conversations during a recent visit with her friend and what she heard and saw that night, she knew she had to take action. Of course, being more than 6,000 miles away, there was not much she could do except talk to her friend ... and someone else.
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During his recent visit of Air Force bases in Europe, Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force James A. Cody spent two days talking with Aviano Airmen, March 28 and 29, getting their viewpoints on some of the Air Force's biggest issues.

In his second month since stepping into the service's highest enlisted position, Cody has traveled great distances to engage with Airmen and families and help answer questions they may have.

During his visit, the 17th CMSAF answered questions about sequestration, education, family programs and more, focusing specifically on the future of the Air Force.
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For decades, America has been known around the world as a place of opportunity, a reputation that has drawn people from all corners of the world to inhabit there.

It's this reputation that motivated a husband and wife to leave a former communist nation of Yugoslavia with their two boys in tow in 1961 at the height of the Cold War.

This is the backdrop of one Airman's story; an Airman who today serves as one of the service's top leaders.

Lt. Gen. Frank Gorenc was born in the former communist country of Yugoslavia. There, his father worked as a tailor and mother served as a midwife. Though his parents worked hard, he said, there was something even hard work couldn't buy there: opportunity.
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Hummingbirds are some of the smallest, most delicate, beautiful creatures in the world. They are tiny little beings, and what they lack in size, with 10 beats per second, they make up for in heart.

Senior Airman Ashton Goodman was a 21-year-old vehicle operator dispatcher from Indianapolis who was stationed a Pope Field, N.C. She was the third generation of females in her family to join the Air Force. According to those who knew her, she was a combination of strength and softness: she loved operating the large vehicles her job required of her and she loved animals -- all of them. Her boyfriend had a pet name for her: "Hummingbird."
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In early 2011, the world watched in horror as the aging dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi turned his weapons against his own people in what became a bloody civil war in the North African state of Libya. Soon, the Libyan army was bearing down on Benghazi, the second largest city in the country, threatening an estimated 700,000 civilians in its path to crush the rebellion.

In March 2011, NATO officials agreed to take control of a no-fly zone, limiting Gaddafi's air force, while at the same time targeting his ground units with coalition forces.
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Three weeks after arriving to her deployed location in Afghanistan, insurgents showered then-Tech. Sgt. Angela Blue's base with 80-millimeter mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun fire.

During the attack, she received a radio request to report to the Afghan National Army side of the compound. Three local nationals had been hit by shrapnel and were in need of assistance.

As an aeromedical technician for Provincial Reconstruction Team Zabul, Blue was directly responsible for 15 Army Soldiers assigned to her unit; a team she called, 'my guys.' As a medical professional, she took on the role of medic for about 230 additional patients on Forward Operating Base (FOB) Sweeney.
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This week's photos feature Airmen around the globe involved in activities supporting expeditionary operations and defending America. This weekly feature showcases the men and women of the Air Force.

View the slideshow.

more...

The Air Force released its plan Mar. 28 to implement force structure changes mandated by the Fiscal Year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act.

The bill authorized the service to complete actions approved in previous years, such as aircraft retirements, and directed execution of Congressionally-approved force structure actions.

Some of these changes were outlined in the Air Force's Total Force Proposal, developed in coordination with the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve. Others were congressionally-directed.
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When Airman Kaycee J. Franco thinks about women's history month, she'll think of it as the month that she began making her own personal piece of Air Force history -- receiving the Air Force Airman's Coin, graduating basic training and becoming an Airman.

As Franco stood with her fellow trainees on the parade field at Lackland, her family and friends were able to witness a ritual that will be etched in her memory throughout her career, the Airman's Coin ceremony. After Master Sgt. Christopher Crawford, an MTI, presented her with the Airmen's Coin, she immediately earned the right to be called "Airman." She was one step closer to accomplishing something amazing, graduating from basic training.
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Each spring, a select group of Air War College students meet for BOGSAT sessions and collaborate in "murder boards" to help Air Force leaders make decisions on how the service will adapt to technological changes in the next quarter of a century.

For the past five years, Blue Horizons has investigated a future described as the "Age of Surprise."

BOGSAT refers to an informal deliberative process Blue Horizons participants call a "Bunch of Guys/Gals Sitting Around Talking," while the "murder boards" are opportunities for Blue Horizons participants to present their ideas to their classmates and faculty, who then "do everything they can to tear it apart," said Col. Edward Vaughan, Air National Guard advisor to the commander and president of Air University and a mentor for Blue Horizons students, as well as a former participant himself in 2008.
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She was four days out before returning home to Dover Air Force Base, Del., from her deployment in Provincial Reconstruction Team, Farah, Afghanistan.

Master Sgt. Jennifer Allara and her explosive ordinance team started the day off at 0330 for a routine combat mission patrol. Allara and her EOD teammates went outside the fence to sweep an ally they call 'IED alley' in Shewan, Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, they didn't foresee what was about to happen next.

Allara is a 436th Civil Engineer Squadron Explosive Ordinance Disposal team leader currently based out of Dover AFB, Del., who had her world turned upside down in a matter of minutes.
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When Neil Armstrong made history with man's first footsteps on the moon, Susan Helms needed a little nudging from her mom to get excited. And get excited she did. She realized that there would never be another first step on the moon, and even as a young 11-year-old, knew the feat was something special.

Little did she know that a little more than two decades later, then Maj. Helms would be the first woman military astronaut to fly in space.

"I would read books on science, the planets, the universe and nature," Helms said. "I spent a lot of time with my nose in a book."
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Senior Army and Air Force leaders for the Reserve and National Guard were on Capitol Hill to testify March 19 and answer questions about updating and replacing their combat-worn equipment.

Chairman Michael Turner, R-Ohio, and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., led the hearing at the House Armed Services Committee's Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. They questioned the reserve-component leaders about modernization and equipping strategies, new initiatives, program changes, and potential impacts from the Budget Control Act's initial $487 billion in DOD cuts and sequestration's additional $600 billion in cuts to defense programs.
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