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An unauthorized vehicle attempted to enter the headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom) Thursday night, prompting gunshots and a lockdown before the driver backed away and left the base. Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, which is home to Stratcom, said the unknown vehicle tried to enter the main gate of the facility at 10 p.m. Offutt security forces activated a barrier system that prevented the vehicle from entering, forcing the individual to turn around. Security also fired shots at the vehicle before it fled the scene, according to the base, and a lockdown was initiated out of an abundance...

The five year gap in Jimmy Stewart's filmography between 1942 and 1946 was the most vivid and important period in his life, if you believe what the famously reticent and reserved movie star would say later. He spent it in uniform with the U.S. Army Air Force, much of it flying B-24 bombers with the Eighth Air Force over Europe. Interviewed by writer Jonathan Coe for the biography Jimmy Stewart: A Wonderful Life, the actor was asked to compare it to his career as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood for nearly half a century. Was it greater than...

Al-kazahy said she thinks he was victimized by the Marines and targeted for prosecution because of racism. “No matter what you do in life, if you are a person of color it’s always going to be 10 times harder for you,” she said. “You have to work 10 times harder than the person who is white.” The Marine Corps said in a statement that an investigation found the accusations of discrimination to be unsubstantiated.

A United Nations-backed panel has publicly released a draft treaty banning the possession and use of all nuclear weapons. The draft treaty is the culmination of a sustained campaign, supported by more than 130 non-nuclear states frustrated with the sclerotic pace of disarmament, to prohibit nuclear weapons and persuade nuclear-armed states to disarm. Nine countries are known or believed to possess nuclear weapons: the US, UK, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. None has supported the draft plan. The draft treaty obliges state parties to “never under any circumstances … develop, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or...

The Pentagon insists it isn't reviving the Strategic Air Command. The Cold War is over -- supposedly. SAC and its workhorse B-52 became uncomfortable symbols of that long, weary struggle waged on the edge of thermonuclear destruction. However, the U.S. Air Force's decision to consolidate control of its strategic bomber fleet into a single headquarters certainly has SAC-like Cold War mission echoes. This also applies to the behavior of Vladimir Putin and his imperialist Kremlin. Thermonuclear threats continue. Despite President Barack Obama's assurances, Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran goes nuclear, Saudi Arabia and Turkey may, as well. It's...

It was at the vanguard of aviation technology in the 1950s, and it's still going strong today: meet the B-52 Stratofortress.The B-52 heavy bomber continues to show that old doesn't have to mean outdated, even in an era of rapid technological change. Just the opposite: through good maintenance and occasional updates, vintage tech can hold its own against flashier but more expensive, and more finicky, next-generation (and next-next-next-generation, even) designs. The very first flight of a Boeing B-52 took place 60 years ago this weekend.

Tu-160 has a lift-generating airframe, which is mostly made of aluminum alloys. Titanium alloys make up to 20% of the airframe mass. The bomber’s airframe has a distinctive appearance, with the wing and fuselage gradually integrated into a single-piece configuration. The variable geometry wings (the sweep angle can be varied from 20 to 65) allow the aircraft to use complex flight profiles from low subsonic speeds to mach 2. Photo: UAC/Tupolev design Bureau The first Tupolev Tu-160M Blackjack has completed its maiden flight after an avionic modernization that revamped the bombers’ radar and avionic systems in the past two years....

Illustrating that the jihadist enterprise transcends all borders, American Islamist groups typically preoccupied with remaking the U.S. have been leaving their fingerprints on the campaign to exchange secular authoritarianism for religious authoritarianism in the Middle East. As these organizations labor stateside to nudge the governing class to embrace Arab Islamists at the expense of liberals — prompting Egyptian intellectual Essam Abdallah to lament that "the most dramatic oppression of the region's civil societies and the Arab Spring … is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington" — several of the groups' past and current officials have emerged as key...

As'ad AbuKahlil—a political science professor at California State University, Stanislaus—spoke last month at a day-long "teach-in" at the University of California, Berkeley titled, "Building Solidarity with the Arab Spring." It consisted of a number of "workshop sessions" at the Valley Life Sciences Building, followed by a "plenary session" at the Multicultural Center, and was co-sponsored by the Arab Resource Organizing Committee, the Berkeley Muslim Students Association PAC, the International Socialist Organization, and the Syrian American Council. AbuKhalil's workshop on "The U.S. and the Arab Uprising" was held in a tiny, hot, windowless room filled with students wearing hijabs and keffiyehs....

Depending on who’s talking, the North American F-107A was either the best fighter the Air Force didn’t have the sense to buy, or a politically flawed loser from the outset. The F-107A will be remembered forever, if it is remembered at all, for being configured as no jet had been before or since: the sharp-edged maw of its air intake, feeding a prototype Pratt & Whitney YJ-75 engine, was just above and behind the cockpit, giving the otherwise sleek fighter the look of a fourth grader with an oversize backpack. In an era of dart-like Mirages and Delta Daggers, the...

Despite an ongoing Defense Department review of potential follow-on options for the Air Force's premiere intercontinental ballistic missile program, development of a new ICBM system will not be one of those options, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said today. While the final results and subsequent recommendations from the Minuteman III ICBM review are not due for months, the service is not ready to dedicate funding or other resources toward the development of a new nuclear missile, Donley said during a breakfast in Washington. “We have already taken steps to get [the Minuteman III] to 2020; now we are focused on...

For nearly 50 years, Strategic Air Command maintained an unsparing, no-nonsense operational culture. After the Air Force disestablished the legendary SAC at the end of the Cold War, however, USAF’s nuclear element slowly drifted away from that exacting standard. It was a mistake, as everyone now will readily, almost compulsively, concede. That certainly goes for Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz, the officer chosen to head USAF’s new Global Strike Command. “If there is one unchanging, immutable truth” about the nuclear arsenal, said Klotz, “it is that it demands constant and undivided attention.” That didn’t carry on in the post-SAC years,...

For the second time in less than a year, the U.S. Air Force has relieved the commander of a combat wing. This time it was the 5th Bomb Wing, a B-52 outfit. Previously, the commander of one of the three Minuteman ICBM wings was relieved. The three missile wings control 450 American Minuteman III ICBMs. In this case, two other senior officers were also relieved (one of them the guy in charge of the Wing Maintenance Squadron.) In both cases, the reason was "loss of confidence in his ability to command". That's milspeak for "too many little things have gone...

The US Air Force on Friday launches a new Global Strike Command responsible for nuclear forces after two major mishaps raised doubts about the supervision of the country's atomic weapons. The opening of the command marks a shake-up that followed the botched handling of nuclear weapons and the subsequent sacking of the air force's top civilian and military leaders last year. The command, located at Barksdale Air Force base in the southern state of Louisiana, will combine nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers as well as the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force -- which had previously been under the Air Force...

The basic bargain is sound: countries with nuclear weapons will move toward disarmament, countries without nuclear weapons will not acquire them.” -- President Barack Obama, Prague, April 6, 2009 As far as nuclear weapons are concerned, the President of the United States wants America to disarm: “Countries with nuclear weapons will move toward disarmament.” It is hard to imagine a more destructive goal. A nuclear disarmed America would lead to massive and widespread killing, more genocide, and very possibly the nuclear holocaust worldwide nuclear disarmament is meant to prevent. There is nothing moral, let alone realistic, about this goal. Here...

Had the United States lost operational control of its nuclear missiles under another scenario — sabotage, computer failure, even bad weather or tectonic irritability — there would’ve been hearings, review boards, press, and maybe even the clatter of rolling heads. But right — it’s only UFOs. Which means author Robert Hastings doesn’t have much competition in pursuit of this monster story. This week, on the Internet radio operation Paracast, two more Air Force veterans once assigned to America’s ICBM silos joined Hastings to discuss how UFOs probed and disabled our weapons of mass destruction during the Cold War. Bruce Fenstermacher,...

Some hedge-fund titans have yanked most of their money out of the stock market, a bearish sign amid Monday's euphoria and an indication of how the hedge-fund business is changing amid chaos. In recent days, Steven Cohen, the hedge-fund manager who runs the $14 billion SAC Capital Advisors, moved about half his funds, or about $7 billion, into money-market and other short-term securities, eliminating much of his fund's exposure to the stock market, says a person close to the fund. Mr. Cohen plans on sitting on the sidelines for the rest of the year -- trading a small portfolio himself...

A word on today's purging of USAF leadership. Official line is that Air Force brass let the nuclear mission slip in the years since the Berlin wall fell. That's true, for a variety of reasons. Standing down Strategic Air Command, the post-Vietnam leadership handoff from nuclear bomber pilots to fighter pilots, the odd square peg that is the kinetic-effects-based Air Force in the round hole of the low-intensity war on terrorism, and the end of the Cold War... all contributed to an overall deemphasis on strategic operations. Still, this is a really old school way of doing business. Back during...

GN’s 2008 Space Conference April 11-13, 2008 Omaha, Nebraska See: Agenda Conference Brochure (735KB PDF file) | Conference Flyer (465 PDF file) In 2008, the Global Network will hold its 16th Annual Space Organizing Conference and Protest outside this Strategic Command. Hundreds of people from around the world will come to Omaha from April 11 – 13, 2008 to learn first-hand about this military installation that operates in America’s heartland. For the first time, world citizens will gather to shine a light on what StratCom has become. Located in the heart of the nation, just south of Omaha, Nebraska, the...

Here’s a story that will throw you for a loop: a "chaplain” at the U.S. Air Force Academy is complaining that the school’s administration has a "systemic and pervasive” problem of promoting religious religious values with a Christian bent. The chaplain, Capt. Melinda Morton, a "Lutheran minister” spoke out publicly on Tuesday as an Air Force task force arrived at the academy to investigate charges that officers and staff members pushed their religious beliefs on cadets. And she claimed that a tolerance program developed at the academy, called Respecting the Spiritual Values of all People (R.S.V.P.), was watered down after...