An active duty member of the U.S. Air Force died Sunday after he set himself ablaze outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while declaring that he “will no longer be complicit in genocide.”

Senior Airman Aaron Bushnell, 25, of Whitman, Massachusetts, died from his injuries, the Air Force confirmed Monday evening.

Bushnell had walked up to the embassy shortly before 1 p.m. on Sunday and began livestreaming on the video streaming platform Twitch, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

Law enforcement officials believe the man started a livestream, set his phone down and then doused himself in accelerant and ignited the flames.

At one point, he said he “will no longer be complicit in genocide,” the person said. The video was later removed from the platform, but law enforcement officials have obtained and reviewed a copy.

The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Bushnell worked as a cyber defense operations specialist with the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio, the Air Force said in a release Monday. He had served on active duty since May 2020.

“When a tragedy like this occurs, every member of the Air Force feels it,” said Col. Celina Noyes, commander of the 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing at Fort Meade, Maryland, which oversees Bushnell’s squadron. “We extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Senior Airman Bushnell. Our thoughts and prayers are with them, and we ask that you respect their privacy during this difficult time.”

The incident happened as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking the cabinet approval for a military operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah while a temporary cease-fire deal is being negotiated.

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, however, has drawn criticisms, including genocide claims against the Palestinians.

Israel has adamantly denied the genocide allegations and says it is carrying out operations in accordance with international law in the Israel-Hamas war.

In December, a person self-immolated outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta and used gasoline as an accelerant, according to Atlanta’s fire authorities. A Palestinian flag was found at the scene, and the act was believed to be one of “extreme political protest.”

It also has affected some retail pharmacies across the country.

For the time being, officials ask for patience, “while pharmacies take longer than usual to safely fill prescription needs.”

Until the issue is resolved, military pharmacies will use a manual procedure to fill outpatient prescriptions, health officials said in a Thursday statement to Military Times. Priority goes to urgent prescriptions, followed by routine prescriptions.

“Each military hospital and clinic will continue to offer pharmacy operations based on their local manning and resources,” officials said.

On Wednesday, Change Healthcare disconnected its systems to protect patient information.

“Once we became aware of the outside threat, in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect our systems to prevent further impact,” stated Change Healthcare’s status web page.

The latest update said the company expected the disruptions to last at least through Thursday.

The company’s website states that it provides provides “industry-leading analytics, expansive data, and unparalleled connection and data transfer between providers, payers, and consumers.”

Any references that this is caused by a technical issue with MHS Genesis are “inaccurate,” military health officials stated. Genesis is the military’s electronic health record system.

Military pharmacies around the world have been posting notices about the issue and their procedures in response.

“This is impacting pharmacies at [military treatment facilities] enterprise-wide,” read a sign posted at the 19th Medical Group pharmacy at Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas, shared on social media Thursday. “We do not know how long it will be down. They are working to resolve it.”

At McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas, the 22nd Medical Group pharmacy posted on social media that it can’t process new prescriptions.

“However, our Pharmacy remains open and will continue to dispense already-completed prescriptions. If you need a new prescription today, please contact your prescribing physician and request that they send the prescription to an alternate pharmacy within the Tricare network.”

At Kadena Air Base in Japan, officials at the medical clinic posted on Facebook Thursday morning: “Due to a systems outage, pharmacy wait times may be longer than normal today.”

The Space Force is considering giving prospective guardians the option to enlist for an initial term of eight years on active duty — twice as long as first-term troops usually sign up for — in a bid to build a more stable workforce to span the coming decades.

It’s one change to personnel policies now under consideration as the Space Force looks to break typical military molds and craft a workforce that meets its unique needs as the Pentagon’s newest and smallest branch.

“I know eight years is a big commitment to make if you’re 20 years old, 21 years old,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna told Air Force Times Jan. 11. “But let me explain to you … the training you’ll get, the opportunities you’re going to get, the experience you’ll have — it takes time.”

All enlisted troops across the armed forces are already required to agree to at least eight years in uniform. But most serve out a four- or six-year term on active duty before spending the remaining time in the individual ready reserve — a pool of former active duty, National Guard and Reserve troops who can still be called up in an emergency.

Instead, the Space Force could ask guardians to spend their entire enlistment on active duty. Once those eight years are up, they would be off the hook — with no commitment to the individual ready reserve.

In a statement emailed after publication, Bentivegna clarified that the idea would not be mandatory for new enlistees.

“If offered, in addition to 4- and 6-year enlistments, 8-year enlistment options would be voluntary and tied to a potential incentive bonus,” he said. “The Space Force is carefully considering the impact of voluntary extended enlistment contracts; we have proposed a third-party study on the impact of this concept.”

Bentivegna hopes that a new set of policies, which will allow guardians to toggle between full-time and part-time service while remaining on active duty, can offer the enlisted force more flexibility while keeping them in uniform longer.

The idea is on the table because the Space Force, established in 2019, has discovered that its enlisted recruits skew older — averaging 22 years old — and are more educated than those of the other services. Rather than joining the military straight out of high school, 40% of those recruits enlist after earning an associate’s, bachelor’s or master’s degree, the service said last month.

The Space Force also handles a niche set of highly technical missions, like cyber operations, electronic warfare and space-based intelligence, using an enlisted workforce of more than 4,000 people. All enlisted guardians must pass the background checks and polygraphs needed to receive a top secret/secure compartmented information clearance as well.

Because its recruits come in with more skill, and because the force is so small, the service doesn’t want to lose that expertise — or the money and time it takes to train guardians in those fields — after just four years.

The service will also explore how to structure re-enlistment bonuses and other incentives to avoid losing them to lucrative jobs in the space and cyber industries once the eight years are up.

“A guardian’s journey doesn’t end at the traditional four- or six-year mark, which enables the service to build the technical depth and expertise we need for great power competition,” Bentivegna said in a follow-up email from a spokesperson Jan. 30. “We are working to enrich their experience through technical training schools, fully qualified promotion policies, bonuses and [reimagining] our professional military education.”

Speaking at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Warfare Symposium on Wednesday, Bentivegna noted that the U.S. also needs to reform military pay and benefits to make service more enticing and sustainable for those who do opt into years in uniform.

“That model that we’re looking at may be just a little outdated. What is the value proposition of service? It’s changed,” he said. “I think that’s the goodness of the dialogue we’ve had.”

It’s unclear whether asking prospects to join the Space Force for nearly a decade would make a dent in the service’s recruitment efforts.

More than 4,000 people sought to enlist in the Space Force in 2023, the service told Congress in January. But just a fraction make it into the limited number of available billets. The service plans to recruit nearly 700 new enlisted guardians in fiscal year 2024.

That’s a sliver of what the other armed forces aim to bring in throughout the year. For instance, the Air Force hopes to sign up 25,900 new active duty enlisted airmen by the end of September.

Todd Harrison, a military space expert at the American Enterprise Institute, warned the Space Force to do its homework before settling on major changes to career models.

He worries an eight-year commitment could make it harder for the Space Force to compete for talent with private industry and the other armed forces, if recruits see the contract as a long time to be locked into military service.

Harrison also questioned whether high performers, who may have other options to consider, would be attracted to an eight-year commitment. He suggested the Space Force track the correlation between how people feel about longer enlistments and how well they score on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, an entrance exam that determines which jobs a recruit is qualified to hold.

“Look before you leap,” he said.

The youngest branch of the armed forces has lacked its own part-time workforce since its creation in 2019. That changed as part of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in December.

The move is part of the Space Force’s broader vision to adapt military service to the needs of modern Americans. Eliminating the traditional component structure, which separates troops serving on active duty from those in Reserve or Guard units, aims to offer more flexibility for those looking to serve their country and ultimately keep them in uniform longer.

“When fully implemented, this new construct will allow us to manage our military force more effectively, improve quality of life and retention, and capitalize on skill sets developed outside the military to continue delivering unmatched space capabilities,” Maj. Tanya Downsworth, a Space Force spokesperson, told Military Times via email.

Now the service begins the difficult work of figuring out how to make the legislation a reality for the 9,000 or so uniformed guardians under its purview, as well as Air Force Reservists in space-related jobs. A phased implementation is expected to last five years.

“We’re looking at the language to make sure we exactly understand how to move forward,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna told Military Times in a Jan. 11 interview. “What does it mean to be part-time? What benefits do you have? … How do we promote? How do we select? What does that look like? We’re working through that right now.”

The Space Force works to protect American interests in space and supports military operations around the globe through a vast network of satellites and radars on Earth and in orbit.

As the new service shapes a workforce separate from and much smaller than the other armed forces, it has seized on an opportunity to avoid pitfalls that have accompanied transitions in and out of the Reserve components.

Last year, the federally funded think tank Rand Corp. found retention issues linked to persistent transition challenges for guardians moving to and from part-time roles in the other services — like the Air National Guard or the Air Force Reserve — from reappointment and pay delays to complications with benefits and medical coverage.

Now, as the Space Force prepares to continue expanding its workforce — the only branch Congress has allowed to grow in fiscal year 2024 — guardians will see new options to create their ideal career with potentially fewer headaches.

According to the 2024 NDAA, those on active duty in the Space Force will become classified as serving on “sustained duty,” a regular, full-time status; or as “not on sustained duty,” a part-time position.

Part-timers must still participate in at least 48 scheduled drills or training periods each year, and serve on active duty for at least 14 days (excluding travel time) per year; or serve on active duty for training for up to 30 days each year, according to the law.

The legislation also establishes the designation of “inactive status” for guardians. That would be similar to the Individual Ready Reserve that already exists in other services as an additional pool of people who can be called up in an emergency, Downsworth said.

It’s unclear how many guardians will be expected to serve on full-time, part-time or inactive status at any given time, she added. Air Force Reservists who work in space roles can also opt to transfer into the space service.

Officials hope the new model will attract more recruits in an already highly competitive field. The Space Force and Marine Corps — the nation’s two smallest military services — were the Pentagon’s only branches to meet their recruiting targets in fiscal year 2023. The Space Force plans to grow to 9,400 uniformed guardians by the end of September 2024.

Bentivegna believes more people could opt to join and stay in a service that doesn’t offer such a stark choice between staying and leaving when “life happens.”

“A lot of our part-timers will probably be in their normal job … in the space industry somewhere, or the cyber industry or the intelligence agencies,” he said. “How do we keep leveraging that and bring them back and forth in a way that makes sense?”

The new setup could lead to changes at the operational units, too. For instance, Bentivegna said, the policies could blur the lines between units such as the active duty 2nd Space Operations Squadron and the Reserve 19th Space Operations Squadron, which run GPS satellites from Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado.

“In many ways, I think that Space Force is rightly going to serve as a microcosm, [a] testbed for the larger military in figuring out how to create a more modern personnel system and a true continuum of service,” Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Military Times.

He added that the “bold new direction” will allow Space Force to continue being selective about who it brings in for its often technical, highly specialized jobs. Still, he acknowledged questions remain about how to implement the new model.

Bill Woolf, who heads the nonprofit Space Force Association, argued that a part-time workforce will make it simpler to leverage the expertise of troops who the service may not need continuous access to, but who are still worth keeping on the bench.

“Career flexibility seems to be important for young people these days,” he said in a statement to Military Times. “No other service will be able to offer this kind of flexibility.”

Is a Space National Guard still on the table?

The move to a hybrid workforce of guardians comes amid a long-running fight to create a separate Space National Guard, which proponents have pushed to become the Space Force’s primary combat reserve.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Mike Bruno, the chair of the space task force at the National Guard Association of the United States, told Military Times that the choice to pursue the non-component structure is untested and “ignores the proven history of the National Guard.” He noted his views do not necessarily reflect the Air Force, the Department of Defense or the Colorado National Guard, where he works as the director of the Joint Staff.

Nearly 1,000 National Guard soldiers and airmen perform space-related operations across more than a dozen units in seven states and one U.S. territory, according to the association. They manage missile warning systems, maintain systems that counter electromagnetic attacks and work with military communications satellites, among other missions.

Bruno also suggested that by creating a Space National Guard, the service could further leverage the Guard’s existing state partnership program to advance the space capabilities of foreign militaries.

Lawmakers from Colorado, a longstanding seat of military space operations, heavily favor the creation of a Space National Guard and supported language to do so that was scrapped from the new defense policy law.

Their advocacy comes amid an ongoing battle to retain the headquarters of the now fully operational U.S. Space Command, the joint combatant command in charge of daily space operations, in Colorado rather than move it to Alabama.

Harrison and others who oppose a distinct National Guard component for the Space Force argue it makes “zero sense.” Governors do not need control over the military space capabilities that currently belong to state Guards, he said, because they are “inherently global and … have to be managed at a national level.”

Critics also argue that the bureaucratic and financial costs of standing up an independent Space National Guard are simply not worth it.

“Adding a Space National Guard is like the antithesis of being lean,” Harrison said, arguing it would contradict the streamlined organization for which leaders have advocated.

A 2020 Congressional Budget Office analysis considered a smaller and larger version of a Space National Guard, estimating those options would cost about $100 million to $500 million each year. The White House Office of Management and Budget has also estimated it could cost up to $500 million annually to launch a Space National Guard.

Others, however, have contested the actual cost would be far lower. The National Guard Bureau pegged the price at only $250,000, according to Bruno, which he said would go toward tasks like changing building signage.

The 2024 NDAA instructed the Pentagon to again dig into the feasibility and cost of moving space functions conducted by the Air National Guard to the Space Force. An interim briefing is due to Congress no later than Feb. 1, followed by a final, unclassified report by March 1.

Congress has also requested that the Department of the Air Force, which includes the Space Force, submit a report by Aug. 31 detailing how its forces will evolve through 2050.

The U.S. military routinely trains near the national capital region, practicing to intercept wayward aircraft and other threats along the East Coast. But those jets rarely break the sound barrier over land unless they face a real-world emergency, to prevent panic among unsuspecting residents on the ground and damage to the community around them.

Military pilots don’t need to zip around at supersonic speeds all the time; for instance, F-35A Lightning II pilots cruise around .9 Mach, or around 700 miles per hour.

Going faster than the speed of sound — around 760 miles per hour — helps pilots fire weapons smoothly in air-to-air combat training, such as those simulating offensive counter-air missions, said Heather Penney, a former F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot who now works as a defense policy expert at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Penney said they are allowed to break the sound barrier in a limited number of scenarios: over the ocean or on a training range where it won’t disrupt everyday life, or in an emergency with a superior’s approval.

And it comes in handy when a pilot needs to catch up with an out-of-place or unresponsive aircraft, so they have more time alongside the plane to assess whether it is a threat or not, Penney said. Most often, she said, people simply get lost or don’t know where they’re allowed to fly.

On Sunday, the New York-bound Cessna Citation business jet suddenly turned around over Long Island, prompting the military to scramble six fighter jets to intercept it. Its civilian pilot appeared to be slumped over and unresponsive, U.S. officials told the Associated Press of their conversations with the fighter pilots. The officials were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the military operation.

North American Aerospace Defense Command spokesman John Ingle told Military Times this week that one F-16 that responded to the unresponsive Cessna made the jump to supersonic speed, though three others were also authorized to do so.

Two F-16s tasked to NORAD’s homeland defense mission flew alongside the Cessna over Virginia around 3:20 p.m., the Pentagon said. Military Times staff heard the sonic boom echo over Washington roughly ten minutes earlier. It’s unclear at what point the jets sped up to catch the unresponsive plane, or how long they escorted it; Ingle said NORAD is still establishing the timeline of events.

The go-ahead to exceed Mach 1 comes from the U.S.-focused branch of NORAD, which is responsible for monitoring and defending the continent’s skies.

“NORAD aircraft typically fly at speeds slower than those required to create a sonic boom. However, that could change depending on the mission and the need to respond in such a manner to provide decision-makers the necessary time to act,” Ingle said. “NORAD aircraft often operate within specified parameters when over land so as to mitigate sonic boom disturbances.”

On top of considering where a sonic boom might reverberate the strongest, officials have to consider the threat level, the atmospheric conditions and how high the jet is flying before approving supersonic flight.

Once a jet breaks the sound barrier, the sonic boom fans out like the wake behind a boat. As with a boat’s wake, the compressed air of a sonic boom is strongest near the jet and gets weaker as it fans out behind the aircraft. That’s why people closer to the F-16 heard and felt its roar more intensely than those farther away, Penney said.

And the jet pilots don’t feel a sonic boom from the cockpit, just as passengers on a boat don’t feel the effects of the wake behind them, she added.

NORAD doesn’t alert other agencies that those shockwaves may be coming because of the unpredictability of military responses and the urgency of situations that would require supersonic flight, Ingle said.

That leaves local and federal government agencies, meteorologists, journalists and more to rule out other possible explanations, like routine explosions on a military installation, thunder or an attack.

In general, Penney said, fighter pilots aren’t supposed to fly that fast near Washington, D.C., at all, to protect the multitude of government buildings and avoid unnecessary alarm.

The wayward plane ultimately crashed near the George Washington National Forest in Virginia, about 160 miles southwest of Washington, shortly after 3:30 p.m.

The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating Sunday’s crash, which killed the pilot and three passengers. North Carolina resident John Rumpel, the plane’s owner, told The New York Times that his daughter, 2-year-old granddaughter and a nanny were on the flight.

Penney said the military’s decision to go fast and inspect the plane in question, rather than jumping to conclusions and shooting down a jet with civilians aboard, shows the nation’s air defenses are working properly.

“The point of our air defense systems is to protect our national infrastructure … not to get trigger-happy,” she said.

The occasion marks Biden’s third graduation speech at Falcon Stadium and his first as president. He previously spoke at USAFA commencements while serving as vice president in 2014 and 2009.

The announcement comes days after current and former government officials confirmed that Biden plans to choose Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president has not made a final decision, National Security Council spokespeople said Friday.

Biden, who announced his reelection campaign for president last month, teased the upcoming visit to Colorado while presenting the Air Force Falcons football team with the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy at the White House April 28.

“In a few weeks, I’ll be headed to your home turf for commencement — you’re going to get stuck with me being your commencement speaker — and where 10 of these cadets behind me will officially become officers in the United States Air Force and Space Force,” he said.

Referencing President Dwight Eisenhower’s graduation remarks at the academy’s first commencement, Biden continued: “You can’t talk about the soul of the nation without talking about our service academies. … And you can’t talk about the service academies without talking about duty, teamwork, service and excellence.”

Since his election to the nation’s highest office in 2020, Biden has offered commencement remarks at the U.S. Naval Academy, Coast Guard Academy, South Carolina State University, and his alma mater, the University of Delaware.

He is the ninth sitting president to speak at the USAFA graduation. Others include Presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and John Kennedy.

The Colorado Springs campus prepares thousands of students to become commissioned officers in the Air Force and Space Force each year. Around 1,140 students arrived for basic cadet training as part of the Class of 2023, the school said in 2019.

USAFA has resumed in-person graduation events after the coronavirus pandemic forced the school to scale back the ceremonies in 2020 and 2021. The school’s 65th commencement ceremony begins at 9:30 a.m. local time and will be live-streamed online.

The new security package aims to bolster Ukraine’s long-range and precision strike capabilities, give its troops the upper hand in close combat, and halt Russia’s piecemeal western advance.

The latest round of aid — America’s 36th shipment in the 14 months since Russia mounted a full-scale assault on Ukraine in February 2022 — brings the total amount of U.S. war goods donated during the conflict to $36.1 billion.

“We are focused and we understand the requirements,” a senior defense official told reporters on background Monday. “We’ve met them every step along the way and we will continue to do so.”

Most notably, the U.S. is continuing to draw from its own stockpiles of High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System shells, which Ukraine uses to strike targets like Russian air defense systems and ammunition depots.

The latest package also includes:

• 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds
• Anti-tank mines and missiles
• AT-4 anti-armor weapons
• Anti-tank mines
• Demolition charges to clear obstacles on the ground
• More than 9 million rounds of small-arms ammunition
• Four logistics support vehicles
• Precision aerial munitions
• Testing and diagnostic equipment for vehicle maintenance
• Port and harbor security equipment
• Spare parts and other field equipment

The Biden administration’s announcement comes in advance of Friday’s multinational Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, hosted by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

This week’s gathering marks one year since defense ministers and senior military officials from nearly 50 countries first came together to coordinate material and training support for Ukraine, discuss current and upcoming battlefield conditions, and share assessments of Russian and Ukrainian capabilities.

“We continue to be as strong as we were a year ago. … That support is enduring going forward,” the senior U.S. official said.

In a briefing with reporters ahead of Austin’s trip to Europe, the official said the U.S. is “not concerned” about its earlier assessment that Ukraine could run out of the air defense artillery it needs next month if fighting continues at the same pace. That conclusion leaked to the public in a trove of documents published on the private online chat community Discord and later obtained by U.S. news outlets.

“We have continuously assessed what Ukraine’s requirements are and address those,” the official said. “Being able to understand the rate of use, the shape of the battle, what kinds of capabilities Ukraine requires in the coming weeks [and] months, is exactly why the secretary started the Ramstein format a year ago.”

The official said the leaks have not caused friction between the U.S. and its allies, but declined to comment further. The Justice Department is leading a federal investigation into Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old IT specialist in the Massachusetts Air National Guard who is accused of posting the classified documents to curry favor with other Discord users.

Town by town, intense fighting continues to punctuate the swath of Russian-occupied territory across eastern Ukraine.

Both sides are struggling to definitively wrest control of areas like Bahkmut and Avdiivka as Russia’s recent push to expand its gains has slowed to a “very static battle,” the senior U.S. defense official told reporters.

Longer-range missile strikes are intermittent, as those troops save up cruise missiles to unleash them on perceived weaknesses in Ukrainian air defenses, the American official said. But that has not succeeded in punching a lasting hole in the local resistance.

Ukrainians are defending their homes “incredibly well and stubbornly under very tough circumstances,” the official said, illuminating shortcomings in Russian military capabilities.

“We’re seeing the effects of their weakened defense industry, their problematic logistics system, and a lot of evidence of really poor training,” the official added of Russia.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, reported Monday that Russian forces have “made further gains in Bakhmut and continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line,” while bolstering its defenses in southern Ukraine.

Equipped with fresh artillery, new tanks from multiple countries and training in the U.S. and Europe on how to use Western weapons, Ukraine is eyeing a counteroffensive that could isolate Russian forces from their supplies and each other.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov told the Associated Press that the renewed push could “break through the land corridor between Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula, moving from Zaporizhzhia toward Melitopol and the Azov Sea.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to respond harshly, invoking nuclear weapons, if Ukraine makes a play for Crimea.

Ground-based air defenses, armor and artillery remain among Ukraine’s most pressing needs as it mulls its next steps, the U.S. official said.

“We’ll see at the end of the week, after the meetings, what kinds of new announcements there will be,” they said. “But if you go back and look over the months, you will see that while those categories remained constant, the specific systems that countries were ready to donate and ready to deliver did change a little bit over time.”

Asked whether the U.S. has grown more amenable to providing longer-range systems like the Army Tactical Missile System that could allow Ukraine to hit targets within Russia, the defense official said they believe equipment like HIMARS is already allowing the country to strike the targets it wants.

The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Ukraine has received its first Patriot surface-to-air missile battery from Germany, offering another tool to hit incoming missiles and enemy aircraft. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force said the nation expected to receive another Patriot system from the U.S. after Orthodox Easter on April 16.

No decisions have been made on whether to supply Ukraine with military jets like F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters, as the country’s leaders have sought, the official said.

Proponents of the idea argue it would help turn the tide in favor of Ukraine; critics say it would take too long to train pilots to fly the Western jets and that, without control of their own airspace, Ukrainian pilots would have trouble making headway.

Even so, the U.S. official is confident the American-led coalition backing Ukraine is making the right decisions.

“While the Russians are having trouble with supplies and sustainment … the Ukrainians will not run out of capabilities because we’ve committed to providing what they need,” they said.

Western officials estimated that about 200,000 Russian troops and 100,000 Ukrainian troops, plus more than 21,000 civilians, had been wounded or killed as of the conflict’s one-year anniversary in February. The war is among Europe’s bloodiest since World War II.

Sweden has lobbied for admission to NATO for nearly a year amid objections from member countries Turkey and Hungary. Many U.S. and allied officials believe its inclusion would strengthen the alliance.

Securing a spot as the 32nd ally would also offer Sweden protection under NATO’s collective defense clause, should Russia target the Nordic nation, with which it shares the Baltic Sea.

“We look forward to continuing to advocate for your swift admission to NATO, and we’ll work hard to get that done before the summit,” Austin told Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson.

Austin arrived in Stockholm Tuesday evening to show support for the country’s NATO application in the first leg of a four-day visit to Europe.

Austin, Jonson and Swedish defense chief Gen. Micael Bydén, among other American and Swedish dignitaries and military officials, hashed out the next steps in their military partnership from a wood-paneled conference room inside Muskö’s rocky island cave complex.

After the hour-long bilateral talks, the U.S. defense secretary toured the subterranean base’s Maritime Operations Center and visited Muskö’s docks ahead of a joint press conference with Jonson.

“Sweden’s membership in NATO is going to mean a stronger alliance and a more secure Europe,” Austin said against the backdrop of a Visby-class stealth corvette and an anti-ship missile system on a bright spring day in southeastern Sweden. “As I’ve seen firsthand on this trip, the Swedish armed forces are an exceptionally capable and highly professional fighting force. And Sweden’s troops and capabilities will enhance NATO’s operations to deter conflict, including in the Baltic Sea region.”

He also hailed progress toward a new defense cooperation agreement between the two countries that will allow them to forge closer ties.

Sweden already participates in several international military exercises with the United States and NATO, including the U.S. Army’s massive Defender Europe event, and is currently hosting “Aurora 23,” its largest military drill in over 25 years at more than 26,000 soldiers from 14 countries. The U.S. has supplied Sweden with military equipment for years, and both countries are part of the global effort to defeat the Islamic State group.

Austin and Jonson reiterated their support for Ukraine in its 14-month war with Russia, and pledged to continue a burgeoning rotation of U.S. Navy ships, Air Force bomber task forces and high-level visits to Sweden.

The delegation then set out on the corvette to watch Swedish naval and air demonstrations from the water.

Camouflaged marines stormed a rocky island shoreline from amphibious combat boats that fired on imaginary enemy positions with the rat-a-tat of mounted machine guns.

The convoy of boats, led by the angular, gray camouflage corvette, wound through the forested island archipelago — past a minesweeper ship and a looming black submarine, cargo ships and underwater mine blasts. Two Blackhawk helicopters buzzed the procession; a pair of Gripen fighter jets soared overhead.

It’s a glimpse of the same force that would respond if Russian warships were to sail through these waters instead.

Muskö fell into disuse in the early 2000s but returned as Sweden’s naval headquarters in 2019. Leaders hope the area’s geological advantages will help shield that core staff — and possibly ships — in case of a Russian attack. The base is also a maintenance site for ships that enter through yawning openings in the rock.

Concerns that Russia could lash out at Sweden, a longtime partner of the U.S. and other NATO countries, spurred Stockholm to seek formal membership after Russian forces launched its bloody invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.

Two holdouts remain: Turkey argues Sweden has not done enough to extradite members of what Turkey considers terror groups, among other qualms related to alleged human rights abuses and a January protest in Stockholm where a Quran was publicly burned.

Hungary is still blocking Sweden’s acceptance as well, complaining that Stockholm has criticized Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s policies.

Asked whether he’s concerned about possible aggression from Russia in the months before Sweden earns the full extent of NATO protection, Jonson said his country already feels safer after earning “invitee” status in the alliance. That allows closer collaboration ahead of the full benefits imbued by membership.

“We’re militarily more integrated … now than before,” he said. “We have received reassurances from the United States and other important partners about our security. We see a much more active exercise pattern from the United States and other countries in our vicinity, and that builds security.”

Austin declined to answer to what extent striking a deal to provide Turkey with F-16 Fighting Falcon jet upgrades has smoothed the path forward, but urged Turkish and Hungarian officials to ratify Sweden’s membership “sooner versus later” to strengthen the alliance.

“We all look forward to having a very capable Sweden sitting at the desk beside us in Vilnius,” he said of NATO’s upcoming meeting in Lithuania.

The decision is a win for Air Force employees who say the service failed to provide the tools they need at work, like American Sign Language interpreters, real-time captioning equipment and videophones.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint could ultimately lead to a smoother process by which deaf and hard-of-hearing employees can obtain that help, and more accessibility features like closed captioning in training videos.

“Our clients and the other Deaf civilians they represent are hard-working and incredibly capable people, and all they have asked for are the basic accommodations they need to do their jobs,” Sean Betouliere, an attorney for the Disability Rights Advocates group, and class counsel Wendy Musell, said in a release Monday.

“Employers with far fewer resources than the Air Force regularly provide such accommodations, but the Air Force’s process for accommodating Deaf applicants and employees is profoundly broken,” the release said. “The EEOC correctly recognized that these systemic problems require a systemic fix, and we are looking forward to continuing to fight for that necessary change.”

Sarah Weimer, a former labor and employment attorney for the Air Force Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, began the initial complaint in January 2020.

Weimer alleged that most of her requests for interpreters had been “denied, unfilled, or simply gone unanswered,” the ruling said. “There were instances when her supervisors contacted headquarters to obtain her accommodations but did not receive responses.”

On at least two occasions in the past three years, Weimer couldn’t finish her required training videos because they weren’t captioned, the ruling said. Transcribing the videos was not “sustainable, effective or efficient,” it added.

“The Air Force repeatedly failed to provide me with ASL interpreters or [Communication Access Realtime Services], and I went almost a year without a working videophone, meaning that I could not even make or receive phone calls,” Weimer said in the release. “Two other deaf employees at my base went over five years without videophones despite repeated requests.”

Those problems are “persistent … across virtually all installations,” said Kendra Shock, who previously served as the Air Force’s top disability program manager, according to the April 5 ruling.

The EEOC allowed Weimer’s complaint to become a class action in October, a move the Air Force appealed to the Office of Federal Operations. The office acts as an appellate court for EEOC rulings.

Because of the latest ruling, members of the class can include any deaf people who worked for or applied to jobs in the Department of the Air Force since Jan. 1, 2018, and found it difficult to secure reasonable accommodations at work.

At least 700 employees and applicants nationwide comprise the class, according to lawyers Betouliere and Musell. That number could grow by thousands: An Air Force legal brief said it had nearly 2,600 civilian employees who identified as deaf or hard of hearing, according to the Office of Federal Operations.

Weimer alleged that the service had provided ASL interpretation just 152 times to hundreds of deaf employees since 2018.

She argued that managers within the Air Force did not budget for those accommodations, in part because the process of carving out money for those services was onerous.

The ruling said that “requests often had to be elevated to the [major command] or higher headquarters, which created delays in providing accommodations.”

Shock, the former disability program official, testified that she “frequently attempted to raise a centralized process,” according to the ruling. She said one-quarter of Air Force installations don’t have a designated disability program manager.

The Air Force agreed that it lacked enough staff to run its disability program in recent years, the ruling said. Three full-time employees were in charge of processing requests for disability accommodations, plus 85 staffers who handled those duties on top of other full-time jobs, the ruling noted.

It also acknowledged that neither mandatory employee training sessions nor internal videos were consistently captioned.

The federal government ended a General Services Administration contract to provide live captioning to those who need it, a centralized option known as Federal Relay, in February 2022. Now federal agencies must seek out that help on their own.

The Air Force “was aware of complications with connecting videophones and captioned telephones since 2018, and rather than addressing the complications in a unified way, they were handled on a case-by-case basis,” the ruling said. “In many instances, the issues were never resolved.”

An Air Force spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

The class complaint will return to the EEOC’s district office in Los Angeles, and an administrative judge will continue to probe the allegations. Class members may also bring their grievances to federal court.

Pituffik (pronounced “bee-doo-FEEK,” according to the Space Force) is the latest base with a military space mission to receive a new name since the U.S. Space Force was established in December 2019.

Most space-focused installations, like Patrick Space Force Base in Florida or Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, have dropped the “Air Force Base” moniker for new management. Pituffik — the traditional Greenlandic name of the region — is the first Space Force installation to get a completely different title.

“This renaming represents our wish to celebrate and acknowledge the rich cultural heritage of Greenland and its people and how important they are to the sustainment of this installation against the harsh environment north of the Arctic Circle,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said at the ceremony, according to a press release.

Situated about 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle on Greenland’s remote northwest coast, Pituffik has grown increasingly important to the United States as global powers jockey for military and economic influence in the Arctic.

The Space Force guardians who work there protect the U.S. homeland against ballistic missile strikes and identify objects in a growing field of space debris.

“Crews operate the Upgraded Early Warning Radar weapon system, a phased-array radar that detects and reports attack assessments of sea-launched and intercontinental ballistic missile threats in support of strategic missile warning and missile defense,” the Space Force’s website says of the 12th Space Warning Squadron. “Additionally, the radar supports space domain awareness by tracking and characterizing objects in orbit around the earth.”

Around 150 people are stationed at Pituffik. Troops reach the base — which is surrounded by ice for nine months each year — on privately contracted flights that arrive weekly from Maryland. The military also relies on a fleet of specialized LC-130 transport planes, equipped with skis, to move cargo.

The site offers a unique location for international scientific research, chilly military training and environmental protection programs.

“We recognize the important role this installation has played in ensuring our countries and all of North America have remained safe and secure,” said Alan Leventhal, the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, of which Greenland is a territory. “I hope [Pituffik] will become a symbol of our cooperation in science, climate and space research, the common defense of our countries, and the stability of this amazing part of the world that is so vital for our survival.”