Exelis, Computer Sciences Corp. and Raytheon risk losing $3 billion in rocket-launch revenue during the next decade as the U.S. Air Force consolidates contracts to reduce costs. The Air Force plans to save at least 5 percent by eliminating redundancies in three maintenance and engineering contracts, Christina Sukach, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Space Command, said in an e-mail. Read full article > >

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Air Force pares contracts in cost-reduction move

From Air Force One after assassination.

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Tape Reveals LBJ Call to Rose Kennedy

Federal investigators have concluded that supervisors at Dover Air Force Base retaliated against four civilian whistleblowers after they reported missing body parts and other failures at the mortuary that handles America’s war dead. Read full article > >

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Dover mortuary whistleblowers suffered retaliation, say investigators

PHOENIX — President Obama is used to tangling with Republicans in Congress. On Wednesday, he sparred with one on a tarmac. Arriving in this Southwestern city on the second stop of his post-State of the Union tour , Obama descended the stairs of Air Force One and was greeted by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who was among the local politicians waiting for him in a customary receiving line. Read full article > >

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Obama tangles with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer over immigration book

The Obama administration on Thursday hailed a new $30 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia as both a hedge against Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf and an economic windfall that could create thousands of U.S. jobs over the next decade. The agreement to sell 84 top-of-the line F-15SA fighter jets to the Saudi air force also provided a needed boost to U.S. relations with the oil-rich kingdom after months of strain over the White House’s response to the Arab Spring uprisings, U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said. Read full article > >

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U.S. touts Saudi Arabia fighter jet deal as a foreign policy, security and economic boon

DENVER — Santa Claus set records Christmas Eve as he raced across the globe on his traditional holiday mission. Santa tracking volunteers at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado said they fielded about 102,000 telephone queries beginning early Saturday on his progress, breaking the previous mark of 80,000. Read full article > >

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NORAD Santa trackers have record holiday telling children about big man’s location

A member of the Royal Air Force injured in an explosion in Afghanistan has died in a UK hospital, the Ministry of Defence says.

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Afghanistan injury kills RAF man

The leaders of a congressional committee investigating the Dover Air Force Base mortuary said Thursday that they would broaden their probe to include all military burial practices over the past decade, including reports that partial remains of hundreds of war dead were incinerated and dumped in a Virginia landfill. Read full article > >

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Dumping of partial remains of war dead in Va. landfill spurs wider probe

A retired four-star general from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will lead a review of operations at the Dover Air Force Base mortuary after federal investigations found evidence of “gross mismanagement” at the repository for America’s war dead . John P. Abizaid, who retired from the military in 2007 after serving four years as the head of the U.S. Central Command and 34 years in the Army, was selected to oversee the review by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, the Pentagon announced late Monday. Read full article > >

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Abizaid to head inquiry into Dover mortuary scandal

Gloria Crothers made the sad pilgrimage to Dover Air Force Base in 2009 to see her son, who was killed in Afghanistan, return to American soil. Like hundreds of families before her, she watched the short, quiet ceremony, in which white-gloved troops carried a transfer case bearing her son’s remains from a cargo aircraft. Read full article > >

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Dover Air Force Base is nation’s latest military site to be accused in scandal

Federal investigators said Tuesday they uncovered “gross mismanagement” at the Dover Air Force Base mortuary that cares for America’s war dead after whistleblowers reported horror stories of lost body parts, shoddy inventory controls and lax supervision. The former mortuary commander and two other senior officials have been disciplined — but not fired — in response to separate investigations conducted by the Air Force Inspector General, the Secretary of the Air Force and the Office of Special Counsel , an independent federal agency that also received the whistleblower complaints. Read full article > >

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Air Force mishandled remains of war dead, probe finds

The Air Force has been secretly flying armed Reaper drones on counterterrorism missions from a remote civilian airport in southern Ethi­o­pia as part of a rapidly expanding U.S.-led proxy war against an al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, U.S. military officials said. The Air Force has invested millions of dollars to upgrade an airfield in Arba Minch, Ethi­o­pia, where it has built a small annex to house a fleet of drones that can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs. The Reapers began flying missions earlier this year over neighboring Somalia, where the United States and its allies in the region have been targeting al-Shabab , a militant Islamist group connected to al-Qaeda. Read full article > >

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U.S. drone base in Ethi­o­pia is operational

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish soldiers, air force bombers and helicopter gunships reportedly launched an incursion into Iraq on Wednesday, hours after Kurdish rebels killed 26 soldiers and wounded 22 others in multiple attacks along the border. Turkish authorities did not immediately confirm the incursion but the chief of the military as well as interior and defense ministers rushed to the border area while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled a visit to Kazakhstan. Read full article > >

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Report: Turkey launches incursion into Iraq after Kurdish rebels kill 26 soldiers

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. — President Barack Obama was joined by former President Bill Clinton on the golf course Saturday, in a friendly contest of first duffers who’ve known the pressures of office and the joys of relieving them on the links. The two teed off on a cloudy afternoon at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and finished up just over four hours later. Read full article > >

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Drive for show, putt for dough: Obama, Bill Clinton hit the links at Air Force base

The Republican Party has produced as front-runners for the presidential nomination two men just three years apart in age, but who otherwise are about as different as possible — in style, substance, biography and their appeals to voters. One was born into a privileged family in a tony Michigan suburb; the other, onto a flat expanse of West Texas dirt with no indoor plumbing. One spent his youth tooling around his father’s car factory; the other, selling Bibles door-to-door so he could afford to buy a car. One excelled at Harvard University, simultaneously earning law and business degrees and swiftly climbing the corporate ladder; the other, his hope of becoming a veterinarian dashed when he flunked organic chemistry at Texas A&M University, joined the Air Force. Read full article > >

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Republican front-runners Mitt Romney, Rick Perry come from different worlds