By Larry Shaughnessy
An Air Force officer charged with sexual battery stemming from an incident in Northern Virginia had received training for his job heading up a military unit aimed at preventing sex assaults, military records show.
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, a 1994 graduate of the Air Force Academy who served tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, was arrested early on Sunday for allegedly grabbing a woman's buttocks and breasts in a parking lot in Arlington County not far from the Pentagon.
A police report said the unidentified woman fought off her assailant, who appeared intoxicated.
Krusinski, 41, is due in an Arlington County court on Thursday after local officials refused a request from the Air Force for it to handle the case.
By Barbara Starr
In an unprecedented action, an Air Force commander has stripped 17 of his officers of their authority to control and launch nuclear missiles.
The 17 are being sent to undergo 60 to 90 days of intensive refresher training on how to do their jobs. The action comes after their unit performed poorly on an inspection and one officer was investigated for potential compromise of nuclear launch codes, according to Lt. Col. John Dorrian, an Air Force spokesman.
The story was first reported by The Associated Press.
The action was taken by the deputy commander of the 91st Operations Group, Lt. Col. Jay Folds, whose officers run launch control centers for the Minuteman III nuclear missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.
By Larry Shaughnessy
The general at the center of a military and legal controversy is telling his side of the story for the first time since throwing out the sexual assault conviction of an Air Force officer.
Lt. Colonel James Wilkerson III was found guilty last year by a jury of Air Force officers of sexually assaulting a woman at his home outside Aviano Air Base in Italy.
He spent four months in a Navy brig before Lt. General Craig Franklin, the convening authority in the case, threw out the verdict.
Franklin was the officer who ordered Wilkerson's court martial at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. But military law allowed him to have the final say.
FULL POST
By Brad Lendon
(CNN) - The nation's best military fliers have had their wings clipped, thanks to the forced spending cuts imposed on the federal government this year.
The U.S. Navy on Tuesday announced it was canceling all the air shows its Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Squadron had scheduled for the rest of the year. The Navy action follows the Air Force's April 1 announcement that its Thunderbirds team would not perform again this year.
Read the full story here.
U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, less than 20 miles from the border with North Korea, bases in Japan and Guam are all targets for North Korea's missiles. Chris Lawrence reports on how and where North Korea would strike U.S. troops.
By Mike Mount
The U.S. military on Friday grounded the F-35 fighter jet due to a crack in an engine component that was discovered during a routine inspection in California.
The Pentagon said in a statement that it was too early to assess the impact on the fleet of jets designed for use by the Navy, Air Force and Marines.
The nearly $400 billion Joint Strike Fighter is the Pentagon's most expensive weapons system. It is currently being tested.
The program has been beset by cost overruns and various technical problems during development.
Currently, there 51 planes in the F-35 fleet.
By Larry Shaughnessy and Barbara Starr
The risk of sexual assault is growing at the elite military service academies, but victims are reluctant to report the problem, according to a Pentagon report obtained by CNN.
The survey of three military academies was ordered by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and will be released Thursday. CNN obtained advance details of the survey, which shows that the problem is getting worse with a rise in reported assaults and evidence that many more are never discussed.
Some of the most disturbing new information comes from the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland. The survey found that 225 midshipmen, mainly females, reported that they were the victims of unwanted sexual contact in the most recent academic year. That contact includes everything from touching to rape. But only 12 filed formal reports, down nearly 50 percent from last year. The belief is the women still are not confident that their reports will be taken seriously.
FULL POST
By Larry Shaughnessy
(CNN) - An F-22 fighter jet crashed Thursday afternoon near Tyndall Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle. The pilot ejected safely, according to Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Force.
Tyndall AFB is a training base for F-22 pilots. There's no confirmation that the plane took off from Tyndall before the crash, but that would be logical, Dorrian said.
The F-22 has been the focus of years of investigations about a problem that causes some of the stealth fighter's pilots to become dizzy or black out. The exact cause of the problem still hasn't been identified.
Last year, the Government Accountability Office put the cost per F-22 (including research and development) at $412 million.
By Mike Mount
An investigation into sexual assaults and harassment at the basic-training facility for the U.S. Air Force has led to sweeping changes of how instructors are chosen, as well as to an increase in the number of female instructors for new recruits.
The announcement came on Wednesday as the Air Force briefed reporters at the Pentagon on the findings of an investigation into claims earlier this year that dozens of female recruits had been sexually assaulted.
The Air Force's final report into the Air Education and Training Command at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas said some of the instructors, "lacked the experience necessary to effectively serve as mentors and leaders and had little to no supervisory experience...this lack of experience is considered particularly relevant when a single (instructor) is generally responsible for a flight of 50 or more trainees."
Some 23 instructors have been identified as having been allegedly involved in the misconduct against 48 recruits at the school. The report says five people have been convicted in military courts on rape and adultery charges, with punishments ranging from 30 days in prison to 20 years behind bars.
WASHINGTON (CNN) - CNN has obtained detailed photographs of a new stealth fighter being tested in China.
It is the second such stealth fighter China has tested in as many years and appears destined to become the communist nation's future aircraft carrier-based fighter jet, according to weapons analysts.
The plane, dubbed by outsiders as the J-31, was test flown Tuesday in Shenyang. According to the analysts, the two photographs obtained by CNN appear to have been leaked by officials in China.
J-31 Chinese fighter jet. (Photo cjdby.net)
"It has to be an official photographer because nobody else can get that close to the airplane," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. "These are all publicity photos from the factory, and I could not imagine that the factory would publicize these things without somebody higher up in the food chain authorizing it."
Richard Fisher, a senior fellow in Asian military affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center (IASC), agrees these are not pictures sent out surreptitiously by some Chinese aviation aficionado. "The Internet censors are controlling this process, have no doubt that."
But Fisher said the reason for the release may not be as threatening as some might imagine.
"It's being done in a way to help promote pro-military nationalism in China. There's just a huge, large audience in China for this kind of information. It's kind of like NASCAR."
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