White Sands Missile Range News

The price of a dysfunctional national government will soon hit home in our region as thousands of Defense Department civilian employees face the equivalent of a 20-percent weekly pay cut for almost three months.

Department of Defense civilian employees at Holloman Air Force Base received news Tuesday that they are facing 11 furloughs days due to sequestration this year.

Soldiers assigned to 4th Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regt., 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division qualify with a M240B during Network Integration Evaluation 13.2 on April 29 at a training area near Fort Bliss.

Congressman Steve Pearce and Congressman Beto OORourke discuss their mutual support for Fort Bliss and the White Sands Missile Range, the William Beaumont Medical Center, and other priorities for the military that will benefit service members in our communities.

The 49th Wing Commander Col. Andrew Croft spoke at a regular county commission meeting about the important role the base plays in local communities.

New Mexico's Spaceport America scored another commercial space success this week when SpaceX confirmed it will test fly its prototype reuseable rocket the Grasshopper at the port.

Whether it's a concern about sonic booms over Las Cruces or range-firing blasts near Chaparral, a federal and local panel is seeking public feedback about military activities in southern New Mexico and west Texas.

The Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation held a hearing Friday on HR1229, the White Sands Missile Range Security Enhancement Act, introduced by Republican Congressman Steve Pearce.

UNMANNED TRAINING: Drone operators fly an MQ-9 Reaper training mission from a ground control station at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

With a final environmental impact statement for a high-voltage transmission line that would start in northern Lincoln County expected in June, the U.S. Department of Defense is making a last effort to reroute the SunZia project.

The tide of war may be receding, as President Barack Obama is fond of saying, but U.S. military demand for unmanned drones and their remote pilots is growing.

The tide of war may be receding, as President Barack Obama is fond of saying, but U.S. military demand for unmanned drones and their remote pilots is growing.

It's a question few rocket scientists have to answer these days, but at the end of the Second World War it was on everyone's mind: what do you do with the brilliant Nazi scientists after importing them to the United States? The answer, in the case of Wernher von Braun and the team behind the V-2 missile, was to put them and their rockets to work ... (more)

SPC Lori Ann Piestewa was a U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps soldier killed during the same Iraqi Army attack in which fellow soldiers Shoshana Johnson and Jessica Lynch sustained injuries.