Military

The national Air Force museum in southwest Ohio will close some galleries starting next month due to federal budget cuts.

The director of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force says the presidential and research and development galleries will be closed until further notice beginning May 1.

Museum Director Jack Hudson says popular exhibits in the affected galleries include President John F. Kennedy's Air Force One and the XB-70 Valkyrie. He says museum officials hope to reopen those galleries as soon as possible.

Officials say a U.S. Air Force reserve wing that flies troops around the globe will start shutting down on Fridays when civilian furloughs begin at Ohio's largest military base.

That's the word at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where around 13,000 civilian employees will be subject to furloughs because of defense budget cuts.

The Dayton Daily News reports that the Air Force Reserve 445th Airlift Wing relies on hundreds of civilian air reserve technicians, who serve double duty as reserve military personnel, to keep nine C-17 Globemaster III cargo jets flying.

The U.S. Air Force's grounding of its Thunderbirds jet demonstration team means the planes won't be headlining this summer's Dayton Air Show.

It's not a surprise. The Air Force earlier announced that it planned to ground the Thunderbirds April 1 if a federal budget deal wasn't reached.

Organizers of the popular Dayton Air Show made the Thunderbirds' cancelation official in a release Thursday.

The air show is scheduled to go on June 22 and 23 with 14 other aerial acts.