Author: Michael

When Americans think of World War II, images of Normandy, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, and Midway dominate the national memory.
Few recall that the war also reached the soil of the United States itself, not in Hawaii alone, but on the cold, windswept islands of Alaska. Yet in 1942, Imperial Japanese forces invaded and occupied American territory in the Aleutian Islands, marking the first foreign occupation of U.S. land since the War of 1812.

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The U.S. Army and the Australian Army have successfully conducted a complex joint demonstration during across multiple locations in Australia, which saw Australian Army M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) deployed with airlift and targeting support from U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force aircraft. Multiple HIMARS launchers from theRoyal Australian Artillery 10th Brigade, 14th Regiment, were loaded onto U.S. Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemaster III transports, which can operate from short and austere runways across Australia to redeploy rapidly.

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In the first week of January multiple reports emerged that the Saudi Defence Ministry was considering procuring Chinese JF-17 fighter aircraft under a deal valued at $4-6 billion, which would mark the first major procurement of non-Western fighters in the country’s history. Should the aircraft indeed be purchased, it would raise serious questions regarding both their role in the Royal Saudi Air Force, and how their capabilities would compare to other fighter types that are already in service.

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Ukrainian Air Force officers have developed an entirely new clean sheet set of tactics to operate F-16 fighter aircraft in the country’s ongoing war effort against Russia. Highlighting the necessity of this, F-16 pilots and other officers have recently criticised the air combat tactics taught by NATO members as “unsuitable” for engagements with Russian forces, particularly singling out their limited suitability to operate in a theatre where Russia fields a particularly dense and capable ground-based air defence network.

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An official revision to Air Force uniform policy announced Friday allows some airmen to wear uniforms with visible “DIRT,” others to show their “AGE” and some to literally be on “FIRE.”
Duty identifier patches are back.
“I’ve decided to bring duty identifier patches back because the Air Force is made up of many different specialties, each with a unique role in our mission to generate airpower,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach. “We are a unified force working together to win.

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