Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed getting in adventures with Joule, his beloved Catahoula Leopard dog who recently died. He had participated in protests following the killing of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs officer on Jan. 7.

“He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset,” said Michael Pretti, Alex’s father. “He thought it was terrible, you know, kidnapping children, just grabbing people off the street. He cared about those people, and he knew it was wrong, so he did participate in protests.”

Pretti was a U.S. citizen, born in Illinois. Like Good, court records showed he had no criminal record and his family said he had never had any interactions with law enforcement beyond a handful of traffic tickets.

In a recent conversation with their son, his parents, who live in Colorado, told him to be careful when protesting.

“We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that… go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically,” Michael Pretti said. “And he said he knows that. He knew that.”

The Department of Homeland Security said that the man was shot after he “approached” Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun. Officials did not specify if Pretti brandished the gun. In bystander videos of the shooting that emerged soon after, Pretti is seen with a phone in his hand but none appears to show him with a visible weapon.

Family members said Pretti owned a handgun and had a permit to carry a concealed handgun in Minnesota. They said they had never known him to carry it.

Alex Pretti’s family struggles for information about what happened

The family first learned of the shooting when they were called by an Associated Press reporter. They watched the video and said the man killed appeared to be their son. They then tried reaching out to officials in Minnesota.

“I can’t get any information from anybody,” Michael Pretti said Saturday. “The police, they said call Border Patrol, Border Patrol’s closed, the hospitals won’t answer any questions.”

Eventually, the family called the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, who they said confirmed had a body matching the name and description of their son.

Alex Pretti grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he played football, baseball and ran track for Preble High School. He was a Boy Scout and sang in the Green Bay Boy Choir.

After graduation, he went to the University of Minnesota, graduating in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in biology, society and the environment, according to the family. He worked as a research scientist before returning to school to become a registered nurse.

Alex Pretti had protested before

Pretti’s ex-wife, Rachel N. Canoun, said she was not surprised he would have been involved in protesting Trump’s immigration crackdown. She said she had not spoken to him since they divorced more than two years ago and she moved to another state.

She said he was a Democratic voter and that he had participated in the wave of street protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, not far from the couple’s neighborhood. She described him a someone who might shout at law enforcement officers at a protest, but she had never known him to be physically confrontational.

“These kinds of things, you know, he felt the injustice to it,” Canoun said. “So, it doesn’t surprise me that he would be involved.”

Canoun said Pretti got a permit to carry a concealed firearm about three years ago and that he owned at least one semiautomatic handgun when they separated.

“He didn’t carry it around me, because it made me uncomfortable,” she said.

Pretti had ‘a great heart’

Pretti lived in a four-unit condominium building about 2 miles from where he was shot. Neighbors described him as quiet and warmhearted.

“He’s a wonderful person,” said Sue Gitar, who lived downstairs from Pretti and said he moved into the building about three years ago. “He has a great heart.”

If there was something suspicious going on in the neighborhood, or when they worried the building might have a gas leak, he would jump in to help.

Pretti lived alone and worked long hours as a nurse, but he was not a loner, his neighbors said, and would sometimes have friends over.

His neighbors knew he had guns — he’d occasionally take a rifle to shoot at a gun range — but were surprised at the idea that he might carry a pistol on the streets.

“I never thought of him as a person who carried a gun,” said Gitar.

Pretti was also passionate about the outdoors

A competitive bicycle racer who lavished care on his new Audi, Pretti had also been deeply attached to his dog, who died about a year ago.

His parents said their last conversation with their son was a couple days before his death. They talked about repairs he had done to the garage door of his home. The worker was a Latino man, and they said with all that was happening in Minneapolis he gave the man a $100 tip.

Pretti’s mother said her son cared immensely about the direction the county was headed, especially the Trump administration’s rollback of environmental regulations.

“He hated that, you know, people were just trashing the land,” Susan Pretti said. “He was an outdoorsman. He took his dog everywhere he went. You know, he loved this country, but he hated what people were doing to it.”

Among the branches of the United States military, the National Guard is unique. It serves as a reserve force ready to be deployed to combat overseas and it is also available to help respond to natural disasters and other emergencies here at home.

If used wisely, the National Guard is an invaluable asset to our national security and well-being. However, we have become concerned that the Guard is being used for an increasing number of missions outside of its core functions. That is why we, along with a group of other retired civilian and military leaders, recently published a statement attempting to help recalibrate the use of the National Guard.

In recent years, Guard members have been asked to execute an increasing variety of nontraditional missions. They have patrolled the border, taught in high schools, guarded prisons, filled in for civilian police officers, and served in a range of situations that stretch the definition of “emergency.” More and more often, governors and presidents — from both political parties — call upon the Guard to address problems that are typically handled by civilian authorities.

These missions come at a considerable cost to state and federal taxpayers, and they run the risk of diverting resources that could be dedicated to training and preparedness for core National Guard responsibilities as the primary combat reserve of the United States Army and the United States Air Force.

Even in the absence of new obligations, much is asked of National Guard members. They must be trained, equipped, and ready, when called upon, to perform a variety of different functions: to serve in combat overseas, to help respond to violent civil unrest at home and to provide assistance during domestic natural and manmade disasters. Maintaining readiness for these traditional functions is no small task, particularly given that most National Guard members balance their service obligations with full-time civilian jobs and with commitments to their families and communities.

The individual men and women of the National Guard want to be of service to their communities, and we are confident that they will execute their assigned missions to the best of their ability, no matter the task. At a certain point, however, overuse of the National Guard threatens the Guard’s ability to effectively execute core missions — missions that protect lives and property. It threatens the Guard’s readiness and availability to respond to genuine disasters or to be deployed to combat overseas.

And it threatens the public trust in the National Guard and the broader United States military. Often, nontraditional deployments coincide with a particular political agenda, and that appearance, warranted or not, can erode the trust that the Guard depends on to effectively execute its missions.

These are the considerations that we and our colleagues emphasize in our statement: mission preparedness, overall readiness and public trust. We think that these values should guide determinations about when to deploy the National Guard and should counsel in favor of restraint when there are other tools available.

Having helped inform decisions to deploy the National Guard, we fully recognize that they can be challenging. Often, it is state governors who must take on the considerable responsibility of deploying their National Guard units, and they must do so based on their own understanding of the need and the risks. Civilian political leaders are the ones who ultimately make these decisions. Voters are the ones who ultimately hold them accountable.

It is for this reason that we offer principles, not prescriptions. We hope that these principles will help spark a thoughtful public conversation about the appropriate use of the National Guard. And we welcome engagement and feedback both from those of you in uniform and from interested members of the American public.

Alongside our fellow retired civilian and military leaders at Count Every Hero, we are committed to doing our part to ensure that the National Guard remains a strong and ready military force worthy of the faith of the American people. We hope our elected leaders will do their part by endeavoring to deploy the National Guard only in the best interests of their states and our nation.

Daryl Bohac, a retired general, formerly served as Adjutant General for the Nebraska National Guard. Joseph Lengyel, a retired general, served as the 28th chief of the National Guard Bureau. Craig McKinley, a retired general, served as the 26th chief of the National Guard Bureau. Allyson Solomon, a retired general, formerly served as Assistant Adjutant General for the Maryland Air National Guard. Paul Stockton formerly served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs.

Nicholas Rasmussen, the DHS counterterrorism coordinator, blamed prominent voices in the political arena that frame politics as zero-sum, encouraging the belief that one political party’s gain is the other’s loss.

That type of framing leads to extreme political views, some of which gain footing among military and veteran communities, and increases the chance that people will be prompted to commit violence, Rasmussen said. The DHS labels that type of threat as domestic violent extremism.

“The toxic political environment in which we live as Americans right now, and the existentialist ways in which voices in our public square frame our politics — not only zero sum terms, but the worst kind of zero sum terms — all of that leaves us far more vulnerable than ever to targeted violence here,” Rasmussen said.

The FBI and DHS categorize extremism into four subtypes: racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism, anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism, animal rights or environmental violent extremism and abortion-related violent extremism.

Of those, Rasmussen said he is most concerned about racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism, which “continues to grow in scope and scale.”

The conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip exacerbated those risks, putting both Jewish and Muslim communities in the U.S. at greater risk of being targeted in attacks, he explained.

While other types of threats are currently more pressing, domestic violent extremism “has the potential to be more undermining of our social fabric than any other form of terrorism threat we face,” he added.

Data shows that the involvement of veterans and service members with extremist ideologies is furthering this type of violence.

Domestic extremists who plot or commit mass killings often share characteristics, such as histories of mental health and criminal issues. But the most common thread is a record of military service, according to research by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, which analyzed three decades of attacks in the U.S.

The findings illustrate a “small numbers, high impact” problem, said Ellen Gustafson, co-founder of We the Veterans, a non-partisan nonprofit that focuses on preserving and strengthening democracy.

“Seeing that there’s a potentially deadly outcome of more involvement by veterans in these extremist groups, it is imperative for us as a group of concerned citizens and also members of the veteran and military family community to try to do something about it,” Gustafson said when the research was released last year.

Rasmussen outlined the threats facing the U.S. during a speech in Omaha, Nebraska, where counterterrorism experts gathered for a conference hosted by the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center.

Threats of violence are “more challenging, more complex and more complicated” than ever because of increasing risks of domestic violent extremism, combined with concerns of terrorist networks gaining entry to the country through the U.S.-Mexico border, he told the crowd.

“I’ve often been called upon to articulate the details of the threat environment and to try to make sense of what we should be most worried about,” Rasmussen said. “It’s harder now, today, here in this moment, than it’s ever been before. We face more challenges, harder challenges.”

Highest on Rasmussen’s list of priorities are vulnerabilities at the southern border, where the U.S. has struggled to manage a record number of migrants over the past year. Tensions between state and federal authorities peaked in January amid record levels of unauthorized border crossings, during which the Texas National Guard and state troopers blocked U.S. Border Patrol agents from a 2.5-mile stretch of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas.

During the feud, the Texas Military Department posted a photo to its official X account, showing a flag from the Texas Revolution flying above its headquarters in Austin.

Renae Eze, a spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, said at the time that the state was using multiple tactics to deter people from crossing and blamed President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

“Texas will continue to deploy Texas National Guard soldiers, [Texas Department of Public Safety] troopers, and more barriers, utilizing every tool and strategy to respond to President Biden’s ongoing border crisis,” Eze said at the time.

Migrants continue to travel from all over the world to seek asylum, and while DHS tries to vet them for ties to terrorist networks, the agency isn’t always successful, Rasmussen said.

Earlier this month, the FBI arrested eight Tajik men with ties to the Islamic State who entered the country through the southern border, the New York Times reported. It’s unclear whether the men were planning a terror attack.

Rasmussen argued against the notion that terrorists are “streaming” across the border. However, the immigration crisis does increase the country’s vulnerability to attacks, he said.

“DHS employs rigorous screening and vetting of those arriving migrants to try to identify any individual who may present a terrorism-related threat to the homeland,” Rasmussen said. “Even in the midst of all of that work, we find ourselves facing a situation in which individual migrants or travelers do arrive here … and we subsequently learn that they in fact have some form of potential threat. When that happens, we work … closely with the FBI and local law enforcement around the country to deal with and mitigate that threat.”

In addition to border issues and threats of domestic violent extremism, homegrown violent extremists present another challenge for DHS, Rasmussen said.

Such threats, which come from longterm U.S. residents inspired by foreign terror organizations to reject Western culture and commit violence, comprise a significant share of the U.S.’ threat profile, he added.

According to data from START, approximately 15% of individuals with military backgrounds who were charged with plotting or committing mass killings during the past three decades were inspired by or linked to foreign Islamist extremist groups, including al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

DHS needs more resources to address these threats, Rasmussen said. The agency warned earlier this year that it faced a budget shortfall, and it urged Congress to approve a bipartisan immigration deal that would provide more than $15 billion to DHS to bolster security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Senate Republicans blocked the deal for a second time in May after former President Donald Trump described the measure as a “gift” for Democrats and Biden’s reelection chances.

Because of the funding shortfall, DHS is relying on the intelligence community, as well as academic and private-sector counterterrorism researchers, to help it prioritize threats, Rasmussen said.

“We are today a counterterrorism community of finite resources. Not something I ever thought I would say in the post-9/11 environment, but it’s true,” Rasmussen said. “We must make choices and deal most urgently with the most threatening things on our worry list. We can’t treat every problem as a top priority.”

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

The U.S. military reanchored its temporary humanitarian pier off the coast of Gaza, less than a week after detaching it ahead of high seas, a defense official said.

On Thursday, the pier was once again unloading aid, according to a U.S. defense official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

However, the aid rolling into Gaza won’t immediately reach the Palestinian people — more than 1 million of whom face “catastrophic levels of hunger,” according to the United Nations World Food Programme.

The WFP is responsible for distributing the humanitarian support but paused its deliveries June 9 due to concerns over worker safety. A day before, Executive Director Cindy McCain said, two warehouses had been hit by rockets, leaving one worker injured.

In the meantime, the crates moving from the pier into Gaza are only filling the nearby storage sites.

Following its completion in mid-May, the pier has been a debacle for the U.S. military. It was damaged by stormy weather little over a week later, leaving it out of commission until June 8. U.S. Central Command announced it would detach the pier last week, expecting rough seas that might again cause damage.

In addition, multiple U.S. service members have sustained noncombatant injuries while working on the humanitarian site.

Since its installation, the pier has only been operational for about 10 days and delivered 3,500 metric tons of aid for further transport the aid into Gaza, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh. The Pentagon insists that the pier is a “temporary measure” and that a sufficient amount of aid can only come through land routes into Gaza.

Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a briefing that he doesn’t have a date on when the pier will cease operations.

Aside from weather conditions, another concern is when the WFP will resume their distribution.

The same day WFP warehouses were rocketed, an Israeli-held raid rescued four hostages and killed at least 274 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is run by the terrorist group Hamas. The Israeli rescue unit used an area near the pier during its operation, leading WFP to conduct a security review on whether they can safely continue operations.

McCain said in a CBS “Face the Nation” interview that she is unsure how the warehouses got rocketed since they are “deconflicted” from the Israeli military.

In a briefing with reporters last week, Ryder affirmed multiple times that the Israeli Defense Forces used no part of the pier or humanitarian staging ground to launch its hostage-rescue operation.

Reporting by The Associated Press contributed to this story.

The aircraft, subject of a hearing Wednesday, has faced safety, maintenance and reliability issues for decades, with 62 service members and civilians killed in 12 Osprey accidents since 1992. The most recent was a crash off the coast of Japan in November that killed eight U.S. service members and led the military to ground the entire fleet. The aircraft, which can fly long distances fast like an airplane but land like a helicopter, began returning to service in March with flight restrictions.

Among the information that the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs has requested but has yet to receive is the wear and replacement rates on Osprey proprotor gearboxes, a component that was a factor in the 2023 crash off Japan.

Committee members also have asked for internal crash reports that the military conducts with surviving air and ground crews and witnesses. The reports, known as safety investigation board reports, aren’t available to the public and cannot be used to punish a crew — they are in place to identify and quickly share any safety issues among the fleet.

To date, the staffers said they had received about 3,500 pages of documents, but information was redacted, leaving them unable to conduct oversight. The committee staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The staffers said the documents they have reviewed left them concerned about whether Pentagon leadership has maintained a close watch on the Osprey program. Some of the problems with the aircraft date back a decade or more but still haven’t been fixed.

After mechanical and material failures led to an Osprey crash in California in 2022 that killed five Marines, the military said it had instituted changes to prevent the issue from happening again.

“However, the recent fatal crash and ongoing investigations suggest that more transparency and rigorous testing is needed to verify these claims,” U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the committee, said in a statement to the AP ahead of the hearing Wednesday.

Testifying before lawmakers will be Vice Admiral Carl Chebi, head of the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, which is responsible for the Osprey program across the military.

The committee is concerned about how the Pentagon will be able to sustain the Osprey program long term. Parts are wearing out faster than anticipated, but recent operations and maintenance budget requests by the Pentagon for the aircraft have been cut, Grothman said.

The Marine Corps is planning on using the Osprey through 2050, while Air Force Special Operations Command has already begun to talk publicly about finding another type of aircraft to conduct missions.

Osprey producers Bell Flight, the Boeing Co. and Rolls-Royce, which supplies the engines, are facing a new lawsuit from families of the five Marines killed in the 2022 California crash. The lawsuit alleges that the companies did not address known parts failures or safety issues that were a factor in the crash.

Boeing and Bell have declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

The most recent crash last year in Japan was the fourth in two years which killed a total of 20 service members. The Air Force quickly identified that a material problem with the aircraft was to blame for last year’s crash, and within a week, the entire Osprey fleet — hundreds of aircraft across the Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force — were grounded.

The staffers said the Pentagon has not provided details on what the restrictions are as the aircraft returns to operations.

The V-22 Osprey is loved by pilots because of its speed and ability to land on target like a helicopter. Besides the deadly crashes, there have been additional accidents in which the aircraft were destroyed and service members were injured, but all survived.

The World Economic Forum’s 2021 Global Competitiveness Report supported this decline, marking the U.S.’s fall from fifth place in 2002 to 13th in infrastructure quality. The results signaled an urgent need for comprehensive action to reverse the downward spiral and rebuild America’s infrastructure backbone.

In response, the Biden Administration has prioritized infrastructure revitalization as a critical agenda item, aiming to “Build Back Better.” This goal has received bipartisan support, recognizing that improving aging highways, bridges, tunnels and other infrastructure is not just a necessity but a national imperative.

However, despite touting historic infrastructure progress during the administration’s May 2024 Infrastructure Week, the sheer scale of the challenge surpasses the capacity of federal efforts alone. As an example, during Infrastructure Week, the Biden team celebrated the launch of more than 9,400 bridge repair projects. However, in 2023, the U.S. recorded 42,000 bridges in poor condition.

Traditional government funding mechanisms and processes are simply proving inadequate in meeting the overwhelming need, which brings us to the potential of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs).

PPPs are a collaborative model where the public sector joins forces with private industry to execute and manage infrastructure projects. Essentially, PPPs harness the strengths of both the public sector’s ability to regulate and protect public interests and the private sector’s efficiency, innovation and capital.

In a PPP, a collaboration is formed between the government and a private firm to deliver a public service or project. Typically, the private partner undertakes the tasks of designing, building, funding and occasionally managing the project, playing a central role in its realization and maintenance. This model allows for the sharing of risks and rewards, aiming to deliver public infrastructure more efficiently and cost-effectively than traditional government procurement methods.

Over the years, there have been multiple successful PPP infrastructure initiatives. One noteworthy project is the Port of Miami Tunnel in Florida. The project benefited all parties, alleviating downtown congestion by nearly 80% while providing a stable revenue stream derived from state and federal funding sources for the project’s financiers, Meridiam and Bouygues Travaux Publics. The project serves as a model for how PPPs can be structured to achieve public objectives without imposing direct costs on users, such as tolls.

Another example is the Denver Eagle P3 Project, one of the largest multimodal transit PPPs in the United States. It encompasses two commuter rail lines in Denver, Colorado, including the line connecting downtown Denver to Denver International Airport. This PPP arrangement allowed for the leveraging of private investment for the design, construction, financing, operation and maintenance of the rail lines, showcasing how public transportation projects can benefit from private sector efficiency and innovation while serving the public interest.

Despite these successes, the challenges posed by today’s economic environment — particularly the volatility and high interest rates that characterize the current financial landscape — cannot be overlooked. These conditions introduce significant hurdles in executing PPPs. High interest rates elevate the cost of borrowing, which is critical for funding the substantial upfront investment typically required for infrastructure projects.

This increase in financing costs can make PPPs less financially viable for private investors who rely on predictable returns over the project’s lifespan. Additionally, economic volatility can lead to uncertain future demand for infrastructure services, complicating revenue forecasts and risk assessments.

However it’s crucial not to outright dismiss PPPs due to short-term concerns. Despite the complexities and increased costs of financing, PPPs hold substantial value for their potential to deliver long-term benefits. These partnerships harness the innovation, efficiency and resources of the private sector while serving the public interest, offering a sustainable path to develop and maintain essential infrastructure. By adopting flexible, innovative approaches and leveraging strategic government support, stakeholders can mitigate current economic challenges.

As the U.S. stands at this critical juncture, one path forward should be revisited: harnessing the combined strengths of government investment, oversight and accountability with private sector expertise in design, execution and financing. By embracing them, America can repair its aging infrastructure while also laying the foundation for a more resilient future.

Scott Cannon, CEO of BigRentz, an equipment rental company based in California.

Falling from 23,000 feet, it takes the tube — called a dropsonde — about 10 minutes to hit the water. The instrument weighs less than a pound, and is the centerpiece of the day’s mission.

Equipped with a small parachute, sensors, a microprocessor, radio transmitter and GPS gear, the dropsonde measures air temperature, the dew point, and wind speed and direction as it falls toward the ocean, sending data back to the aircraft along the way.

Hogue, the aircraft’s loadmaster, checks whether the information is coming in clean. He passes it to Maj. Chris Dyke, the mission’s aerial reconnaissance weather officer, or flying meteorologist, who sits a few feet away at a special computer where he analyzes information gathered by the dropsonde and other aircraft sensors, then transmits it to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

In a real hurricane, the meteorologist would use the atmospheric data they collected to help direct the Weatherbird into the swirling storm.

The crew from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, a reserve unit from Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, is preparing for hurricane season. Known as the “Hurricane Hunters,” the 53rd plays a critical role gathering data inside storms to help the NHC improve its forecasting.

“Like any good reconnaissance mission, our job is to create certainty out of uncertainty,” Dyke told reporters ahead of a demonstration flight along the East Coast on April 24.

Weathering the storm

Comprised of 10 WC-130J aircraft loaded with weather-measuring equipment, the Hurricane Hunters are an exclusive Air Force mission. The unit was first established in 1943 and reactivated as part of the 403rd Operations Group at Keesler in 1993.

With 10 full-time and 10 part-time crews during hurricane season, which officially starts June 1 and runs through Nov. 30 each year, the 53rd can simultaneously fly in three separate storms from locations across the continental U.S., as well as from Hawaii and the Caribbean.

Five airmen work aboard each flight: two pilots, a navigator, an aerial reconnaissance weather officer and a loadmaster.

But the 53rd isn’t only on the hunt for hurricanes. Since 2020, crews now spend the winter tracking “atmospheric rivers,” or tropical winter storms that can dump massive amounts of rain or snow along America’s coasts.

The 53rd’s hunting has intensified as storms grow more frequent. Since 2018, the demand for winter reconnaissance flights has increased more than 600%. For hurricane season, it’s grown by 18%, according to the Air Force.

In fiscal year 2023, the Hurricane Hunters flew 93 tropical reconnaissance missions into 16 named storms, plus 48 missions during the winter.

“Those are the highest we’ve had in the last nine years, at least,” Dyke said, adding that the volume of missions in 2024 is already on track to meet or beat last year — with about a month to go before hurricane season officially begins.

In April, forecasters at Colorado State University predicted the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season will become “extremely active” due to warm seawater and less wind shear to disrupt storms. CSU believes the season will generate five major hurricanes with winds above 111 mph, out of 11 hurricanes and 23 named storms in total.

Responding to more storms leaves less time to train and maintain the Hurricane Hunters’ aging fleet of aircraft, which averages almost 23 years old. The squadron completed its transition from the older C-130H to the WC-130J in 2005, and each aircraft has flown more than 6,500 hours on average, according to Air Force data.

“They are definitely spread thin,” Maj. Gen. C. McCauley von Hoffman, deputy chief of staff of the Air Force Reserve, told reporters. “At the same time, they would now be considered an aging weapons system, with the number of hours on it. So, parts availability, all of that, is hard.”

An aircraft that flies into a hurricane has unique maintenance needs as well, added Col. William Magee, commander of the 403rd Maintenance Group. Hail is one of the biggest culprits of damage, even though planes are painted to defend against it, he said.

After flying through Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in southwest Florida as a Category 4 storm in September 2022, maintainers had to replace several components on one aircraft, including its carbon-fiber propellers.

“Even though they’re modified to take that sort of hail damage, this one was so, so rough we had to change several propellers,” Magee said. “We had to change the radome.”

Taking into account the violent shaking that the aircraft endure as a result of hurricane-force winds, the corrosive environment they’re exposed to, and the pace of flights, the challenges of the Hurricane Hunters’ unique job are threatening to prove too much for the planes.

“I’m not authorized to say when enough is enough,” Magee said. “But we are growing our storm missions at a rate of … if you were to say, ‘Today is enough utilization of our airplanes,’ about every two years, we would earn another airplane to maintain that current utilization rate.”

Tight resources can mean making tough decisions. In August, the 53rd pulled aircraft from covering a storm out of St. Croix back to Keesler so they could fly in Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm, Dyke said.

That could mean going without crucial data if a storm is prioritized over another.

“Now we’re talking about potential impacts to stateside readiness, homeland defense,” Dyke said. “If you ask the wing commander at Homestead [Air Reserve Base, Florida], the wing commander at Tyndall [AFB, Florida], the wing commander at any coastal installation, they’ll tell you the same thing. They rely on that hurricane center forecast to tell them what’s going to happen.”

Eyes on the storm

While the media flight in April saw mostly sunny skies, during an actual storm, the Hurricane Hunters launch multiple dropsondes from an altitude of about 10,000 feet, including at its eyewall and in the center, as directed by the flying meteorologist.

The Air Force says that data has helped improve the accuracy of hurricane forecasts by 20%, saving $1 million per mile of coastline. Flying in winter storms, too, has helped provide more predictive data, giving local and state officials more lead time to plan ahead on matters such as search-and-recovery efforts and when to lower water reservoirs to prevent flooding.

As the military and lawmakers increasingly worry about the effects of severe weather on military bases, the data collected by WC-130J crews can also help officials decide whether to evacuate people and assets like aircraft and ships.

Lt. Col. Stephen Pituch, the copilot on April’s demonstration flight, was the first to fly into Hurricane Michael in October 2018. Michael became the first Category 5 storm to hit the U.S. since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Michael advanced from a tropical storm to a Category 2 hurricane in less than eight hours, and within two days had roared into a Category 5, Pituch said. Tyndall may not have been evacuated had awareness of the storm’s intensity not been adequately gauged, he added.

Tyndall, as well as several other nearby military installations, evacuated thousands of personnel and some F-22 Raptor fighters. But the base was flattened by a direct hit from Michael, which by then had strengthened to a Category 4. The base is now more than five years into a reconstruction effort that is slated to cost about $5 billion.

“That was never forecast to be more than a Cat. 1,” Pituch said.

FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell joined Gov. Kevin Stitt and Sen. James Lankford in surveying the damage in Marietta that was caused by the Saturday night tornado that struck the town about 100 miles (161 kilometers) south of Oklahoma City, killing one person.

“We’re going to work through the day to get a better understanding of what the impacts are across the state,” Criswell said. “I’ll give an update to the president on what I’ve seen and make sure we get the right federal resources” to each area.

The National Weather Service rated the tornado as an EF4 with wind speeds of up to 170 mph (274 kph). It was one of at least 25 tornadoes the weather service confirmed having struck Oklahoma and north Texas Saturday night, 22 of them in Oklahoma.

Criswell will also survey damage in Sulphur, which was hit by an EF3 tornado with winds of up to 165 mph (266 kph) that left one dead. Another EF3 tornado with winds of up to 145 mph (233 kph) struck Holdenville, killing two people.

Stitt said the initial focus of recovery efforts is on people who were uninsured and helping businesses rebuild.

The governor noted that the state Legislature is currently meeting. “We’re still in session … so if there is some kind of gap that we need to do on funding, we can absolutely get that across the finish line,” Stitt said.

The tornadoes, part of an outbreak of severe weather across the middle of the U.S., followed dozens of tornadoes that raked Iowa and Nebraska on Friday, killing one person.

New Hampshire National Guard Lt. Ryan Camp looked through the border fence separating Texas and Mexico, and made a mental note of the pickup truck crawling back and forth along the bank of the Rio Grande. He logged the man fishing and the person he could hear but not see walking through the brush below the fence.

Camp’s list of events can grow long by the end of a 10-hour shift.

That’s the kind of vigilance, he said, that left his unit prepared to spot a group of migrants crossing the river in darkness Wednesday night. Soldiers intercepted the foursome after they cut the fence and slipped under.

“You have to pay attention and be observant of what’s happening not only in front of you at the anti-climb barrier, but what’s happening in the river, and what’s happening on the opposite bank,” Camp said during a patrol last week. “Every encounter we have on the border is different, and we have to adapt every night to every scenario.”

Gov. Chris Sununu deployed 15 National Guard soldiers to Eagle Pass, Texas, in early April to help that state stop undocumented migrants and drugs from coming into the country illegally. The New Hampshire soldiers pair with Guard members from Texas and Louisiana, patrolling 1 1/2 miles of Texas’ 1,250-mile border overnight. Camp said they encounter about 50 migrants a night on average, a huge drop from the 5,000 who were arriving in December.

Their orders allow them to do three things: report suspicious or illegal activity to Texas authorities; direct migrants to a legal port of entry; and aid migrants only amid danger to their “life, limb, or eyes.”

They cannot arrest or detain migrants. They cannot even give them water.

Pfc. Dennis Harris, 42, of Freedom, was keeping watch from atop a Humvee last week.

“It’s more of a safety aspect both for the people that are trying to cross and for the people that are here in the States,” he said. “Because, yes, some people that are crossing are obviously family members but there’s also other individuals who are crossing that we probably don’t want living next door.”

Logistically and emotionally challenging

The soldiers’ mission, which will keep them in Texas until early June, is likely more logistically and emotionally complicated than it looks from afar. It can be frustrating, they said, to watch a situation unfold and be so limited in responding.

That includes waiting for a person to cut or climb over a fence before calling in Texas authorities and saying no to someone asking for water.

Some migrants ask the soldiers to admit them because they fear for their safety at home. Some appear with young children. They risk drowning in the Rio Grande to get that far. Some spend hours looking for a spot out of the soldiers’ sight to cut the fence and slip under. Last week a woman and two men slept two nights against the fence, asking the soldiers to let them in. Camp, who like the other New Hampshire soldiers does not speak Spanish, used Google Translate to communicate with them.

“She was saying that she would rather be imprisoned here than in Mexico and that Mexico was dangerous,” Camp, 26, of Brookfield, said.

Camp recounted a man approaching the fence carrying a toddler in his backpack, through coils of wire with sharp barbs that can quickly shred a pack.

Last week, a group of migrants found an opportunity to climb over the fence unnoticed and cleared a second fence about 200 yards away. To protect themselves against the sharp wire, they drape it with clothes or blankets. Sometimes they light the material on fire to melt the wire.

When troops noticed the migrants fleeing, Sgt. Timothy King, 26, of Fremont, said they responded the only way their orders allow them to: call authorities who have the power to take migrants into custody — if they find them.

“I’ve seen instances where (migrants) will sit in the brush for probably up to nine or 10 hours,” King said. “They are determined. They will just go out there and just take a nap and … wait until the search gets called off and they can get through.”

Soldiers from other states have seen individuals leave infants at the fence and return to Mexico, waiting to see if the authorities take the child into the United States. If they don’t, they swim across the river again and collect the child.

Guard members from another state saw a woman give birth at the fence. In that case, soldiers responded because the life of the mother and child were at risk.

“You do everything you can to make sure that if something goes wrong, you can save them,” Camp said. “But until then you have to do your job.”

He said those experiences take a toll on soldiers. The unit was given resources for mental health treatment when they arrived. Camp and another troop leader, Sgt. 1st Class Cameron Holt-Corti of North Berwick, Maine, watch their soldiers for signs they are struggling and help them seek treatment.

“Our job is simple to describe, but there is nothing simple about it,” Camp said.

According to media reports last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said 14 of its agents had died by suicide in 2022, the highest count in a single year since it began tracking suicides in 2007.

There are no days off

At the start of his 7 p.m. shift, Holt-Corti, 34, stepped aside, his cell phone to his ear. He was wishing his three children goodnight.

“You miss them, and it’s rough on them,” he said. “I’ve talked to them every day.”

Each of the 15 Guard members, whose ages range from 19 to 42, left something behind when they volunteered for this mission.

Harris, who also has children, works in construction. Holt-Corti is the director of safety at a welding company. Camp works at Sig Sauer’s testing range and looks after his parents. One soldier is trying to keep up with college courses.

“You have to make sure that you’re talking with your work, you’re talking to your professors,” Camp said. “One of the things that can be hard for people is the world doesn’t stop while you’re gone. So you’ll come back and things are different. And you end up playing catch up.”

They are staying an hour from Eagle Pass, in Base Camp Alpha, in Del Rio, a commute that stretches their 10-hour shift to 12 hours. They’ve got a gym and a chow hall that serves a lot of shrimp. They cannot have alcohol on or off duty. Some have to get around in a minivan because the car rental agency had nothing else.

Soldiers work three nights, followed by three days off. But “off” is a misnomer because they use those days to keep their service pistol in working order and keep up with training.

“That’s the Army as a whole,” Camp said. “When you have a day off, in reality, you don’t really have a day off. You have a calmer day.”

New Hampshire Bulletin is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on Facebook and Twitter.

When I served as chief of staff for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from 2001 to 2008, the U.S. experienced an average of seven billion-dollar weather and climate disasters per year. Now, the annual average has swelled to 20 over the past five years, including a record 28 disasters last year. In the past decade, the average annual cost of these disasters has skyrocketed from $64 billion to $121 billion, and it’s only expected to climb higher according to the federal government’s latest National Climate Assessment.

The financial toll would be much greater if it weren’t for weather forecasts issued or enabled by NOAA, which already save billions of dollars annually and countless lives. However, the agency’s budget is simply too small to keep up with the new reality of extreme weather, putting hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives at risk over the next few decades.

What NOAA acting chief scientist Craig McLean said to Congress three years ago —”NOAA is a $12 billion agency trapped in a $5-and-a-half billion budget”— still rings true today. With a fiscal year 2024 budget of $6.3 billion, the nation’s leading weather and climate agency remains significantly underfunded given the requirements to meet its mission of protecting life, property and the economy.

NOAA has always been a good value for the American taxpayer. Looking at hurricanes alone, a 2022 study estimated $7 billion in savings due to NOAA forecast improvements since 2009—that’s 20 times the agency’s hurricane forecasting system budget during the same period. Another analysis estimates a value of $9 for every $1 spent by federal agencies on weather forecasting and research, which also enables a thriving private weather sector.

These large returns on investment are due to advances in weather forecasting infrastructure, research and technology that have yielded steady improvements in forecast accuracy and lead times over the past several decades. The pace of improvement, however, has struggled to keep up with the increasing frequency of weather extremes.

The good news is, research shows that “our current weather prediction capabilities are not yet maxed out and could still be significantly improved,” but that it would take 40 to 50 years to reach their full potential at the current rate of improvement. The nation can’t afford to wait that long given the financial toll of extreme weather could reach $2 trillion annually by the end of this century.

There is “growing evidence that investing in improvements in weather forecasting is a highly cost-effective means of reducing damages from extreme weather,” according to the World Bank. One study found that a 50 percent improvement in U.S. temperature forecasts alone would save 2,200 lives and $2.1 billion annually.

Yet funding for NOAA, whose data and models underpin all U.S. weather forecasts, has remained largely stalled. The agency’s annual budget has increased by just $1 billion in the past decade — some programs are even facing significant cuts — while the annual cost of extreme weather has soared by more than $50 billion.

Return on investment

Here are five critical NOAA focus areas where increased funding would accelerate the pace of forecast improvement, potentially saving the nation hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few decades based on the historical return on investment in weather forecasting:

— Observations: Numerous sensors collect millions of weather observations every day. But there are still significant data gaps, especially in the lower atmosphere and across the oceans, that restrict our ability to improve forecasts. In addition, NOAA’s method for bringing this data into its forecast models is not as advanced as it could be — a key reason why the accuracy of its flagship model has lagged behind international competitors. NOAA must have the financial means to tap into new data sources and improve its technique for ingesting data into its models.

— Computing resources: NOAA’s Science Advisory Board estimated the agency will need at least 100 times more high-performance computing capacity by 2031 to handle the expected research and operations load, including running more advanced models that make forecasts at finer scales. Expanded use of cloud computing is critical to accelerating the transition of research to operations, allowing academia and industry to contribute to model improvements, providing on-site decision support to key partners, and seamlessly disseminating forecasts and warnings.

— Coastal resilience: Nearly 40 percent of Americans live in coastal counties, which are taking a battering from more extreme weather. Robust funding of NOAA’s water modeling, buoy network, flood mapping and land cover data is vital to supporting sustainable coastal management that protects near-shore communities, marine health and habitats, commercial fishing, recreational businesses, and coastal tourism and transportation.

— Artificial intelligence: NOAA is collaborating with academic partners to evaluate emerging AI weather models from the private sector. The agency is also conducting in-house AI projects to improve its forecasting capabilities. Still, NOAA trails its top competitor, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which has already developed its own AI forecast model. AI has shown great promise to slash the cost of operating forecast models but requires upfront investment to get the ball rolling.

— Social science: More accurate forecasts don’t ensure better decisions. Forecasts must be communicated effectively to elicit responses that save lives and minimize financial loss. A well-funded NOAA social science program is essential to understanding how people interpret and act on forecasts, better communicating forecasts, improving decision support to emergency managers, assessing the needs of vulnerable populations, and quantifying the economic value of better forecasts.

Many of these key priorities are outlined in the Weather Act Reauthorization Act of 2023 under consideration by Congress, though none can move forward at a proper speed at existing funding levels.

The United States is the world’s second-most economically exposed country to intensifying weather hazards, according to a recent report from reinsurance company Swiss Re. Therefore, it is more urgent now than ever before to fund NOAA at a level commensurate with the rising toll of extreme weather and the value of NOAA’s services to the nation.

Scott Rayder is president of Lynker, a science, engineering and technology company that supports NOAA and other federal agencies. Previously, he served as NOAA chief of staff from 2001 to 2008 after first joining the agency in 1992.