Free Republic

***NOT FOR BROADCAST*** Contact Brett Adair with Live Storms Media to license. brett@livestormsnow.com Extreme damage to Tyndall AFB after Hurricane Michael shot from Helicopter.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — High above Yemen’s rebel-held city of Hodeida, a drone controlled by Emirati forces hovered as an SUV carrying a top Shiite Houthi rebel official turned onto a small street and stopped, waiting for another vehicle in its convoy to catch up. Seconds later, the SUV exploded in flames, killing Saleh al-Samad, a top political figure. The drone that fired that missile in April was not one of the many American aircraft that have been buzzing across the skies of Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001. It was Chinese.. Across the Middle East,...

WASHINGTON —The U.S. Air Force has selected Boeing to replace the service's aging fleet of UH-1N Iroquois helicopters, which are currently tasked with security missions as well as protecting America's nuclear missile arsenal. The long-awaited Pentagon contract is worth $2.4 billion for up to 84 aircraft. The service awarded Boeing approximately $375 million for the first four helicopters on Monday.

he proposed addition of 74 new combat squadrons to the Air Force would be the biggest increase in the service since the Cold War and is specifically intended to counter growing threats from Russia and China. “We must see the world as it is. … We must prepare,” Wilson said. “We have returned to an era of great power competition." Wilson acknowledges it will take time and additional funding to acquire the aircraft and recruit the pilots and additional personnel crews, but she called the planned expansion “an obligation to our countrymen. “We aren’t naive about how long it will...

An old Air Force friend of mine was doing some research and found himself leafing through the papers of retired Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier. Those attuned to USAF history will recall that Schwalier was the commander at the center of controversy surrounding the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, a terrorist attack which killed 19 and injured 498 at a remote airbase in Saudi Arabia. Schwalier was scapegoated by the Clinton Administration, which triggered the resignation of Gen. Ronald Fogleman, whose integrity prevented him from continuing as the Air ForceÂ’s Chief of Staff in the face of what he viewed as an...

The controversy swirling around the F-35 joint strike fighter echoes previous battles fought over aircraft tasked with serving more than one master. Perhaps the central question in today’s debate is whether a single airplane designed to perform many missions adequately is a better and truly more affordable choice than several airplanes, each designed to perform a single mission flawlessly. In 1968, the Navy had an unequivocal answer: No. But were they right? In the early 1960s both the Navy and the Air Force were shopping for new combat aircraft. The Navy needed a carrier-based interceptor capable of engaging Soviet bombers...

The B-61-12 gravity bomb, a GPS-guided behemoth that’s been in development since 2008, can penetrate three meters of earth before detonating and dial up a nuclear yield of between 0.3 kilotons and 50 kilotons of devastating power. A message to Iran? Read on: An Air Force B-2 stealth bomber just completed the first test drop of an advanced nuclear gravity bomb, Military.com reported on June 30. The B-61-12 gravity bomb , a GPS-guided behemoth that’s been in development since 2008 , can penetrate three meters of earth before detonating and dial up a nuclear yield of between 0.3 kilotons and...

A meteor hit Earth and exploded with 2.1 kilotons of force in July, but the Air Force has made no mention of the event. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed an object of unspecified size traveling at 15.1 miles per second (54,360 miles per hour) struck the ground in Greenland, just 27 miles north of Thule Air Base, on July 25. The base is mainly used to detect missile launches. Director of the Nuclear Information Project for the Federation of American Scientists Hans Kristensen tweeted about the impact, but the US Air Force has not reported the event. Kristensen argues it’s...

Reports of an active shooter sent emergency responders to the hospital at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio on Thursday afternoon. A spokesperson for the Air Force base confirmed on Twitter that base emergency responders, including security forces and the fire department, responded to an active shooter incident at a building at the base’s hospital at around 12:40 p.m. local time. “Base personnel have been directed to shelter in place until the incident is investigated,” the base said in a second, which was followed by a third.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence picked up two family members of American soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War as he traveled to Hawaii to attend a ceremony marking the return of U.S. troops' alleged remains. Pence stopped in California en route to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, where a ceremony will be held 2 p.m. Wednesday (local time) following the repatriation of 55 sets of remains from North Korea last week. "As we travel to @JointBasePHH, Karen & I are honored to be joined by Diana Brown Sanfilippo & her husband Robert," Pence tweeted early Wednesday. "Diana lost her...

WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- President Donald Trump will posthumously award the Medal of Honor to the family of a fallen U.S. Air Force Special Tactics Combat Controller at a ceremony on Aug. 22 for his extraordinary heroism in March 2002 while deployed to Afghanistan. According to the medal nomination, Tech. Sergeant John Chapman distinguished himself on the battlefield through “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity,” sacrificing his life to preserve those of his teammates. Chapman was part of a joint special operations reconnaissance team deployed to Afghanistan in 2002 that came under overwhelming enemy fire during a heroic rescue attempt on Takur Ghar...

Last week, the aerospace-defense community was overwhelmingly intrigued by a report from Defenseone.com that said Boeing was pitching a new variant of its 45-year-old F-15 Eagle line of fighters to the United States Air Force. Still, next to nothing is known about this initiative, including where it came from and what it entails exactly. Although it has been framed as a Boeing solicitation to the USAF, the opposite is actually true—the USAF began the discussion over a year and a half ago. Since then, ongoing talks have been kept incredibly hush-hush, along with the details of the aircraft involved—until now....

From a gold-plated toilet to a king sized bed and even a gym, these astonishing pictures show the lavish interior of one of Vladimir Putin 's private jets. The Russian president's aircraft touched down in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, yesterday ahead of his historic meeting with Donald Trump, who also boasts his own private jet - Air Force One. Here we take a look inside both jets to see how they compare...

The commander of F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming has agreed to replace a Bible on a POW/MIA table with a generic “book of faith,” according to documents released by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The MRFF is a militant organization that has fought against Nativity scenes, Bible studies and any outward expressions of the Christian faith on U.S. military installations. The head of the foundation, Mikey Weinstein, wrote in the HuffPost that he is dedicated to fighting “virulent religious oppression” carried out by “incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their...

The families of some of the 17 SEAL Team 6 commandos who were k****d in an ambush in Afghanistan during a helicopter flight to help Army Rangers pinned down by Taliban gunmen accused the Obama administration of deliberately endangering their loved ones for political ends. Now a highly decorated, retired Air Force officer is coming forward, breaking her silence to speak out on what she witnessed in one of the deadliest attacks on Navy SEALs in U.S. history. Her testimony details how the government covered up evidence in the 2011 downing of a Chinook helicopter gunship that k****d a total...

The missing machine gun that triggered the firing of a security forces chief at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, in May turned up in what’s probably the last place the Air Force wanted it to: stashed in an airman’s home off-base. Minot officials announced on Wednesday that the machine gun had been recovered by Air Force Office of Special Investigation agents after obtaining a federal search warrant for the unnamed airman’s residence on June 19. The machine gun was discovered missing during a standard weapons inventory by the 91st Missile Wing security forces on May 16, just about two...

Under the contract, the Hawthorne, Calif.-based rocket company founded by Elon Musk will launch the Air Force Space Command-52 satellite to its intended orbit. The contract includes launch vehicle production and mission, as well as integration, launch operations and spaceflight worthiness activities, according to a notice posted by the U.S. Department of Defense. The work, which will be performed at SpaceX’s headquarters, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and in McGregor, Texas, is expected to be completed by September 2020. The mission is planned to be launched from Kennedy Space Center. Two proposals were received by the DOD in the competitive bidding...

he former head of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, managed to overlook the Air Force deserter with top-security clearance on her staff who has been a "most-wanted" fugitive for 35 years. Nanette Asimov and Megan Cassidy report in the San Francisco Chronicle: Employees in the University of California president's office in Oakland knew their former colleague Tim O'Beirne as the personable, brainy number-cruncher for the UC system's vast health benefits program. They were stunned Tuesday to learn that the Air Force has identified him as William Howard Hughes Jr., a captain with top-secret clearance who vanished in 1983....

Military officials have reportedly ordered a command-wide inventory and investigation after a box of grenades and a machine gun from an Air Force base in North Dakota went missing. CNN reported Friday that the inventory will seek to account for grenades, small arms, machine guns, rifles and pistols at eight bases under the Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). The AFGSC did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment about the reported inventory. At the same time, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have been called to examine the matter, CNN reported....

If you've been paying attention to the latest viral controversy this week, you know that the following audio says "Yanny," not "Laurel." It says Yanny. Those who claim it says "Laurel" are spreading fake news. Regardless, the Air Force sent a Yanny vs. Laurel reference out on their Twitter feed Thursday morning about the Taliban. By the afternoon, they took it down and apologized.