For several days in late June, Toth, the commander of the 22nd Operations Group at McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas, relied on his Netflix queue to stay awake, adjusting his sleep cycle to go to bed around 3:30 a.m. local time and waking up around noon.

“There was a bunch of things in the queue,” Toth said of his binge sessions on the streaming platform. “And I just kind of let it pick things out for me.”

Flying a KC-46A Pegasus tanker nonstop around the globe takes stamina. For the McConnell-based airmen who recently pulled it off on REACH046, it involved adjusting work-sleep cycles to synchronize with events, like crucial aerial refueling rendezvous that require razor-sharp focus, that helped make the sortie a success.

“Trying to stay up … until 4 a.m. is difficult, especially when you’re used to getting up around that time to come into work,” Toth said.

Dubbed “Project Magellan,” the flight builds on a sortie that took off from McConnell in May 2022, when a KC-46 from the 22nd Air Refueling Wing flew a record 24 hours straight around the contiguous United States. It also comes on the heels of a staggering 36-hour mission flown by the New Hampshire Air National Guard’s 157th Air Refueling Wing, one that went halfway around the world and back in November of that year.

The latest mission took off from McConnell June 29 and landed back at the Kansas base, home to the 22nd ARW, on July 1. The crew flew more than 24,000 miles in the process.

Along the way, the aircraft and its crew of nine airmen — Toth as the aircraft commander, three additional instructor pilots, two flying crew chiefs, two boom operator instructors and a flight surgeon — stretched the endurance of the Air Force’s newest tanker jet as the service prepares for a protracted battle in the Pacific, one in which it may need to surge troops and supplies quickly.

The first KC-46A was delivered to McConnell in 2019. The Air Force plans to buy 179 KC-46A tankers from Boeing under a $4.9 billion deal; so far, the aerospace contractor has delivered 84 of the aircraft to the Air Force, including five so far this year, according to a Boeing spokesperson and an announcement of second-quarter deliveries released Tuesday.

“We wanted to demonstrate the ability of the KC-46 to go around the world,” while also demonstrating Air Mobility Command’s shifting focus on the Pacific, Toth said. “So, we decided that we needed to go westbound based on showing our ability to project power anywhere in the world, but starting out in the Pacific.”

The crew relied on beyond-line-of-sight and other onboard communications to link with air and ground assets as it traversed the globe, aligning with an initiative set by Air Mobility Command’s four-star boss Gen. Mike Minihan to connect 25% of the command’s fleet by 2025.

Heading west, REACH046 gassed up midair four times, meeting up with tankers from the 22nd ARW that were prepositioned at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam; U.S. Central Command; and RAF Mildenhall, England.

It also offloaded fuel to eight other aircraft during the trip, including two KC-46As from McConnell, one of which left with REACH046 and gassed up over the California coast; a C-17 Globemaster III it met in U.S. Indo-Pacific Command; two F-15 Strike Eagles on a sortie in CENTCOM; and three B-2 Spirit Bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.

Coordinating those rendezvous, which requires scheduling airspace, took months of advance planning, and was lead by Capt. Cody Donahue, a pilot and executive officer from the 22nd OG.

“Air refueling is all about being at a certain point in space at a certain time,” Toth said.

Real-time updates were crucial in achieving those goals, as the aircraft was often beyond radio contact for long stretches of the flight, Toth said. Two teams of four crew members, divided into ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams, alternated between flying and sleeping in cycles that shortened to match critical needs, such as flying over the ocean or during nighttime, according to Capt. Jacob Heyrend, Magellan’s flight surgeon.

Crews were monitored for fatigue during the flight, including wearing smart devices. They were also enrolled in a Department of Defense-Army fatigue study run by a contractor that has advised NASA astronauts and professional athletes and performers.

While the crew continues to evaluate lessons learned, they credit their success in part to putting in early work with Heyrend to customize sleep schedules. Three days before takeoff, Team A adjusted their bedtime to approximately 4 a.m., while Team B began retiring at 4 or 5 p.m.

“My dinner was basically during my kids’ breakfast,” Capt. T.J. Buckley, a pilot and member of Team B, said.

Early planning, coupled with climate control, adjustable LED lighting and assigned bunks helped the airmen get a good night’s — or day’s — sleep in the air. Shift handoffs required trusting their fellow airmen to control the aircraft while one team focused on resting up.

Project Magellan also notched firsts for the airmen, as well as for the Air Force, with a new record for the KC-46 as well as the longest sortie for AMC.

For Master Sgt. Patrick Murray, a boom operator on Team B, fueling multiple aircraft became a highlight of his 16-year career.

“Our training and our mission preparation and briefs leading up to executing this mission were fantastic,” Murray said.

It also included a birthday.

Capt. Daison Batangan, an instructor pilot who flew on Team A, turned 31 somewhere between Hawaii and Guam, based on Kansas local time, on June 30. The crew celebrated with strawberry shortcake and an unlit candle, packed by Batangan’s wife.

“The crew was able to wake up from their slumber and sing me ‘Happy Birthday’,” he said.

The return to flying followed a “multi-phased” approach to ensure the readiness of crews and follows a “meticulous and data-driven approach” that includes the development of added safety controls, the Air Force said in a news release.

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to ensuring the safety of the men and women who operate our aircraft and the safety of our community both on base and in Japan,” 21st Special Operations Squadron Commander Lt. Col. Matthew Davis said in a statement. “These safety mitigation measures have been taken seriously, and we would not fly this aircraft without full confidence in the measures, the maintenance professionals implementing them, and the skilled professionals who fly it.”

The U.S. military has said it doesn’t expect its fleet of more than 400 tiltrotor Osprey aircraft to return to full flying operations until at least mid-2025. Naval Air Systems Command, which leads the joint program office overseeing the aircraft, began allowing the Osprey to fly again in March after a three-month grounding was lifted but with added restrictions.

Ospreys can be flown like an airplane and take off and land like a helicopter. Its vertical take offs and landings make it useful for carrier landings as well as for special operators operating in austere environments. The controversial aircraft has suffered a string of fatal crashes since being introduced into special operations more than two decades ago with four mishaps responsible for the deaths of 20 service members in the last two years.

The military grounded the Ospreys in 2022 and again in 2023, after a series of “hard clutch engagements” that occurred when the input quill assembly, which attaches the Osprey’s engine to its proprotor gear box, wore out earlier than expected. A redesigned clutch is expected to begin testing with fielding anticipated mid-2025. Testing is also underway on a vibration sensing system upgrade to identify complements that need to replaced and a proprotor gearbox pinion bearing redesign is awaiting production and installation.

The military has said the Nov. 29 crash of GUNDAM 22 was the result of a material failure that hadn’t been seen before on the Osprey. An investigation into that crash is nearing completion.

The Marine Corps, which operates hundreds of the aircraft, used them in Sweden as part of Exercise Baltic Operations with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which last week conducted flight operations with the Osprey from the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp in the Mediterranean Sea. The Navy, which owns about 30 of the aircraft, is sidelined from using them in its carrier support mission and remains barred from flying them more than 30 minutes from an airfield where they could land in an emergency.

The Air Force owns about 50 Ospreys. While the 353rd resumes flying, crews from the 27th Special Operations Wing, based at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, have also resumed limited flying operations based on aircraft availability after spending months keeping up their proficiency in simulator training, something Japan-based crews have also done while preparing to return to the air. That includes putting pilots and flight engineers through a specific return-to-flight simulator syllabus, Capt. Paul Danielson, a flight commander and Osprey pilot with the Cannon-based 20th Special Operations Squadron, told Air Force Times.

Cannon-based maintainers continued sustainment necessary on the CV-22s during the stand down and were trained on maintenance protocols directed by NAVAIR to return to fly, 20th Special Operations Maintenance Squadron Commander Maj. Shelby Olivera said, adding that they’re also completing rigorous inspections. Squadrons are progressing through those protocols based on aircraft maintenance needs and personnel experience levels, she said.

As the 20th Special Operations Squadron focuses on reaching basic proficiency, the unit is first focusing on getting flight instructors back in the air. Pilots and maintainers look are looking forward to getting Ospreys flying once again, Danielson and Olivera said.

“The morale of the squadron, I think, has gone up just seeing people fly,” Danielson said. “There’s also a good balance of understanding from the the crews that aren’t flying, understanding that the leadership is doing what is best just ensure safety moving forward.”

The aircraft, a modified Bombardier business jet outfitted with Northrop Grumman’s Battlefield Airborne Communications Node payload, or BACN, is lesser known than the Air Force’s stalwart fleet of bombers, fighters and cargo jets. Now, with U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, the E-11 has taken on a new behind-the-scenes role supporting the multinational mission to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Since March, the 430th Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron, the only unit in the Air Force to fly the aircraft, has supported more than 30 of the service’s airdrops in Gaza while operating out of an undisclosed location in U.S. Central Command. Pilots with the squadron who spoke with Air Force Times in an interview declined to discuss specific missions, but offered brief insights into their work in the region.

The Air Force has participated in 40 airdrops alongside coalition partners since March. Those missions were paused for more than a month as Israel’s invasion of the city of Rafah began in early May. The U.S. flew its most recent airdrop June 9.

“The BACN mission provides the Air Force, as well as joint and international partners, line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight interoperability, and that’s between dissimilar platforms with varying electronic capabilities,” 430th EECS Commander Lt. Col. R. Clayton “Vector” McCart said. “We capture, translate, combine and, ultimately, relay and extend legacy and modern comms and data links.”

That means flagging potential threats to the cargo aircraft ferrying shipments of food, any course corrections or other important details from mission planners and other troops around the area.

In a region as large as CENTCOM, airdrops can be derailed by a number of variables, from weather to other flight safety issues. The BACN aircraft, which carries two pilots, can quickly relay real-time changes coming from the Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar to mission partners on the front lines.

“We can monitor progress in a way that other platforms may not be able to see … as far as locations of the assets, the weather calls, etc. Weather plays a big factor in the airdrops off the coast of Gaza,” Capt. Britton “Rad” Ellington, an E-11A pilot who previously flew the service’s now-retired E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or JSTARS, aircraft, said.

With a range of more than 6,900 miles and a typical sortie time of around 10 hours, the aircraft can take over where satellite phones fail, and interpret transmissions between the military’s myriad communications systems that can’t otherwise connect. While AFCENT declined to say how many of the service’s seven E-11As are operating in theater, the 430th acts as a data lilypad for more than 1,000 hours every two weeks.

“We’re just not relegated to an airdrop. For instance, we could do that as a part of a larger expectation from CENTCOM leadership, and just move around the battlespace. … We’re not really tethered to any one location,” McCart said.

The E-11A is in the process of establishing its new home at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, within the 18th Airborne Command and Control Squadron. It’s one of four missions replacing JSTARS planes at Robins over the next several years; the squadron is expected to become fully operational by 2027.

The 430th EECS, which deploys out of the Middle East, and doubles as a training unit, will shift its training mission to Robins.

“Every sortie is a training sortie, in the sense that we learn every day that we fly,” McCart said.

Those core missions — combat readiness, careerlong training, acquisition and future force planning — will eventually fall under the purview of four major organizations, dubbed “institutional commands,” in charge of force-wide planning and policymaking, Air Force officials said in public remarks earlier this month.

The plan aims to streamline the Air Force’s fragmented internal structure, which currently spreads those missions across nine major commands that oversee various types of aircraft and geographic regions, to become more effective and mirror other branches of the armed forces.

The four commands would include:

• Air Combat Command, which would expand its focus on fighter, intelligence and other units to instead manage readiness for the entire service;
• Airman Development Command, which would handle education and training over the course of a service member’s career;
• Air Force Materiel Command, which would run acquisition programs across the force; and
• Integrated Capabilities Command, which would handle long-term planning.

Those core commands would absorb some assets from current Air Force major commands, like Air Mobility Command and Air Force Global Strike Command, to give them the resources they need to manage troops and weapon systems across the force, Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in a talk at the Air and Space Forces Association June 13 and in a roundtable with reporters at the Pentagon the following day.

In practice, it could look much like the Army, which since 2018 has spread those missions across Army Training and Doctrine Command, Army Forces Command, Army Materiel Command and Army Futures Command.

It’s unclear how the other current major commands will interact with the four overarching organizations, or whether the service will look to add more subordinate commands as well.

The Air Force would also turn each of its service components into standalone organizations that supply forces to higher combatant commands around the globe. Right now, some service components, like Air Forces Cyber, fall under Air Combat Command’s purview, while others like Pacific Air Forces and U.S. Air Forces in Europe, don’t report to a higher Air Force command and have more control over their own planning.

“We adapted to the time that we were in. … But when you think about the things that the environment asked of us, it drove us to be a little bit more diffuse and distributed,” Allvin said. “We didn’t have a clear existential threat like we had in the Cold War.”

The reorganization is the latest piece of a sweeping effort launched in February to realign the Air Force to outpace China and other advanced militaries after decades of fighting in the Middle East, when the Air Force responded piecemeal through siloed commands that focused on a single type of air mission, like bombers or tankers. Now the service wants a more holistic approach to lending those air packages to the joint force.

Some pieces of the plan, including standing up the new Integrated Capabilities Command and turning Air Education and Training Command into the new Airman Development Command, were unveiled by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in February.

Now, additional parts of the puzzle are beginning to emerge.

Air Forces Northern, Air Forces Southern and Air Forces Central — which supply forces to commanders in North and South America and the Middle East — would move out from under Air Combat Command to instead sit on par with the other service components like U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa and Pacific Air Forces.

With less to watch over, ACC would work with “other institutional commands to generate the readiness, the exercises, have the inspections to ensure that we’re mission-ready, not just task-ready,” Allvin said.

“ACC is transitioning into a different type of a command,” he said.

That would include ensuring the Air Force’s combat wings are prepared to fight, including the attack assets that fall under so-called “deployable combat wings” or the wings that will supplement them with airlift and other assets, referred to as “combat generation wings.” They’ll leave behind separate units tasked with keeping Air Force bases running at home during deployments, as well as wings that perform their mission from home station, like intercontinental ballistic missile units.

Lt. Gen. Adrian Spain, the service’s deputy chief of staff for operations, said the Air Force predicts it will be eventually be able to resource 24 deployable combat wings, 16 of which would be active duty and the remainder from the reserves. Those wings are expected to dispatch teams of airmen from the same bases who have already trained together, rather than filling empty jobs overseas as needed from different squadrons.

Their precursor units, referred to as air task forces, are spinning up this summer at six bases across the country in preparation for deployments to the Middle East and the Pacific in October 2025. Another three are slated to replace them overseas in 2026.

ACC will need to work with the other commands to ensure airmen across the force are getting the training they need, beyond the fighter units it has traditionally managed.

“There’s going to be this relationship in building the exercises, building the training mechanism for the whole force that deploys not just what has traditionally been the fighter force,” Allvin said. “That’s where ACC is going to be really accountable and responsible for the readiness of the whole force. That’s a big mission.”

If executed well, the revamp could benefit the service, said Clint Hinote, who worked on the reorganization before retiring from the Air Force as its three-star strategy boss in 2023. He cautioned that it could encounter opposition if the service opts to move the three- and four-star leadership positions that currently govern those commands. But he argues failing to evolve would be a mistake.

“I think they do it wrong by not changing,” Hinote said.

Naval Air Systems Command boss Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, whose office oversees Ospreys in use across the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, said a review that is probing whether the enterprise has adequate manning, training and equipment, will last another six to nine months.

“As we have findings from the comprehensive review, I will take the necessary actions to ensure continued safe flight operations,” Chebi told the panel of lawmakers.

The command allowed the Osprey to begin returning to the air — with flight restrictions in place — in early March, three months after the fleet was grounded in early December following an Air Force CV-22 crash off the coast of Japan that killed all eight airmen on board.

Ospreys can be flown like an airplane and take off and land like a helicopter, making them useful for aircraft carrier landings as well as for special operators entering austere environments.

The Marine Corps operates hundreds of the aircraft, while the Air Force and Navy own around 50 and 30, respectively. Marine Ospreys are starting to reenter the fray; 10 aircraft from Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 268 headed to Hawaii in May in preparation for a training exercise in Australia, while the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit is using them in Sweden as part of Exercise Baltic Operations.

The Navy’s CMV-22 fleet remains sidelined from performing its carrier support mission at sea, service officials said Wednesday. Despite getting the green light to resume regular missions, the services are barred from flying more than 30 minutes from an airfield where they could land in case of an emergency, according to Military.com.

Osprey crews at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, have begun rebuilding their skills in anticipation of returning to normal ops, and other squadrons are getting close to flying again, Air Force Special Operations Command spokesperson Lt. Col. Rebecca Heyse told Air Force Times.

An investigation into the Air Force’s Nov. 29 CV-22 crash is nearing completion, with briefings for families expected in the coming weeks. The military has said that accident was the result of a material failure that hadn’t been seen before on the Osprey.

Ospreys have suffered a string of fatal crashes since the U.S. military introduced them into special operations more than two decades ago, including four mishaps that have killed 20 service members since March 2022. The military grounded the Ospreys in 2022 and again in 2023, after a series of “hard clutch engagements” that occurred when the input quill assembly, which attaches the Osprey’s engine to its proprotor gear box, wore out earlier than expected.

On Wednesday, Chebi and Gary Kurtz, program executive officer for anti-submarine, assault and special mission programs including the Osprey, told lawmakers that a redesigned clutch is expected to begin testing soon.

“We anticipate that we will have a new clutch fielding in the mid-2025 timeframe,” Kurtz said.

Faced by Gold Star families who held photos of loved ones during Wednesday’s hearing, lawmakers questioned the aircraft’s mishap and readiness rates, the latter of which have struggled in recent years due to woes like corrosion issues and a lack of available parts.

For example, the Air Force CV-22 fleet’s mission-capable rate, or the percentage of time that the aircraft can perform at least one of its core missions, hovered around 50% between fiscal years 2020 and 2022, according to data provided to Air Force Times.

Members of the House Oversight Committee also pushed for more transparency, saying the military wasn’t sharing enough about the findings on its recent crashes.

Some on Capitol Hill are running out of patience.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, called for the entire fleet to be grounded while the military works works out a fix for the clutch.

“If another Osprey goes down, we’re done,” Lynch said. “This program’s done.”

“Ramstein 1v1″ pitted pilots from the U.S., United Kingdom, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France and Germany, against each other in a daylong competition of basic fighter maneuvers, or “dogfighting,” in which rapid decisions and sharp response to an adversary can mean life or death. It featured a mishmash of aircraft, including F-35A Lightning IIs, F-16 Fighting Falcons, Eurofighter Typhoons, French Rafales, F/A-18 Hornets and A-4 Skyhawks.

The exercise was a first for U.S. Air Forces in Europe, and turned Ramstein, a military airlift hub, into a fighter base for a day.

“Basic fighter maneuvering … is a foundational skill set for fighter pilots,” Lt. Col. Michael Loringer, USAFE’s chief of weapons and tactics, said in a statement. “It tests a pilot’s reaction time, physical stamina and situational awareness. … There is no better way to build trust in a pilot’s aircraft or a pilot’s skills than to engage” one-on-one.

The event comes as Russia gains ground in Ukraine in the third year of the war on NATO’s doorstep. The U.S. military and its allies have turned their attention to bolstering aerial combat skills as they prepare for the possibility that tensions with Russia and China might spill into armed conflict, pitting advanced air forces against each other for the first time in decades.

As part of that prep work, the Air Force last September brought back its famed “William Tell” aerial shooter competition after sidelining it for nearly two decades because of high operations tempo in the Middle East. Air Combat Command told Air Force Times Tuesday that a 2025 William Tell competition is tentatively in the works, though a date has not yet been set.

USAFE Commander Gen. James Hecker said last year that NATO pilots will also put freshly honed offensive and defensive maneuvers to the test at a major new training exercise, Ramstein Flag, in Greece at the end of 2024.

“We don’t want to go to war with Russia, and I don’t think they want to go to war with us either,” he told Air Force Times last July. “But we need to make sure that we have the forces capable of deterring them, so that nothing bad will happen.”

During last week’s exercise, U.S. airmen from RAF Lakenheath, England, pitched in to service the Royal Norwegian Air Force’s F-35s. The 86th Airlift Wing at Ramstein handled installation support and flight line operations.

The exercise focused on readiness and building trust, with some friendly competition built in. After a day of flying, a piano was burned in memory of fighter pilots killed in action — a World War II tradition that lives on.

“We are not just NATO allies, but a community bound by genuine friendship and respect,” Loringer said. “I emphasize this point because successful military operations require exceptional teamwork, often critical to survival. And as a pilot, it boils down to trust. It’s crucial to trust your wingman.”

But on May 28, two stealth bombers assigned to the 393rd Bomb Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, took on a unique mission: fly to Offutt AFB, Nebraska, where a single pilot from each aircraft would jump out and refuel the plane — alone.

“This is a new concept for pilots, generally speaking, to refuel their own aircraft, and do it in a timely manner,” Maj. Bo Bateman, a B-2 instructor pilot with the squadron, told Air Force Times.

As the Air Force focuses on how it might win a protracted and widespread conflict in the Pacific, part of its strategy is learning to be leaner. Under the “agile combat employment“ concept, a small team of multiskilled airmen should be able to quickly deploy to a new, potentially austere, airfield where they’d have to assemble their own operation with little to no additional support.

That flexibility can come in handy for the B-2 fleet, whose ability to carry conventional and nuclear weapons between continents make it a central piece of the Air Force’s strategy to deter conflict with other nuclear powers.

“This exercise is another fine example of bombers executing agile combat employment. It is the first time that the 393rd Bomb Squadron has executed B-2 ‘cold-pit’ refueling operations without the help of our maintenance professionals on the ground,” Col. Geoffrey Steeves, 509th Operations Group commander, which oversees the 393rd Bomb Squadron, told Air Force Times in a statement.

“Cold-pit” refueling is the Air Force’s term for gassing up a plane with its engine turned off.

“Ultimately, we are posturing the B-2 to meet the challenges of the ‘great power competition’ head-on,” Steeves added.

To prepare for the trip to Offutt, the squadron compiled multiple checklists used by maintainers and pilots to create a comprehensive flight-prep to-do list from the cockpit to the ground.

The pilots also spent a couple of hours in the classroom at Whiteman — the Air Force’s sole B-2 base — brushing up on how to service an aircraft. That training is already an annual requirement, Bateman said.

“Then we had two specific trips to the aircraft to work with maintenance personnel to run through the checklist and actually practice flipping the switches for the fuels and running the checklist and hooking up the fuel receptacle to the aircraft,” he added.

Planning for the operation meant the aircraft had to carry gear, like wheel chocks, a ladder, oil and hydraulic fluid, that it wouldn’t typically need because maintainers already have those supplies on hand, said Capt. Andrew Dang, a B-2 pilot with the 393rd and an operational planner for the training run.

While a small recovery team was on hand at Offutt to resolve any maintenance issues that could have popped up, Bateman and Dang said the operation went off seamlessly.

Bateman, who previously flew the T-6 Texan II trainer as an instructor pilot, had never refueled his own plane before. After landing at Offutt, he jumped out of the bomber, secured the landing gear, chocked the wheels, and hooked himself up to the aircraft’s communications system, with the fuel truck waiting far in the distance.

“It was pretty surreal, hopping down from the cockpit,” Bateman said.

Then he returned to the cockpit and continued down the checklist with his co-pilot, including shutting down the aircraft.

With the engines off, Bateman then turned to refueling, a multistep process that included pulling various circuit breakers and covering up the sharp edges around landing-gear doors. After the fuel truck arrived, Bateman climbed a ladder to connect the fuel hose and signaled to start the flow of gas.

“That was challenging because it needs to be seated properly,” Bateman said of connecting the hose. “With one individual, you really have to get creative and maneuver the hose into the appropriate spot.”

The team met its goal to complete the entire refueling, from landing to takeoff, within two hours.

“Two hours was not easy,” Bateman said. “But going through the checklist smoothly allowed us to do it safely, and we showed that we can do it successfully.”

While the 393rd was the first active duty B-2 squadron to complete such a mission, it built off of the work of the 110th Bomb Squadron, a Missouri Air National Guard unit at Whiteman that completed a similar operation with a larger maintenance footprint on a trip to Forbes Field Air National Guard Base, Kansas, in March. Those pilots also completed cold-pit refueling on their own; the squadron will keep working with the 393rd as they move forward with agile combat operations.

“We iterated on [the Guard unit’s work] and went from a crawl phase, where we had, essentially, handholding through the process, to now saying, ‘Look, we developed this checklist we can do this, don’t need help,’” Dang said.

Now that they’ve shown it can be done, the goal is to streamline the operation and make it more efficient across the B-2 community, Bateman said. Their next steps include running the operation without maintainers standing by, adding the pilot-turned-maintainer option to the training curriculum, and perfecting a packing list so the aircraft can carry the right equipment to get the job done.

For instance, Bateman said he had to wrestle a 6-foot ladder in and out of the bomber when a step stool would have been sufficient.

The end goal, Dang said, is to reach the stage where pilots can land, refuel and take off again without shutting down the aircraft’s engines — or “hot-pit” refueling.

In a contested or unfamiliar environment, “I don’t want to be on the ground any longer than I have to be,” Dang said.

Those are just some of the questions that Air Education and Training Command wants its aircraft maintainers to answer on a new worksheet it rolled out in February.

The two-page questionnaire is intended to help determine how safe an airman’s work environment — and their mental state — may be before starting any high-risk maintenance work, ranging from hoisting and towing an aircraft to checking landing gears or loading munitions.

Maintenance-related mishaps, including “preventable” accidents during engine checks and while towing aircraft, have cost AETC more than $50 million since September 2018, the command said in February. But fiscal year 2023 saw an “alarming spike” in those accidents, prompting the training branch to look for new ways to enforce its safety precautions.

Overall, the Air Force recorded 75 major non-combat mishaps during FY23, including 21 that occurred during ground maintenance — nearly double the maintenance incidents of the previous year, according to Air Force Safety Center data obtained by Air Force Times. Figures were current as of April 1.

AETC recorded a total of 11 Class A and Class B mishaps in FY23, most of which occurred in flight. Three took place during ground maintenance, including two separate incidents in which F-35 jets sucked foreign objects into their engines, and one instance in which an F-16′s engine erupted in flames while being checked.

In comparison, AETC logged one Class A ground operations accident in FY22 and zero in FY21, Air Force safety data shows.

Class A accidents involve a death or permanent total disability, destruction of a military aircraft, damages of more than $2.5 million, or a combination of those criteria. Class B mishaps cause between $600,000 and $2.5 million in damages, a permanent partial disability, inpatient hospitalization of three or more personnel.

While the Air Force said no one was directly injured in AETC’s worst maintenance mishaps, they can lead to serious injury.

For instance, in February 2023, a contractor working on an Air Combat Command-owned T-38A Talon at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, was crushed when the jet collapsed on him while he was lubricating the aircraft’s landing gear, leaving him with multiple broken bones. An Air Force investigation found the unnamed man had removed a safety pin that allowed the landing gear to retract without other precautions in place.

Ground mishaps within AETC “really clued us in to realize that we needed to foster a stronger risk-management and safety mindset in the maintenance community,” Col. Will Phillips, the command’s safety director, told Air Force Times.

How it works

AETC’s new questionnaire is similar to the checklist completed by fighter crews in preflight briefings to tally mission risks and will create “a more standardized, repeatable process” to measure factors that could contribute to an accident before starting a potentially dangerous task, Phillips said.

AETC maintainers “perform tasks that risk their own health and welfare, and they also risk aircraft damage when they have to do these tasks everyday, but their tasks are mission-essential,” Phillips said.

The command’s approximately 7,600 active duty and civilian maintainers will use the worksheet, which takes about 10 minutes to complete. It does not yet apply to contractors, though Phillips said that’s being considered.

The paperwork is to be completed by each person before starting a new task. If the same task is being performed throughout the day, like towing aircraft, it only needs to be completed once. However, if a factor changes that can increase risk, like weather, maintainers are required to complete a new worksheet.

The tool is also not intended to replace a departmental “knock-it-off” instruction intended to empower personnel from stopping a task they feel is too risky.

“This process equips personnel and supervisors to objectively assess risk and alert leadership when task, human, and environmental factors may accumulate to create an unacceptable level of risk,” instructions accompanying the worksheet said.

Scores in each area — human, environmental and task risks — are separately tallied; the team lead should be briefed on each, with a focus on how to mitigate them. A “moderate” score in any area requires approval to proceed from a flight, section chief or expeditor; a “high” score requires the OK from a production superintendent.

“The concept is, once you have a team of people and they put together an understanding of what their aggregate risk is, if it rises to a certain level, then they elevate that to their supervisor and their supervisor can then look at say, ‘OK, can I swap a person? Can we push this to the day shift? Can we add another person to the crew that’s more experienced?’” Phillips said. “‘What are those measures I can take to buy down risk?’”

The worksheets can be thrown out at the end of a shift, but must be kept if a mishap occurs.

Phillips said some maintenance units are keeping the sheets anyway to “get a better finger on the pulse of the data at a more macro level.” The information can help units track trends, including where resources — or a lack of them — could be driving risk in an already stretched-thin maintainer community that has struggled to keep up with aging aircraft and a high operational tempo.

The sheet could also become a tool to help units connect struggling airmen with support services.

“Will this form encourage leaders to have a better understanding of what’s going on with their folks? The answer to that is we hope so,” Phillips said.

While some may feel the added paperwork amounts to micromanaging or even policing airmen, Phillips said that’s not the intent. But the command is conscious of that perspective as it seeks honest answers. That’s why AETC expects an initial question about alcohol consumption in the last 24 hours to change to something more generally related to health.

“We can meet them in the middle” by asking less specific questions, Phillips said, “and still achieve the baseline objective of a good assessment.”

The command expects to tweak the questionnaire as it receives feedback and will eventually release a new form.

It’s almost impossible to know how many potential accidents may be avoided. But thanks to the worksheet, Phillips said he hopes to hear from units about instances when maintainers flagged risks and stopped upcoming work as a result. AETC plans to share the results of its initiative with the other major commands.

“If it canceled a sortie, I would love to know about that so we can begin to understand,” Phillips said. “Maybe a point value needed to be adjusted. Maybe we need to include something else, or maybe we need to remove something from the form.”

“We’re trying to find that balance between risk and mission,” he said.

The service noted their arrival in budget documents released March 11. The first of 10 EA-37Bs was delivered to the Air Force last year for testing — two years later than anticipated — before heading to its eventual home at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. Delivery of the first mission-ready jet is expected sometime in 2024.

It’s unclear to what extent the first five aircraft will be used in testing or if they will enter regular operations as they come online. Air Combat Command, which manages the fleet, declined to provide more details about the jets.

Compass Call is designed to jam enemy signals, including communications, radar and navigations systems, and can suppress enemy air defenses by blocking the connection between weapons systems and command-and-control networks. The aircraft also carries hardware and software that give airmen the ability to hack into wireless devices, defuse roadside bombs and more.

Its new airframe — a Gulfstream G550 business jet outfitted with advanced electronic attack equipment by an L3Harris-BAE Systems team — will also be able to soar higher than 40,000 feet and fly at nearly 600 mph, nearly twice as high and as fast as the legacy EC-130H.

The 43rd Electronic Combat Squadron at Davis-Monthan will be the first to transition to the new Compass Call, which began flying in the 1980s. As it prepares to replace old with new, the squadron logged its final flight in an EC-130H on Feb. 15.

“Throughout its storied existence, the squadron’s adaptability and commitment to evolving military technologies shine through, having operated 11 different aircraft types across six continents,” 43rd ECS Commander Lt. Col. Tray Wood said in a statement. “The final EC-130H flight marks the end of an era and signals the beginning of a new chapter with the forthcoming EA-37B transition.”

The 41st and 42nd Electronic Combat Squadrons, also based at Davis-Monthan, are still flying the legacy platform. The 41st is the only remaining operational squadron flying the EC-130H; the 42nd is a training squadron.

The new EA-37B, which was redesignated from EC-37B late last year, comes as the Air Force looks to replace many of its decades-old aircraft with more-capable versions that may have a better shot at surviving in future conflicts against advanced adversaries like China.

The service said in November it had retired nine of its 14 old Compass Calls so far. Air Force budget documents show that the service plans to send one more EC-130H to its aircraft “Boneyard” this year. The budget also includes an additional $15 million for operating and maintaining the Compass Call program, driven by fielding the new aircraft and storing the retiring planes.

A mainstay in U.S. Central Command during the war on terror, the EC-130H carries a 13-person crew, including two pilots, a navigator, a flight engineer, a mission crew commander and supervisor, a signals analyst and multiple cryptologic language analysts. The Air Force contends that though its new Compass Call airframe is smaller, advances in equipment will allow it to consolidate jobs onboard and cut the crew to nine members.

The 41st Electronic Combat Squadron spent 20 years overseas with the Compass Call, becoming the longest continuously deployed Air Force unit in Afghanistan at nearly 14,800 sorties over 90,000 flying hours before returning home in 2021.

The Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy will immediately start refreshing troops’ training and changing maintenance procedures as prerequisites for resuming normal operations, leaders from each of the services told reporters Wednesday.

But they acknowledged it will be months before the tiltrotor aircraft are fully back to flying real-world missions.

The Ospreys will receive no equipment modifications before they return to the air.

Marine Corps Col. Brian Taylor, the V-22 joint program manager, told reporters his office and the services “have high confidence that we understand what component failed and how it failed.” It’s still unclear why the part in question did not perform as intended.

Taylor and other service officials declined to say which component’s failure caused an Air Force Special Operations Command Osprey to crash into the sea during a training mission Nov. 29, killing all eight airmen aboard. They also declined to answer whether the aircraft would be restricted from flying under certain conditions or in certain areas due to the risk of a repeat problem.

The accident is still under investigation. The Air Force has shared its findings with the joint program office — which manages V-22 acquisition and maintenance for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps — and the other services to better understand the material failure that led to the crash.

Because the wreckage of the Osprey sat under the Pacific Ocean for about a month before being recovered, the drive system is corroded such that engineers may never understand why the unnamed component failed, Taylor said. But investigators created a “fault tree” to map out potential causes, which are addressed in the services’ mitigation plan.

The main change will increase the frequency of an inspection that is already done on the aircraft — like upping the number of oil changes on a car, Taylor said. He said the change gives the component a greater “perimeter of safety” during operations.

Though Taylor repeatedly declined to offer information about the component, he said it is not the input quill assembly that attaches the Osprey’s engine to its proprotor gear box — the component that began wearing out early and caused a series of clutch malfunctions for Marine Corps and Air Force pilots in 2022. A portion of the Air Force and Marine Corps fleets were grounded in 2023 as those services studied how to mitigate the risk of so-called “hard clutch engagements” and when to replace worn-out parts.

NBC reported Feb. 19 the November crash may have involved “chipping,” where tiny pieces of metal wear off during use and can damage the engine. Taylor did not specify whether chipping played a role in the crash, but characterized it as a normal phenomenon for a mechanical system and said the V-22 has a sophisticated monitoring system that looks for small metal bits and alerts the pilot if any are detected.

Taylor made clear the November crash was unrelated to other previous V-22 mishaps.

“This is the first time that we’ve seen this particular component fail in this way, and so this is unprecedented” in the 750,000 flight hours amassed over the life of the V-22 program, he said.

Due to that long track record, Taylor said: “We are confident in the system.”

The ‘Gundam 22′ crash

The Nov. 29 accident was the deadliest Air Force mishap since 2018, and the fourth fatal Osprey crash in a two-year span. Twenty U.S. troops have died in Osprey incidents since March 2022.

The downed crew of “Gundam 22″ included Osprey pilots Maj. Jeff Hoernemann, Maj. Luke Unrath and Capt. Terry Brayman; medical personnel Maj. Eric Spendlove and Tech. Sgt. Zach Lavoy; flight engineers Staff Sgt. Jake Turnage and Senior Airman Kody Johnson; and airborne linguist Staff Sgt. Jake Galliher.

Six were stationed at Japan’s Yokota Air Base; two worked at Kadena Air Base. All were assigned to the Air Force’s 353rd Special Operations Wing.

The weeks-long, multinational search effort successfully recovered the bodies of all but Spendlove.

The U.S. military now flies hundreds of V-22s, largely operated by the Marines. The tiltrotor aircraft is known for its towering nacelles that allow it to launch and land like a helicopter, and speed forward like a fixed-wing plane. Troops use the unique aircraft to slip in and out of areas without established runways, where fixed-wing planes may not be able to land with troops and supplies.

The Marine Corps owns nearly 350 Ospreys; the Air Force and Navy operate smaller fleets at around 50 and 30 aircraft, respectively.

Beyond the safety and accident investigation boards studying the most recent crash, Air Force Special Operations Command is also conducting a deep-dive into its CV-22 Osprey program to determine whether it provides adequate training, resources and other factors to ensure airmen’s safety.

The Government Accountability Office and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability have also launched their own probes into the V-22. On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House oversight committee, said it had not yet received information from the military as it looks into the aircraft’s safety and performance.

“Serious concerns remain, such as accountability measures put in place to prevent crashes, a general lack of transparency, how maintenance and operational upkeep is prioritized, and how DOD assesses risks,” Comer said in a statement. “We will continue to rigorously investigate the DOD’s Osprey program to attain answers to our questions on behalf of American taxpayers and protect U.S. service members defending our nation.”

Marines prepare

As the biggest user of the V-22 platform by far, the Marine Corps has been most affected by the monthslong grounding. It relies on the Osprey to move people, supplies and weapons, and operates from ship decks and from ground bases.

Brig. Gen. Richard Joyce, the assistant deputy commandant for aviation, told reporters the Marine Corps has focused on keeping up troops’ proficiency on the Osprey since the grounding began in early December so the service could resume flights as quickly as possible.

“Our simulator utilization has been maximized to keep proficiency as much as possible in the virtual environment,” he said.

The service has gone as far as sending MV-22 pilots in Djibouti thousands of miles away to use simulators in Japan, and shipping MV-22 pilots who are deployed to the Middle East with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit back home to North Carolina for simulator training.

Now that the program office has cleared the aircraft to fly, the Corps’ most experienced pilots and aircrew will begin maintenance-check flights to get the Ospreys up in the air, then retrain on “core and basic skills,” Joyce said. Once those top personnel have brushed up on the fundamentals, they’ll pair with junior pilots and crew for additional basic training.

Joyce said it would take about a month for a squadron to get everyone back up to speed basic skills.

However, it will take more time for the personnel to retrain on more advanced skills and mission-specific tasks for combat assaults, transport flights and other missions.

The general said it would take until late spring or early summer to get back to pre-grounding readiness levels.

V-22 squadrons will go through more consumable parts, like filters, as they take on additional inspections and maintenance, he said. Those parts and training support will first go to deployed units, followed by squadrons with upcoming deployments, squadrons participating in key exercises or service-level training events, and eventually to test-and-evaluation units and those farthest from a future deployment.

The amphibious assault ship Boxer and the 15th MEU are set to deploy from California this spring, and Joyce said it’s not clear yet if they’ll be ready to bring the V-22 along. It’s one of the most pressing decisions related to resuming V-22 flight operations, he said.

Air Force’s ongoing studies

Airmen have done the work required to keep the Air Force’s Osprey fleet healthy during the three-month standdown, but “there’s only so much they can do with aircraft that are not flying,” Air Force Special Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind told reporters Wednesday.

He described a 12-week road map to getting the Ospreys back in the air that adds new maintenance requirements and allows experienced airmen to lead the way. The service will deviate from that plan as needed if work isn’t progressing on schedule.

Returning the aircraft to service begins with ground and simulator training that will include new safety controls and briefings, a review of aircraft maintenance records and refining squadron-level training plans to implement the new safety protocols, Bauernfeind said.

The Air Force did not elaborate on what new safety protocols will be introduced. AFSOC held an all-hands for Osprey crews Feb. 22-23 at Hurlburt Field, Florida, to explain the new safety protocols.

“We received very positive feedback that it was very beneficial to the crews,” Bauernfeind said.

The second phase will focus on returning air crews and maintainers to basic proficiency, initially targeted at senior aviators, instructors, evaluators and weapons officers. Simulator training has helped keep skills sharp during the standdown.

The phased approach gives the service time to absorb findings from the service’s initial safety investigation, an internal report meant to root out the cause of a mishap and prevent future occurrences. Bauernfeind received and accepted the findings of the safety board March 1.

He expects it will take the service more than three months to reach the level of proficiency it had on the Osprey before the Nov. 29 crash.

Bauernfeind said he’s confident in the service’s ability to safely resume Osprey operations before wrapping up two ongoing investigations. The Air Force has kept the families of the downed crew informed about the process, but has not told them the results of the recently completed safety investigation board.

“I have confidence that we know enough now to return to fly,” he said.

Navy’s path to at-sea missions

The Navy will take a similarly cautious approach to resuming its flights, putting only its most experienced personnel in the air first for basic flights in daytime-only conditions, Commander of Naval Air Forces Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever told reporters.

Those top personnel will then pair with junior sailors and eventually resume night operations and other, more complex training. The Navy will lastly resume training new pilots and aircrew at the fleet replacement squadrons.

But Cheever warned that returning to flight wasn’t the same as returning to mission: It may be several more months until the Navy sees its CMV-22Bs flying operational missions to haul cargo and people to aircraft carriers at sea.

Cheever said the Navy would avoid long, over-ocean flights until all personnel had built up sufficient proficiency. But when asked about any restrictions on the aircraft regarding duration of over-water flights, he deferred to NAVAIR. Taylor, from the V-22 program office under NAVAIR, declined to say whether there were or were not any operational limitations for the planes under the new return-to-flight plan.

Cheever highlighted the Navy’s flexibility and said all carriers at sea had fared well during the V-22 grounding. The Navy relied on its C-2A Greyhound, which is set to sundown in 2026 as it’s replaced by the CMV-22B, to resupply carriers at sea, including the Theodore Roosevelt deployed in the Indo-Pacific today.

He said the Navy also relied more heavily on its replenishment ship fleet and looked to load more goods onto carriers when they were in port.

But he noted the importance of getting the CMV-22 back to its mission, saying it can conduct medical evacuations and haul large F-35C engine components — unlike its aging predecessor.