Roger That: Air Force considers forgiving overpayments for overseas housing
U.S. Air Forces in Europe has asked the Pentagon to consider forgiving more than $1 million in debt owed by more than 1,000 airmen in Germany, who were overpaid their overseas housing allowances, according to Air Force Times.
Recent audits found that about 1,100 airmen at Spangdahlem Air Base had been overpaid an average of $1,212.41 apiece due to a discrepancy on forms for personnel in Germany.
The biggest overpayment, $29,700, went to an airman at Spangdahlem, Stars and Stripes first reported July 17. The amount airmen were overpaid depends on how long they have been stationed in Germany, according to the article.
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The West’s deal with Iran is premised on the idea the International Atomic Energy Agency can detect illicit refinement of weapons-grade material — a tough job when the landscape includes radioactive debris from previous nuclear efforts. But technologies based on anti-neutrino detectors could someday help reveal if Iran resumes its pursuit of a bomb, according to DefenseOne.
Case in point: The IR-40 heavy water reactor in Arak, Iran, which can produce some 22 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium a year, would be altered to perform engineering and research work, according to the agreement. But the radioactive traces of its original purpose might confuse today’s sensors, leading to uncertainty about Iran’s ongoing efforts to abide by the deal.
But what regular radiation detectors miss, anti-neutrino detectors could catch. Neutrinos—and their antimatter corollary, anti-neutrinos—are subatomic particles with no positive or negative charge. They pass through virtually all material you can imagine, from lead shielding to the cores of stars. That could allow monitors to “‘see” into the core of a running nuclear reactor and to measure the plutonium content in situ,” said Patrick Huber, an associate professor of physics at Virginia Tech.
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The U.S. Air Force is on track for the first flight of its new KC-46 Pegasus Tanker aircraft by September of this year despite technical challenges and Boeing’s announcement that the aerospace giant went over the contract-imposed cost caps for the program, service officials said, according to Military.com.
“We're still on track for a first KC-46 flight by September,” Brig. Gen. Duke Richardson, Air Force Program executive officer for tankers, said in a written statement.
This optimism comes despite Boeing’s announcement that their firm would absorb $536 million in extra after-tax charges related to some unexpected costs of the tanker’s production and development. The Air Force-Boeing cost cap built into the Boeing tanker contract is $4.9 billion for the program, a mark that Boeing has overshot.
Extra required work on the airplane's integrated fuel system is the reason for the extra Boeing payments, a company statement said. The extra costs were incurred by Boeing due to a firm-fixed cost cap woven into the Air Force-Boeing contract for KC-46 development. The KC-46 will eventually replace many of the Air Force’s KC-135 Air Stratotankers, most of which were built in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
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Tiny, unmanned aerial drones will soon become ubiquitous on battlefields around the world. As a consequence, the U.S. Army is studying how to shoot them down with a chain gun, according to the War Is Boring blog.
Since at least 2007, the army has been working on the so-called Extended Area Protection and Survivability program, or EAPS. Originally expected to just shoot down incoming rockets or mortar bombs, killing small aircraft is now a key part of the project.
A prototype anti-drone chain gun uses a 50-millimeter Orbital ATK Bushmaster III cannon. Powered by an electric motor, the gun can fire up to 200 rounds every minute — or single shots if required.
Neither Orbital ATK nor the Army have offered any details on how far away the gun can hit and kill its targets. Engineers described the weapon’s “battlespace” as reaching out to just over a mile, according to one 2011 briefing.
On the ground, a radar points the guns in the right direction of the enemy drone. Then once the shells leave the barrel, a computer beams guidance instructions, telling them where to go and changing their course mid-flight. Once near the target, the shells explode into a cloud of metal shrapnel powerful enough to destroy or at least disable the unfriendly drone.
Contact reporter Mike Fitzgerald at mfitzgerald@bnd.com or 618-239-2533.
This story was originally published July 22, 2015 at 10:09 AM with the headline "Roger That: Air Force considers forgiving overpayments for overseas housing."