The first Raider, which was unveiled in a highly publicized ceremony in December 2022, flew to Edwards Air Force Base on Nov. 10. It is now undergoing flight testing, which also includes ground tests and taxiing. The Air Force Test Center and the 412th Test Wing’s B-21 Combined Test Force are managing the bomber’s testing program, the service said.

The Air Force has confirmed at least six B-21s are in various stages of construction by Northrop Grumman or are undergoing tests. The program is now in the engineering and manufacturing development phase, the service said in November, and Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota is expected to receive its first Raider in the mid-2020s.

The service plans to buy at least 100 B-21s, an advanced stealth bomber, to replace the aging B-1B Lancer and B-2 Spirit bombers. It will provide the service with new abilities to conduct penetrating deep-strike missions, and the aircraft will be able to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons.

Northrop Grumman said throughout 2023 that it expected a contract by the end of the year for the first of five low-rate initial production lots on the B-21. That contract was not issued by press time, but once in place, it will pave the way for the production process to move forward.

Inflation, labor problems and lingering supply chain issues are complicating the B-21 production process and raising cost estimates for low-rate initial production, Northrop officials said in earnings calls during 2023. And the company said it’s not expecting to turn any profit on the B-21 at first, perhaps losing up to $1.2 billion.

The B-21 formal training unit will also be based at Ellsworth. Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and Dyess Air Force Base in Texas will later receive their own bombers as they become available. Maintenance and sustainment for the B-21 will be largely carried out at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma.

After that, it’ll be up to the rest of the committee to turn them into law.

The quality of life panel — led by Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa. — was formed in early 2023 as a way to evaluate military policies and shortfalls that may be discouraging individuals from reenlisting.

Over the last nine months, the panel held a host of roundtables with Pentagon leaders, military families and outside advocates on ways to address those concerns. That included a briefing in late November on base daycare options.

Better pay for junior troops will be top focus of new House panel

At a Nov. 15 event hosted by the political action group With Honor, Bacon and Houlahan said they are considering a host of proposals to add into next year’s defense authorization bill debate, including military sabbaticals for outside job opportunities or family care, more tax exemptions for military pay, and more flexibility for troops in their future duty assignments.

They also are upset over continued reports of housing problems at bases across the country. Bacon blamed some of the problems on a lack of accountability for the issue among senior leaders.

Just how many of those ideas can advance into actual legislation remains to be seen. Senior Republican leaders said the quality of life changes will be key in recruiting and retention efforts. But they also spent most of 2023 focused on social issues in the personnel section of the annual defense budget bill.

Bacon and Houlahan are likely to be key voices throughout the spring in hearings on the quality of life topics. A draft of the authorization bill — including any possible recommendations from the panel — is expected in May or June.

These are just some of the past toxic risks that were in the underground capsules and silos where Air Force nuclear missile crews have worked since the 1960s. Now many of those service members have cancer.

The toxic dangers were recorded in hundreds of pages of documents dating back to the 1980s that were obtained by The Associated Press through Freedom of Information Act requests. They tell a far different story from what Air Force leadership told the nuclear missile community decades ago, when the first reports of cancer among service members began to surface:

“The workplace is free of health hazards,” a Dec. 30, 2001, Air Force investigation found.

“Sometimes, illnesses tend to occur by chance alone,” a follow-up 2005 Air Force review found.

The capsules are again under scrutiny.

The AP reported in January that at least nine current or former nuclear missile officers, or missileers, had been diagnosed with the blood cancer non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Then hundreds more came forward self-reporting cancer diagnoses. In response the Air Force launched its most sweeping review to date and tested thousands of air, water, soil and surface samples in all of the facilities where the service members worked. Four current samples have come back with unsafe levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a known carcinogen used in electrical wiring.

In early 2024, more data is expected, and the Air Force is working on an official count of how many current or former missile community service members have cancer.

Some current missileers told the AP they were concerned by the new reports but believe the Air Force is being transparent in its current search for toxic dangers. Many of them take some of the same precautions missileers have for generations, such as having “capsule clothes,” the civilian attire they change into once inside the capsule to work the 24-hour shift. The clothes go straight into the laundry after a shift because they end up smelling metallic.

“Whenever you hear ‘cancer’ it’s a little concerning,” said Lt. Joy Hawkins, 23, a missileer at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. To Hawkins and fellow missileer Lt. Samantha McGlinchey, who spoke to a visiting AP reporter as they completed an underground shift at launch control capsule Charlie, the news meant they would need to be diligent about medical checkups. “There’s more testing, things to come, cleanup efforts,” McGlinchey, 28, said. “For us early in our careers, it’s better to be caught so early.”

Others worry the dangers will again be played down.

When the latest rounds of test results were released, the Air Force did not initially reveal that samples showing contamination had critically higher PCB levels than EPA standards allow — and dozens of other areas tested were just below the EPA’s threshold, said Steven Mayne, a former senior enlisted nuclear missile facility supervisor at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota who now runs a Facebook group that is dedicated to posting Air Force news or internal memos.

“At this point the EPA, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and senators from North Dakota and Montana need to look into this matter,” Mayne said.

In December 2022, former Malmstrom missileers Jackie Perdue and Monte Watts, both of whom have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, asked the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate.

“I believe health and safety standards have been violated, or not considered, and should be investigated,” said Perdue, who served as a nuclear missile combat crew commander at Malmstrom from 1999 to 2006, in an inspector general complaint obtained by the AP.

Past exposures

There are currently three nuclear missile bases in the United States: F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Minot and Malmstrom. Each base has 15 underground launch control capsules that act as hubs for fields of 10 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silos each. The capsules are manned around the clock, 365 days a year. Missileers spend 24 hours or more each shift working underground in those capsules monitoring the ICBMs, ready to launch them if directed by the president.

The Air Force acknowledges the current review can’t provide full answers on what past missileers were exposed to, but the data will establish a health profile likely to help them apply for veterans benefits.

However, there are plenty of warning signs about past toxic risks in the documents obtained by AP.

“Type and content of asbestos, please phone ASAP,” a handwritten note reads on memo dated Nov. 9, 1992. All of the documents obtained by the AP have been redacted to have the names blocked out, but the urgency was evident. “PRIORITY,” the handwritten note says, in all caps.

An environmental team at Malmstrom capsules Hotel and Juliet got worrisome asbestos readings from underneath a generator in the capsule equipment rooms. The equipment room is also underground, contained within the same, sealed-in workspace. The EPA’s threshold for asbestos exposure is 1% for an eight-hour workday. But missileers were locked in there for 24 hours at a time, at least. If the weather was bad and the replacement crew couldn’t make the drive to the site, a team could be stuck underground for as long as 72 hours. Hotel and Juliet recorded solid samples of chrysotile asbestos — a white asbestos that can be inhaled — between 15% to 30%.

In the official report published just seven days later, however, the risks were downplayed.

“Asbestos presents a health hazard only when it is crushed (able to be crushed or pulverized by hand pressure.) All suspect (asbestos) was found to be in good condition,” the annual review on Hotel said.

At missile silo Quebec-12 in 1989 it found levels of up to 50% amosite asbestos, a brown asbestos found in cement and insulation. And a team looking at Malmstrom’s Bravo capsule that same year had warned that even if it was left undisturbed, it could be dangerous. “Diesel room — when running leaks asbestos,” it warned.

In his inspector general complaint, former Malmstrom missileer Watts said there was asbestos in the floor tile as well, and that missileers also “routinely removed, handled and replaced these tiles as part of required survival equipment inventories.”

The documents also reveal multiple PCB spills throughout the decades. A 1987 report talks about a missileer calling his commander to report a severe headache and lightheadedness. The crew finds a clear, sticky syrup leaking under the capsule’s power panel. “I suggested the blast door be opened for more ventilation and no contact with the substance be made,” a bioenvironmental engineer documents. “All the team needed to do was open the blast door and stay away from the spill. There was no need to close the capsule.”

“It’s frustrating to know they had thought of this back then,” said Doreen Jenness, whose husband, Jason Jenness, was a Malmstrom missileer who died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2001 at the age of 31. “It makes me frustrated and angry that they can keep telling these young men and women that they are not finding anything — knowing that back in 2001, 2003 and the early 2000s that there was something going on there.”

Capsule Sierra

Doreen and Jason Jenness met while he was assigned to Malmstrom. They married and lived on base in the mid-1990s. Their missileer friends used to tease them because they had a golden Labrador named Sierra, the same name as one of the capsules that Jason’s squadron operated.

The environmental reports from Malmstrom when Jason was assigned there show Sierra had a long list of hazards. In 1996, a medical team reported there were more than 25 gallons of fluid overrun with biological growth festering on Sierra’s capsule floor. An intake that collected outside air for Sierra was located by the parking lot, and the team watched a running car idle near it for 20 minutes. The team documented that a fan needed to pull clean air down into Sierra had been broken for at least six months, so the only way crews could get fresh air was if they left the capsule’s steel vault door open.

At the other capsules, the team said the air quality was “marginal, but should not cause serious health problems.” Sierra was dangerous. In March of 1996, the medical team measured carbon dioxide levels of 1,700 parts per million in the air. “At these levels you can expect complaints of headache, drowsiness, fatigue and/or difficulty concentrating from a majority of the occupants. Worker removal should be considered.”

Nothing changed. That May the medical team again recorded exposure levels of 1,800 ppm, and advised again that the missileers should be removed.

Leaking computer consoles

By the mid-1990s a new missile targeting system was needed, and each capsule began a refurbishment to install a wall-sized computer console called REACT, for Rapid Execution and Combat Targeting System. The new system would allow the U.S. more quickly to reprogram and retarget its nuclear missiles in case of war. Demolition of the old computer and construction of REACT began inside each of the 15 Malmstrom capsules.

Missileers wonder if the REACT refurbishment further disturbed asbestos and PCBs that were still in the capsules. But once installed, the new console also exposed missileers to a new toxic danger.

“Crew members reported a malfunctioning video display characterized by a clicking sound,” a report on a May 1995 incident at Malmstrom’s Bravo capsule said. “After the click, the video display shut down with only a white line visible to crew members.”

A clear liquid began to leak, followed by a fishy, ammonia-like smell. The crew began to complain of headaches and nausea, and the capsule was evacuated two hours later.

Malmstrom’s team learned that the liquid was dimethylformamide, an electrolyte used in REACT’s video display unit capacitors, because F.E. Warren, the Wyoming base, had recently reported similar leaks.

“The capacitors overheat and vent into the capsule in lieu of catastrophic failure,” a 1996 memo found after a second dimethylformamide leak at Bravo. “To date, we have no idea how much of this material is contained in the capsules nor do we have any idea of the relative hazard to missile crews and maintenance personnel who come in contact with this material.”

Medical studies on dimethylformamide’s link to cancer are split; some report a clear tie to liver cancer, others say more study is needed.

Changes coming

All of the capsules will be closed down in a few years, as the military’s new ICBM, the Sentinel, comes online. As part of the modernization, the old capsules will be demolished. A new, modern underground control center will be built on top of them. Air Force teams working on the new designs are aware of the cancer reports and are applying modern environmental health standards in the new centers — requirements that did not exist when the Minuteman capsules were first built, said Maj. Gen. John Newberry, commander of the Air Force’s nuclear weapons center.

“We are absolutely learning from or understanding what’s going on with Minuteman III, and if there’s something that we need to look at from a Sentinel side,” Newberry said.

The old capsules will remain in use until then, though, which makes it even more important that the Air Force is completely open with its missileers now, Doreen Jenness said.

Because they were so young, neither she nor Jason suspected cancer when he started to feel fatigued in the fall of 2000. Nor when his hip started to ache that December.

When he finally gave in and saw a doctor in February 2001, he was admitted to the hospital the same day. By March, Jason and Doreen knew his lymphoma was untreatable. He died that July.

“We can all pretend to not know, because knowing is really hard,” Doreen Jenness said. “Knowing and doing something about it is even harder. Now, 23 years after Jason’s been gone there’s a whole bunch of young men and women that are having to go through the same things that we had to go through. They have to live the same lives and maybe have the same future as me, and it’s just sad. Really sad.”

Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to show the documents recorded toxic dangers, not toxins.

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

David Flosi, the next chief master sergeant of the Air Force, and Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna, who started the job in September, will be the top advocates for more than 261,000 enlisted airmen and guardians — the Department of the Air Force’s largest constituency — as well as key advisers to each service’s four-star boss.

Flosi (pronounced “floss-ee”) most recently served as the top enlisted airman at Air Force Materiel Command. His selection signals that Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin values his input as a career munitions expert, including a background in nuclear missile maintenance, as the service brings on a new generation of nuclear weapons.

Bentivegna previously worked as the senior enlisted adviser to the Space Force’s chief operations officer. In that role, he oversaw the noncommissioned guardians who help fly military satellites, operate offensive and defensive weapons in orbit and track missile launches around the globe.

Together, they’ll look to shape the future of enlisted education, redefine the enlisted corps’ role in an evolving force and push for policies that keep military families happy and healthy.

Flosi will also oversee the Air Force’s ongoing effort to reshape the enlisted enterprise by growing the lower ranks and slowing promotions to midlevel jobs — a plan that has frustrated many airmen eager to climb the career ladder and earn more money.

Troops hope the men will seek meaningful change on issues from unit understaffing to dysfunctional computers and IT networks to — of course — beards.

Like previous missions, the reusable plane resembling a mini space shuttle carried classified experiments. There’s no one on board.

The space plane took off aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at night, more than two weeks late because of technical issues.

It marked the seventh flight of an X-37B, which has logged more than 10 years in orbit since its debut in 2010.

The last flight, the longest one yet, lasted 2 1/2 years before ending on a runway at Kennedy a year ago.

Space Force officials would not say how long this orbital test vehicle would remain aloft or what’s on board other than a NASA experiment to gauge the effects of radiation on materials.

Built by Boeing, the X-37B resembles NASA’s retired space shuttles. But they’re just one-fourth the size at 29 feet (9 meters) long. No astronauts are needed; the X-37B has an autonomous landing system.

They take off vertically like rockets but land horizontally like planes, and are designed to orbit between 150 miles and 500 miles (240 kilometers and 800 kilometers) high. There are two X-37Bs based in a former shuttle hangar at Kennedy.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

It was July 30, 1943, and the primary targets of the 379th Bomb Group were the Nazi aero engine shops located in the central German town of Kassel.

Of course, B-17 bombing missions were no picnic. Aeronautical advancements at the time allowed a B-17 to fly at altitudes of approximately 35,000 feet for up to 2,800 miles, all while carrying a hefty bomb payload supplemented by 10 .50-caliber machine guns.

The bomber, however, flew at a speed of just 150 mph, which left crews immensely vulnerable when flying through swarms of the 400 mph-capable Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf-190s. What’s more, it would not be until the routine implementation of the P-51 Mustang in 1944 Europe that B-17s would be regularly accompanied by fighter escorts.

In 1943, as casualty rates hovered around 30 percent, surviving the mandatory 25 missions as a crewman of a B-17 — ominously dubbed the “Flying Coffin” — often came down to luck. The Kassel raid was no exception.

The Tondelayo and its crew weathered near constant attacks from Luftwaffe fighters, with Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf-190s hedge-hopping from station to station to refuel along the bombers’ flight path — easy actions with nary an Allied fighter in sight.

From the skies, German fighters spit the Tondelayo with 20 mm explosive shells. From below, anti-aircraft flak peppered the flying coffin.

“I was undeniably alive in battle. … This was not the war of boredom and vermin we had read about in the tales of our fathers’ agony. This was a frenzy in which I heaved and sweated but could not stop because, shamefully, my guts loved what my head hated,” Bendiner noted about the constant proximity to death. “I exulted in that parade of Fortresses forming for battle. I confess this as an act of treason against the intellect, because I have seen dead men washed out of their turrets with a hose. But if one wants an intellectual view of war, one must ask someone who has not seen it.”

Throughout the war, B-17 crews became used to the all too frequent scene of adjacent bombers being hit and hurtling towards the earth. For the men of the Tondelayo, July 30 seemed like it would yield much of the same. But on that particular raid, the Tondelayo was afforded remarkable luck in the form of Czech prisoner of war sabotage.

After losing both of the bomber’s waist gunners, Tondelayo crew members, upon successfully returning to England, discovered 11 unexploded 20 mm shells housed in the bomber’s gas tank. Such placement of explosives would normally spell out certain death for all on board, except for a “highly personal miracle,” Bendiner recalled.

In looking at the shells’ construction, the armorers found no explosives. Instead, the munitions were “clean as a whistle and as harmless,” Bendiner wrote. One shell, however, wasn’t quite empty.

Inside the casing was “a carefully rolled piece of paper” written in Czech, he noted.

“This is all we can do for you now,” the message read.

Ultimately, the Tondelayo’s luck would run out. She now sits somewhere on the bottom of the English Channel, a relic of sacrifice and sabotage.

Bendiner, meanwhile, retired from the service with a Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters, and a Purple Heart. He authored numerous books after the war and worked as a journalist for Esquire.

Elmer Bendiner died in September 2001.

The deadline for enrolling for the plan each year is during the federal benefits open season, which generally runs from mid-November to mid-December. The 2024 benefit’s deadline was Dec. 11, 2023.

But beyond open enrollment season, many service members may have a qualifying life event, such as birth or adoption of a child, that will allow them to enroll or change their enrollment into the new account. Those entering the military during the year can also enroll.

If service members have enrolled for the new benefit, they are encouraged to stay on top of requirements for reimbursement, take full advantage of financial benefits, and avoid forfeiting money left in the account after the benefit period ends.

The new flexible spending account helps defray the cost of child care (up to age 13) and other dependent care by providing tax savings. Accounts are funded through pre-tax deductions from a service member’s paycheck. Documented claims can then be filed to receive reimbursement for eligible expenses.

Such costs include child or adult day care, preschool, summer day camps, and before- or after-school programs.

Families can contribute as much as $5,000 to the account in 2024. The Federal Flexible Spending Account Program, known as FSAFEDS, is sponsored by the Office of Personnel Management.

The Internal Revenue Service has final say in determining what counts as a qualifying event for making changes outside the open enrollment period. In addition to the birth or adoption of a child, or the death of a dependent, qualifying event examples include:

• Change in employment status for you, your spouse, or dependent
• Change in legal marital status
• Change in your dependent’s eligibility (e.g., your child reaches age 13 and is no longer eligible)

Complete information about filing a claim is available at fsafeds.com/file.

Be sure to mind the deadlines, however. The last day for incurring expenses for the 2024 claim year is March 15, 2025. The deadline to submit claims for the 2024 claim year is April 30, 2025. Any amount left over in one’s account after that is forfeited.

But even as more troops participate in cold-weather training, injuries associated with the cold are on the way down.

A new survey published in the November version of the Medical Surveillance Monthly Report shows that cold-weather injuries across the services dropped more than 15% between winter 2021–2022 and the 2022–2023 cold season.

While that drop is especially notable, data shows that cold injuries such as frostbite and hypothermia have been decreasing since 2020 for the Army and the Marine Corps, the services with the highest numbers of cold-injury rates.

Will Alaska be the Marine Corps’ next unit training location?

The Marine Corps had the greatest year-over-year drop, with a 22% reduction in cold injury rates in 2022 compared to the prior winter. And while a ramp-up in cold-weather ops and a decrease in cold-weather injuries may seem paradoxical, experts say the two trends are likely related.

Dr. John Castellani, a research physiologist at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, said interest in preventing potentially deadly conditions like hypothermia has been central to his career since the start of his nearly three-decade career at the research institute. He arrived at the institute, he said, shortly after the February 1995 hypothermia deaths of four Army Rangers who’d been training in chest-high swamp waters within the boundaries of Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base.

“I’ve been here at USARIEM now for 28 years, and I can say that it’s only been in the last couple of years that we’ve tried to think about more resources towards cold-weather research and ways to improve function there,” Castellani said.

Castellani attributes the decrease in cold injuries ― from 534 across active and Reserve components in winter 2018–2019 to 376 in 2022 ― to growing awareness and training regarding the severity of cold-weather threats.

Frostbite incidents, which fluctuate year to year, were down to 125 in the 2022–2023 cold season from a 2021–2022 high of 189. Cases of hypothermia, when body temperature drops to an abnormally or dangerously low level, saw a five-year low in winter 2022–2023, with 31 compared with 38 the previous year.

Cases of immersion foot, also called trench foot, which occurs when feet are submerged in water for an extended period of time, were also below historical averages. The 76 cases in 2022–2023 were above the 67 for the previous winter but well below the five-year high of 106 seen in winter 2019–2020.

While it’s true that the past winter was historically mild ― the fifth-warmest meteorological winter on record for the Northern Hemisphere ― Castellani stressed that cold-weather injuries do not always correlate to the coldest locations, as the tragic Ranger deaths in Florida demonstrated. Rather, he said, they tend to affect troops who are unprepared or under-informed, even if they’re training in relatively temperate locations or conditions.

“With [North] Carolina as an example, you’re not going to get frostbite, but cold, wet exposure is real,” Castellani said. “And in fact that’s probably more dangerous, at least from a perspective of, potentially, hypothermia.”

The data seems to bear this out. While Fort Wainwright and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska do have the top two highest counts of cold-weather injuries over the past five years, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Fort Moore, Georgia, also make the top-five list with nearly 100 recorded injuries apiece.

Other hot spots for cold injuries include Fort Carson, Colorado; Fort Drum, New York; and Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

In June 2022, the Army established the 11th Airborne Division at Fort Wainwright and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. with a special focus on operating and fighting in extreme cold and at altitude, demonstrating the service’s commitment to competency in these conditions.

Maj. Gen. Brian Eifler, commander of the division, known as the “Arctic Angels,” told Defense One that the number of soldiers using the Army’s Northern Warfare Training Center has doubled since it stood up.

And while cold weather indoctrination training is a requirement for all Alaska-based soldiers, more troops across the services are now training to fight in the cold, with the Marine conducting regular rotational deployments to Norway to train with local troops.

Castellani said the Army also is working to provide cold-weather training to troops from bases in the continental U.S. to demystify conditions they might encounter in future deployed operations.

Through this kind of training he said, unit leaders can “learn that [the cold] doesn’t have to be debilitating, and that they can thrive in that environment if they know how to dress correctly and look for certain signs and symptoms.”

The Medical Surveillance Monthly Report also cited a new regulation from Army Training and Doctrine Command that recognizes sickle cell trait, which affects about one in ten troops of African descent, as a potential risk factor for cold injuries. There’s a clear racial component in the data the report published: Black service members were almost three times as likely to sustain a cold-related injury as their white counterparts.

Gender differences were less pronounced, but data shows female troops are slightly less likely to sustain cold injuries than males.

Castellani said that while the literature is not conclusive, sickle cell can affect blood flow to the extremities, which may increase risk for frostbite.

Ultimately, he said, efforts to collect data and clarify risk factors will serve to further enhance preventative efforts and effective preparation for operations in the cold.

“I’m a big believer in prevention,” he said.

The problem emerged from unusual circumstances and shouldn’t become an annual headache, Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller, the Air Force’s uniformed personnel boss, told Air Force Times in September.

She said the Air Force faced a deficit in its military personnel budget at the beginning of 2023, partly because the service had allowed too many high-ranking troops — who cost more in pay and benefits — to stay in uniform.

Officials tried to move money around to avoid widespread problems, Miller said, but failed to get congressional approval in time. Slowing PCSes and delaying some bonuses allowed the Air Force to continue sending paychecks instead, she said.

The Air Force paused its global shuffle for about two weeks in July while the funding issue was resolved, then told airmen who were slated to move by the end of September that they would get those orders at least 30 days before their scheduled departure date. Service members typically receive orders 60-120 days ahead of moving day.

Domestic moves have continued as usual. But airmen who were scheduled to return to the U.S. from long overseas postings were told to wait. Troops who planned to be stateside between October and December 2023 will now come back by the end of March 2024.

Airmen for whom the delay creates a major problem can ask their commander to make an exception.

The move upends the traditional chain-of-command-centric military justice system, where commanders have had the authority to make decisions on whether to proceed with criminal cases.

Standing up of these special trial counsels means that, going forward, only trained, designated attorneys will decide whether to press charges or send a case to trial.

The move is the culmination of more than a dozen years of effort by members of Congress, who in late 2021 voted to install independent prosecutors to make decisions about not only sexual assault cases, but murder, manslaughter, domestic violence, child abuse and more, 14 crimes in all.

“This shift should assure a sexual assault victim that if they choose to make an unrestricted report, the case will be handled professionally and consistently with the best practices and procedures of civilian prosecution offices,” a senior defense official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told reporters on Dec. 21.

New military justice rules set to go into effect with Biden order

It also represents the first time the Defense Department and Congress have been on the same page about independent prosecutions. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in 2021 approved a multi-year plan to implement more than 80 recommendations from an independent review commission on sexual assault, including special trial counsels.

That original plan gave the services until 2027 to transfer those authorities, but the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act moved that timeline up to no later than December 29 of this year.

As of Thursday, each of the services has multiple regional special trial counsel offices up and running, which dozens of specialized prosecutors, as well as uniformed and civilian support staff.

“The sort of key difference here for us, going forward, is going to be that we are making decisions based on the facts on the evidence ... unencumbered by perhaps some of the pressures or concerns that the senior commanders might feel,” a senior Army official told reporters.

“So I think that’s where, you know, you’re going to see a difference in the in the number or quality of cases getting referred,” the official added, because those decisions no longer lie with commanders who might be concerned about how sexual assault within their units might affect their careers.

While Wednesday marked the official cutoff for new cases to be sent to special trial counsels, policy does allow some overlap.

For example, officials said, crimes committed before Dec. 28 but reported afterward can be handled by the new prosecutors. Or, in a case where a single perpetrator commits multiple crimes before and after Dec. 28, that case would go to the special trial counsel.

Each service’s organization is headed up by an O-7 judge advocate, save for the Army, which is in the process of finding a replacement for Brig. Gen. Warren Wells, who was fired earlier this month for past comments about sexual assaults.

Lawyer picked as Army’s first top sexual assault prosecutor fired

And the prosecutors working in the regional offices have undergone special training to handle these sensitive cases. Policy calls for them to spend at least three years in their positions, both to have consistency in the new offices but also to give each judge advocate corps time to select and train their replacements.

“So in an ideal world, we’d be rotating the office one third every year so that we’re bringing in new people and training them as we come,” a senior Navy official told reporters.

Neither the Pentagon nor the services have made any promises about how many more cases will or won’t go to trial under the new system.

Trained special prosecutors have been advising commanders for years, though they haven’t before had the decision-making power. And in the civilian world, sexual assault prosecution and conviction rates are low, despite the oversight of independent experts: just 16% of rape reports result in an arrest, with 9% leading to a felony conviction, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

But the hope is that independent prosecutions will encourage service members, who as of 2021 are estimated to report sexual assaults only 20% of the time, to report their assaults and have faith that they will be prosecuted properly.

The military’s sexual assault problem is only getting worse

That figure is down from 30% just a few years earlier. At the same time, though instances of sexual assault have continued to rise, rates of prosecution and conviction have fallen.

“So we’re hopeful that in the long run, there may be more cases coming in to the system to to promote greater accountability,” the senior defense official said.

Russell Hamler, 99, died on Tuesday, his son Jeffrey said. He did not give a cause of death.

Hamler was the last living Marauder, according to a biography published by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in January.

Hamler had been living in the Pittsburgh area, where he was born in 1924, and enlisted in the Army at 18, according to the department’s biography.

In 2022, the Marauders received the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress’ highest honor. The Marauders inspired a 1962 movie called “Merrill’s Marauders,” and dozens of Marauders were awarded individual decorations after the war, from the Distinguished Service Cross to the Silver Star. The Army also awarded the Bronze Star to every soldier in the unit.

The soldiers spent months behind enemy lines, marching hundreds of miles through the tangled jungles and steep mountains of Burma to capture a Japanese-held airfield and open an Allied supply route between India and China.

They battled hunger and disease between firefights with Japanese forces during their secret mission, a grueling journey of roughly 1,000 miles (1,610 kilometers) on foot that killed almost all of them.

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to have the Army assemble a ground unit, the 5307th Composite Unit Provisional, for a long-range mission behind enemy lines into Japanese-occupied Burma, now Myanmar. Seasoned infantrymen and newly enlisted soldiers alike volunteered for the mission, deemed so secret they weren’t told where they were going.

Merrill’s Marauders — nicknamed for the unit’s commander, Brig. Gen. Frank Merrill — were tasked with cutting off Japanese communications and supply lines along their long march to the airfield at the occupied town of Myitkyina. Often outnumbered, they successfully fought Japanese troops in five major engagements, plus 30 minor ones, between February and August 1944, according to the department.

Starting with 3,000 soldiers, the Marauders completed their mission five months later with barely 200 men still in the fight.

Hamler was wounded in the hip by a mortar fragment during the battle known as Nhpum Ga, the department’s biography said. The injury immobilized Hamler in his foxhole for more than 10 days until rescuers arrived and evacuated him to a hospital in India.

Marauders spent most days cutting their way through dense jungle, with only mules to help carry equipment and provisions. They slept on the ground and rarely changed clothes. Supplies dropped from planes were their only means of replenishing rations and ammunition. Malnutrition and the wet climate left the soldiers vulnerable to malaria, dysentery and other diseases.

The Marauders eventually captured the Myitkyina airfield, the only all-weather strip in northern Burma, their key objective, according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History. The unit was disbanded afterward.

Hamler was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He became an aircraft mechanic for Trans World Airlines and retired from it in 1985, the department said.

The weapons, worth up to $250 million, include an array of air munitions and other missiles, artillery, anti-armor systems, ammunition, demolition and medical equipment and parts. The aid, provided through the Presidential Drawdown Authority, will be pulled from Pentagon stockpiles.

Zelenskyy asks Congress for more air defenses as Ukraine aid dwindles

In a statement, Marine Lt. Col. Garron Garn, a Pentagon spokesman said there is no more funding to replace the weapons taken from department stocks. And the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provides long-term funding for future weapons contracts, is also out of money.

As a result, Garn said Wednesday, “Without the supplemental funding, there will be a shortfall in replenishing U.S. military stocks, affecting American military readiness.”

President Joe Biden is urging Congress to pass a $110 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other national security needs. It includes $61.4 billion for Ukraine, with about half to replenish Pentagon stocks. It also includes about $14 billion for Israel as it fights Hamas and $14 billion for U.S. border security. Other funds would go for security needs in the Asia-Pacific.

Due to an accounting error that overvalued some of the weapons sent to Ukraine over the past year or more, there is still about $4.2 billion in restored drawdown authority. But since the Pentagon has no money to replenish inventory sent to Kyiv, the department will have to “rigorously assess” any future aid and its implications on the U.S. military’s ability to protect America, Garn said.

This is the 54th tranche of military aid taken from department shelves and sent to Ukraine, and it is similar in size and contents to many of the other recent packages.

U.S. defense and government leaders have argued that the weapons are critical for Ukraine to maintain its defense and continue efforts to mount an offensive against Russian forces during the winter months.

In a Pentagon briefing last week, Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder noted the recent letter that the Defense Department comptroller sent to Congress warning that the U.S. will be using up the last of its replenishment funds by the end of the year.

“Once those funds are obligated, we will have exhausted the funding available for us to provide security assistance to Ukraine,” said Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary. “We would, again, continue to urge the passage of the supplemental that we’ve submitted. ... It is imperative that we have the funds needed to ensure that they get the most urgent battlefield capabilities that they require.”

The latest aid package comes as the war in Ukraine drags on into its 22nd month. Russia fired almost 50 Shahed drones at targets in Ukraine and shelled a train station in the southern city of Kherson where more than 100 civilians were gathered to catch a train to Kyiv. And a day earlier, Ukrainian warplanes damaged a Russian ship moored in the Black Sea off Crimea as soldiers on both sides are struggling to make much progress along the front lines.

The changes start at the bottom. Rather than welcoming new enlisted recruits with screaming drill instructors, Air Force boot camp now begins with a crash course in stress management, cleanliness and military values. The service bets that building up budding airmen, not tearing them down, will forge stronger troops without sacrificing discipline or talent.

The service is also pushing recruits to think on their feet and learn from experience, through mock deployments, better wargames and a sharper focus on how their lessons will apply to real-life operations.

That’s a core piece of the new curriculum at the Air Force’s Officer Training School, which launched a revamped program in October. The service is trying to keep more people in that pipeline, too: Trainees who struggle will be held back until they’re ready to move on, not sent home.

Other measures are in the works to help the Air Force catch up to civilian schools that are years ahead in technology use, classroom collaboration and curriculum design. Tablets, augmented- and virtual reality headsets and other tools aim to give new airmen more control over their studies, particularly at the technical schools where troops learn their first — or their next — trades.

And a new set of professional development seminars are designed to help enlisted airmen tackle everyday leadership challenges, from mental health to unit cohesion. Those lessons are currently optional.

Allvin, a career mobility pilot and strategist who previously served as the Air Force’s No. 2 officer, believes airmen stand at an inflection point between how past wars were fought and what tomorrow’s conflicts will demand.

“We have accelerated change, and now must turn this momentum into outcomes,” he said in prepared remarks at a Nov. 17 welcome ceremony. “The time to execute is now.”

To avoid losing on the global stage — and jeopardizing America’s superpower status — the four-star wants to continue a multibillion-dollar modernization of the Air Force arsenal to rival China, crafting more relevant training and agile deployments, and ditching outdated rules that can hinder airmen’s well-being.

As chief of staff, Allvin oversees an approximately $180 billion portfolio and around 689,000 uniformed and civilian employees across the globe. His right-hand man will be Lt. Gen. Jim Slife, a career special operations airman who was confirmed Dec. 19 as the service’s four-star vice chief of staff.

Also newly confirmed are Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, who will move from running Pacific Air Forces to Air Combat Command, and Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider, who will take over as PACAF’s top officer, among other nominees for senior roles. They’ll need to ensure the force can juggle myriad conflicts around the world without significant growth, and convince a restive Congress to fund those plans.

“We face a security environment which grows more complex by the day and a pacing competitor which continues to advance at an alarming rate,” Allvin said Nov. 6. “We have a responsibility to lead and advance the integration of the joint force. … We must now follow through.”

After passing a short-term budget extension in early November, lawmakers are again faced with the possibility of disruptions in military funding and government operations if they can’t come to an agreement over a full-year budget plan in the next few weeks. And their decisions in early January could cause problems for the fiscal 2025 budget before work on that spending plan even begins.

Fiscal 2024 began on Oct. 1, so federal agencies are already nearly three months into new spending cycles without appropriate changes in their funding plans. Pentagon leaders have said that means some new programs and purchases have been delayed until a new full-year budget plan is passed.

When that will happen is unclear. Congress actually faces a pair of potential shutdown deadlines in the next few weeks.

The short-term spending deal approved in November extended funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and a few other agencies until Jan. 19. If a budget deal is not reached before then, only those offices would be forced into partial closure.

House votes to prevent a government shutdown

Meanwhile, VA does have advance appropriations to keep hospitals, benefits offices and most other operations going past that date. So, a partial government shutdown in late January may have a limited impact on military and veteran families.

But Defense Department funding — as well as Homeland Security and the rest of the government — only runs until Feb. 2. If a budget deal is not reached before then, troops’ paychecks will halt, non-essential base services will shutter and family moves will be postponed.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have said they hope to avoid that, but they remain far apart on a compromise.

House Republican leaders have insisted that spending limits must be part of any full-year budget deal. White House officials have insisted that lawmakers follow the budget outlines agreed upon early last summer, as part of the debt limit extension deal.

Typically, work begins on the next year’s federal budget plan in early February. In 2024, lawmakers may still not have last year’s work finished by that time.

Liz Rose Short set out to film her husband, Codie Short, as he reacts to pulling a bun out of the oven in what was supposed to be a playful reference to a metaphor for pregnancy.

Instead, things went awry when she had to run out for an unexpected errand, and her unaware husband turned on the oven, leaving the bread burnt.

When she returned home, her husband, a Navy submariner, was left confused as he held the tiny charred loaf between a pair of tongs.

“Elizabeth,” he says endearingly. “I love you so much. Why would you put a single roll in the oven?”

@lizroseshort Replying to @addy❤ Announcing our burnt roll 🤍🤍 #submarinefamily #pregnancyannouncement #milso #miltok #pregnant #pregnancyreveal #husbandwife ♬ original sound - Liz 🌸

She responds that it’s not a roll, but rather a bun. The distinction here is crucial, but her husband doesn’t quite put the pieces together.

“We have a bun ... in the oven,” she notes.

Perplexed, he replies that’s not true because he just pulled it out.

Alas, when Liz finally gives up the game and says they’re having a baby, Codie drops the roll and the tongs and rushes to hug her. The video quickly went viral, amassing three million likes since it was posted on Dec. 20.

Now our hearts are as warm as the family’s burnt roll.

The brass says the Air Force of the future will consist of multi-squadron teams that train together in two-year cycles to become cohesive units, like the Navy’s carrier strike groups. Three of those “air task forces,” announced in September, will form over the course of 2024 and start deploying together in 2026.

Typically, the service sends one airman or squadron at a time as jobs open and needs arise overseas. Task forces could offer a more holistic, better prepared option for regional commanders and more predictability for airmen.

Those plans may be accompanied by even bigger overhauls, foreshadowed by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in the fall.

On Dec. 13, Space Force Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein — the nominee to become the service’s vice chief of space operations — said the Air Force may dismantle the nine major commands that govern the daily business of organizing, training and equipping airmen.

“We’re going to transform the entire Department of the Air Force organization to prepare for great power competition within the next quarter. … The Air Force is going to get rid of the [major command] structure,” Guetlein said, according to Breaking Defense. “Think about how fundamental that is to the way we fight today and the way we’ve always thought about the Air Force.”

The Air Force last reimagined its MAJCOM structure in the 1990s, when it renamed Cold War-era organizations like Strategic Air Command and shuffled the units under their purview.

The entire Osprey fleet remains grounded following the Nov. 29 crash with the exception of limited Marine Corps flights in emergencies. More than 50 U.S. service members have died in Osprey crashes over the lifespan of the program, and 20 of those died in four crashes over the last 20 months.

Ospreys had history of safety issues long before they were grounded

The Osprey is a fast-moving airframe that can fly like both a helicopter and an airplane — but its many crashes have led critics to warn it has fatal design flaws.

The government of Japan, the only international partner flying the Osprey, has also grounded its aircraft after the Nov. 29 crash.

On Thursday the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin requesting a massive amount of documentation on the Osprey’s safety record to be delivered to the committee by Jan. 4.

“Our servicemembers remain in harm’s way without resolution of known mechanical issues, " wrote the committee chairman, Kentucky Republican James Comer. “While, statistically, the Osprey is not considered as dangerous as some other military aircraft, the Committee remains alarmed that most fatalities involving the aircraft have happened during training exercises, not combat operations.”

On Friday Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, and Rep. Richard Neal, all Massachusetts Democrats, also announced they were also pressing Austin for answers on the Osprey’s safety record. The three lawmakers represent the home state of Staff Sgt. Jacob Galliher, one of the eight Air Force special operations service members killed in the Japan crash.

“We urge the Defense Department, and the Departments of the Air Force and the Navy to ensure that the V-22 Osprey is safe to fly before allowing servicemembers from across the Commonwealth and the United States back on board,” the lawmakers wrote.

The Osprey only became operational in 2007 after decades of testing. Since then, it’s become a workhorse for the Marine Corps and Air Force Special Operations Command, and was in the process of being adopted by the Navy to replace its C-2 Greyhound propeller planes, which transport personnel on and off aircraft carriers at sea.

Shortly after the Nov. 29 crash, the Air Force said that a malfunction of the aircraft, not a mistake by the crew, was probably the cause. If it is the case, it will be the second known fatal crash caused by a mechanical problem with the aircraft in a year.

The Osprey is produced through a partnership between Bell Textron and Boeing. Both companies have declined to discuss the most recent crash, but have said they will work with the military however needed to support the investigation.

All three versions of the Osprey, the Marine Corps’ MV-22; the Air Force’s CV-22 and the Navy’s CMV-22 programs are overseen by the Pentagon’s Osprey Joint Program Office.

The Joint Program office said in a statement to the Associated Press that its engineering team has been integrated into the Air Force Special Operations Command investigation team looking at the Japan crash, and “sharing as much information as possible without compromising the ongoing investigation to find a path forward for the V-22.”

The Osprey has faced persistent questions about a mechanical problem with the clutch that has troubled the program for more than a decade. There also have been questions as to whether all parts of the Osprey have been manufactured according to safety specifications and, as those parts age, whether they remain strong enough to withstand the significant forces created by the Osprey’s unique structure and dynamics of tiltrotor flight.

Marine Corps Ospreys also have been used to transport White House staff, press and security personnel accompanying the president. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said those Ospreys are also grounded.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said one of the U.S. troops suffered critical injuries in the attack that occurred earlier Monday. The Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, under an umbrella of Iranian-backed militants, claimed credit for the attack that utilized a one-way attack drone.

Iraqi officials said U.S. strikes targeting militia sites early Tuesday killed one militant and injured 18. They came at a time of heightened fears of a regional spillover of the Israel-Hamas war.

U.S. CENTCOM conducts strikes against Kataib Hezbollah terrorist group targets in Iraq

In response to multiple attacks against coalition forces in Iraq and Syria, U.S. military forces conducted airstrikes against multiple facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups… pic.twitter.com/mmL4WqFXq9

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) December 26, 2023

Iran announced Monday that an Israeli strike on the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus killed one of its top generals, Razi Mousavi, who had been a close companion of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the former head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Soleimani was slain in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.

Iranian officials vowed revenge for the killing of Mousavi but did not immediately launch a retaliatory strike. The militia attack Monday in northern Iraq was launched prior to the strike in Syria that killed Mousavi.

Biden, who was spending Christmas at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, was alerted about the attack by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan shortly after it occurred Monday and ordered the Pentagon and his top national security aides to prepare response options to the attack on an air base used by American troops in Irbil.

US troops in Iraq and Syria attacked two dozen times in two weeks

Sullivan consulted with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Biden’s deputy national security adviser, Jon Finer, was with the president at Camp David and convened top aides to review options, according to a U.S. official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and requested anonymity.

Within hours, Biden convened his national security team for a call in which Austin and Gen. CQ Brown, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed Biden on the response options. Biden opted to target three locations used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, the official said.

The U.S. strikes were carried out at about 4:45 a.m. Tuesday in Iraq, less than 13 hours after the U.S. personnel were attacked. According to U.S. Central Command, the retaliatory strikes on the three sites “destroyed the targeted facilities and likely killed a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants.”

“The President places no higher priority than the protection of American personnel serving in harm’s way,” Watson said. “The United States will act at a time and in a manner of our choosing should these attacks continue.”

The latest attack on U.S. troops follows months of escalating threats and actions against American forces in the region since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the devastating war in Gaza.

The dangerous back-and-forth strikes have escalated since Iranian-backed militant groups under the umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Syria began striking U.S. facilities Oct. 17, the date that a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds. Iranian-backed militias have carried out more than 100 attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria since the start of the Israel-Hamas war more than two months ago.

In November, U.S. fighter jets struck a Kataib Hezbollah operations center and command and control node, following a short-range ballistic missile attack on U.S. forces at Al-Assad Air Base in western Iraq. Iranian-backed militias also carried out a drone attack at the same air base in October, causing minor injuries.

The U.S. has also blamed Iran, which has funded and trained Hamas, for attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militants against commercial and military vessels through a critical shipping choke point in the Red Sea.

The Biden administration has sought to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a wider regional conflict that either opens up new fronts of Israeli fighting or draws the U.S. in directly. The administration’s measured response — where not every attempt on American troops has been met with a counterattack — has drawn criticism from Republicans.

Number of troops injured in drone attacks jumps to 56

The U.S. has thousands of troops in Iraq training Iraqi forces and combating remnants of the Islamic State group, and hundreds in Syria, mostly on the counter-IS mission. They have come under dozens of attacks, though as yet none fatal, since the war began on Oct. 7, with the U.S. attributing responsibility to Iran-backed groups.

“While we do not seek to escalate conflict in the region, we are committed and fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities,” Austin said in a statement.

The clashes put the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in a delicate position. He came to power in 2022 with the backing of a coalition of Iranian-backed parties, some of which are associated with the same militias launching the attacks on U.S. bases.

A group of Iranian-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces were key in the fight against Islamic State militants after the extremist group overran much of Iraq in 2014. The PMF is officially under the command of the Iraqi army, but in practice the militias operate independently.

In a statement Tuesday, Sudani condemned both the militia attack in Irbil and the U.S. response.

Attacks on “foreign diplomatic mission headquarters and sites hosting military advisors from friendly nations … infringe upon Iraq’s sovereignty and are deemed unacceptable under any circumstances,” the statement said.

However, it added that that the retaliatory strikes by the U.S. on “Iraqi military sites” — referring to the militia — “constitute a clear hostile act.” Sudani said some of those injured in the strikes were civilians.

The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is set to return to the skies of Pasadena, California, on New Year’s Day for the Tournament of Roses after a brief hiatus from the annual flight.

The B-2 flyover will kick off the Rose Bowl football game on Jan. 1, 2024, between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Michigan Wolverines, continuing its tradition with the Tournament of Roses Foundation, according to a statement from the Air Force 509th Bomb Wing.

“We are excited to return to the 2024 Rose Bowl,” Col. Keith J. Butler, 509th Bomb Wing commander at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, home of the B-2 Spirit, said in the release.

B-1s replace B-2s for New Year’s Day flyover

The stealth bomber’s reappearance comes after its absence from the sunny skies of California earlier this year, when a pair of B-1B Lancers from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, instead flew over the events.

That flyover followed an incident in December 2022 at Whiteman Air Force Base, when a B-2 malfunctioned in flight and made an emergency landing, causing the entire nuclear bomber fleet to stand down for a safety check. That eventually ended in May after months of safety inspections.

A B-2 bomber task force deployed to Iceland over the summer, marking a return to routine operational rotations after the mishap late last year.

In case one missed a glimpse of Santa Claus gliding through the air earlier this week, be sure to catch the B-2 in action as it delivers a last dose of festive spirit for everyone — even to those who were naughty.

In the year ahead, the service hopes to number 502,700 enlisted airmen and officers across the active duty Air Force, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve — about 1,000 fewer uniformed jobs than in 2023. Congressionally proposed cuts may drive the total slightly lower.

The decline is linked to plans to retire multiple aircraft fleets, but also points to the Air Force’s challenges in filling those roles. Staffing those billets requires the third-largest branch of the U.S. armed forces to hit its recruiting goals, retain airmen who are already in uniform and pull various policy levers to ensure staff are used wisely.

Officials aim to reverse the service’s recent recruiting woes and bring in 25,900 new active duty enlisted troops by the end of September 2024. The Air Force hopes adding more recruiters, changing policies around fitness and appearance, and chipping away at its own red tape will help prevent last year’s shortfall from becoming a longer trend.

It seems to be working: As of Dec. 8, the service had reached its active duty enlistment goal of 6,342 people while falling about 70 people short in the Reserve and about 390 short in the Guard.

“We are trending well ahead of where we were this time last year,” Air Force Recruiting Service spokesperson Leslie Brown said.

Once a recruit comes in, the Air Force wants to keep them. The service expected to retain about 93% of its officers and 90% of its enlisted airmen in fiscal 2023, spokesperson Master Sgt. Deana Heitzman said in August. It’s trying to sweeten the deal with monetary bonuses, greater job flexibility and other policies designed to improve quality of life, particularly in its most crucially understaffed fields.

It’s also keeping troops in the service’s lowest ranks longer to ensure that lagging recruitment doesn’t lead to too few entry-level airmen, and increasing the number of years airmen can stay in uniform before they’re kicked out, among other changes to the shape of the force.

Meanwhile, the Space Force has already met its officer and enlisted recruiting goals for the year as it continues to expand. The nation’s newest and smallest military service is projected to grow to 9,400 billets in 2024 and total 14,300 jobs overall.

Deployed personnel include those from brigade combat teams in Romania and Poland. There are also plans to increase the Navy’s presence in Rota, Spain, a Pentagon spokesman told Military Times.

“Given the current security environment, there are no immediate plans to reduce these forces,” Army Maj. Charlie Dietz said.

Without a separate named operation, the increased rotations have been absorbed into the larger Operation Atlantic Resolve, which has been sending rotations into Europe since Russia invaded the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014.

Long-term assistance command to oversee training mission with Ukraine

“Over the past two years, the United States has made strategic decisions to enhance our military presence and capabilities,” Dietz said. “This includes an increase in NATO exercises and supportive operations with various allies and partners. Currently, there are no plans for a surge in additional capabilities, as our assessment indicates that we have appropriately sized and deployed forces.”

In addition to partnering with allies in the Baltics, Poland and Hungary, U.S. troops have set up a long-term assistance command in Germany to help coordinate rotations of training with Ukrainian troops.

The service sent a classified solicitation to industry for NGAD’s engineering and manufacturing development contract in May, officially kicking off the process to select the company that will build its next advanced fighter system.

NGAD will be a sixth-generation aircraft that would replace the F-22 Raptor, and the service wants to have it in production by the end of the decade.

The Air Force wants NGAD to be a so-called “family of systems” that has a crewed aircraft component and other elements, including drone wingmen — also known as collaborative combat aircraft — increased sensor capabilities, and advanced abilities to connect with satellites, other aircraft and more.

The Air Force said in May that NGAD will use open-architecture standards to take advantage of competition throughout its life cycle while cutting down on maintenance and sustainment costs. But the Air Force has been mum on many of the highly classified program’s other technical details, citing security reasons.

With Northrop Grumman’s decision in 2023 to bow out of the competition for the NGAD contract, the future will likely hold a head-to-head match between Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

Northrop announced in July it does not plan to bid on the Air Force’s version of NGAD as a prime contractor. However, Northrop CEO Kathy Warden said in that month’s earnings call that the company may still bid on the Navy’s separate version of NGAD, dubbed F/A-XX.

The Air Force also plans in 2024 to dramatically increase spending on the propulsion system that will one day power NGAD. This system, dubbed Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion, or NGAP, will incorporate multiple design elements from Pentagon-funded research into an adaptive engine that at one point was considered for the F-35 jet.

Those elements could include the use of composite materials that can withstand high temperatures for turbines and other components, as well as an adaptive element that would allow the engine to rapidly shift to the configuration providing the best thrust and efficiency for any given situation.

The Air Force requested $595 million for NGAP in its fiscal 2024 budget, a $375 million increase over the previous year’s funding.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in June extended the mission through September 2024, opting to continue sending troops to support the surveillance of border crossings.

“Active duty military personnel will continue to support CBP personnel by providing administrative and logistical duties, including warehousing support and additional detection and monitoring support efforts,” U.S. Northern Command spokeswoman Capt. Mayrem Morales told Military Times.

This is what it’ll take to end the military’s border mission

The current NORTHCOM commander has said repeatedly that CBP needs to be adequately funded so that the Homeland Security Department does not have to continue to rely on the Pentagon for support.

“I think, long term, this is not an enduring mission of the Department of Defense,” Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last year. “We need to fully fund and resource DHS to do their mission, and the DoD should be used in extremis times for the support on the border mission.”

Customs and Border Protection has repeatedly declined to respond to Military Times queries on plans to adequately staff the agency to levels that make military support unnecessary.

Depicted as a roughly middle-aged curmudgeon with no family or friends, the Grinch’s past is relatively unknown beyond a brief backstory that suggests he was an orphan.

When the Grinch chooses to steal Christmas, however, his actions happen to be rather consistent with the training and attitude of an angry veteran. Here are a handful of unmistakable signs the Grinch is actually prior military.

The attitude

The Grinch’s mood mirrors that of a classic driver seat-ranting veteran — mad at the world yet rather disconnected from it.

PSYOPS

The choice to steal Christmas is not so much about taking physical gifts as it is about crushing the spirits of the Whos. The recognition that he can destroy the morale of an entire town is extremely top brass.

The service dog

Max is trained to go above and beyond the normal duties of man’s — or green monster’s — best friend. From being an emotional companion to driving the Grinch’s getaway sleigh, he always rises to meet his owner’s challenges.

Explosives knowledge

The Grinch’s use of a makeshift flamethrower to burn down Whoville’s Christmas tree illustrates clear explosive ordnance training. Accidentally blowing up a gas line while driving a mini-car, however, is also the kind of reckless thing a member of the E-4 mafia might do.

The schedule

“4:00, wallow in self-pity. 4:30, stare into the abyss. 5:00, solve world hunger, tell no one. 5:30, jazzercize; 6:30, dinner with me. I can’t cancel that again. 7:00, wrestle with my self-loathing. I’m booked. Of course, if I bump the loathing to 9, I could still be done in time to lay in bed, stare at the ceiling and slip slowly into madness,” notes the Grinch as he ponders his day. The regimen mirrors that of many a veteran home longing for the days of deployment.

He lives in the wilderness

Many veterans prefer an off-the-grid existence, post-service. In the Grinch’s case, it’s a solitary cave-like home on Mount Crumpit. It’s outdoorsy, far from society, and even has a few characteristics of a doomsday prepper’s domicile.