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

Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it. The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft. Read full article > >

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F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11

Two RAF fighter jets escort a Nigerian air force plane to Cambridge Airport amid high security.

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RAF jets escort Nigerian aircraft

Canada’s navy and air force are to be known as “royal” once again, the country’s media report, more than 40 years after the prefix was dropped.

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Canadian forces ‘royal’ once more

A soldier with a passion for martial arts from Baltimore was killed Thursday in Afghanistan when the vehicle he was in hit a roadside explosive, according to authorities. Army Spec. Jameel T. Freeman, 26, died in Kandahar province with four other soldiers after an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle, according to Department of Defense officials. The soldiers’ remains were flown to Dover Air Force Base on Saturday. All five were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, N.Y. Read full article > >

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Baltimore soldier killed in Afghanistan

The Pentagon on Thursday released details of 30 men who died in Saturday’s helicopter crash in Afghanistan, providing the fullest picture yet of those lost to the deadliest day for U.S. forces in the Afghan war. The group included 17 Navy SEALs and five other personnel from a Navy Special Warfare unit, as well as five Army and three Air Force personnel. Military officials had previously said 22 SEALs were among the dead. Three of the men were Army reservists based near Gardner, Kan., where dozens gathered for a vigil last weekend. They had been working in a dangerous, high-octane environment, said a fellow soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Kirk Kuykendall. Read full article > >

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Pentagon releases names of Afghan crash dead

Here’s what the Pentagon’s technological innovators hope will happen today: They’ll take an unmanned aircraft, launch it from an Air Force base in California and, once high in the atmosphere, have it barrel through the sky at about 13,000 miles per hour — a flight speed that would have it rocket from New York to Los Angeles in about 12 minutes. That’s the hope, anyway. Read full article > >

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Pentagon agency set for test of hypersonic aircraft

NASA’s ocean-watching Aquarius sensor soared into space Friday morning on a mission to fill critical gaps in understanding how the Earth’s oceans affect the planet’s climate. In a key success for NASA’s climate science program , the Aquarius device achieved orbit aboard an Argentine-built satellite, called SAC-D. Two previous Earth-watching NASA craft crashed after launching from the same site, Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. “Elated would be an understatement,” said Gary Lagerloef, chief scientist for Aquarius, shortly after launch engineers confirmed that the satellite was circling Earth in the proper orbit. “Of course, everyone was really apprehensive.” Read full article > >

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NASA’s salt-sniffing climate satellite successfully launched

A rocket carrying a NASA satellite launched early Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a mission to measure the saltiness of the ocean from space. Read full article > >

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NASA launches Delta 2 Rocket

A rocket carrying a NASA satellite launched early Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a mission to measure the saltiness of the ocean from space. Read full article > >

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NASA launches Delta 2 Rocket