Jeff has been involved in aerospace journalism since the mid 1990s. Prior to joining Aviation Week, Jeff served as managing editor of Launchspace magazine and the International Space Industry Report. He has been the editor and chief of Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report since 2007 and has been a regular contributor to Aviation Week magazine. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
Former Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim questioned the Air Force's need to buy the F/A-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) at currently planned levels during a speech in Washington Dec. 3. "The Air Force is under tremendous budgetary pressure and its future resources simply can't sustain its stated needs," Zakheim said at the Heritage Foundation. Those needs include its space programs, airlift modernization, tanker support and increasing its fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles, he said.
The U.S. Army is changing its training for drivers of Stryker vehicles and installing new seat belts to help address a rollover problem that is killing more soldiers than attacks from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
Despite the Stryker vehicle's requirement that it be transportable within a C-130 cargo aircraft, so far Stryker brigades in Iraq have not used the aircraft for intra-theater movement, according to Col. Peter Fuller, the Army's Stryker project manager. "I'm not saying it's always faster [than a C-130], but they find that it's very fast because it's a wheeled vehicle," Fuller said during the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement's Light Armored Vehicles conference in Washington Dec. 2.
