Capt. Bianca C. Wilkerson, 37, of Norfolk, Virginia, died Sept. 18 “as a result of a non-combat-related incident,” the Army said Wednesday. A defense official confirmed she was posthumously promoted to major.

Wilkerson was assigned to Headquarters, U.S. Army Central & Third Army at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, and was deployed to Doha, Qatar, where she was supporting overseas operations, according to the Army.

A defense official previously told Task & Purpose that Wilkerson suffered a medical incident while aboard a military flight en route to Saudi Arabia. Her death was added to the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, on Sept. 21, before the Army publicly identified her on Sept. 23.

The DCAS entry lists Wilkerson’s death as “pending” under the category “Overseas Operations,” rather than under Operation Epic Fury, the Defense Department’s name for the initial U.S. military operation against Iran.

A defense official said the classification reflects the Defense Department’s treatment of casualties in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility after Operation Epic Fury, which the Pentagon said ended May 5.

“Since Operation Epic Fury concluded, the Department classifies casualties as having occurred in Overseas Operations in the [U.S. Central Command] area of responsibility,” the official said.

Wilkerson is the fifth service member listed under the Overseas Operations category. Four other service members who died in July are also listed in that category. Combined with the 14 deaths listed under Operation Epic Fury, Wilkerson’s death brings the public DCAS tally to 19 since the start of the Iran war.

The Defense Casualty Analysis System is the Defense Department’s public casualty database. The Defense Manpower Data Center maintains the system, while the military services provide the underlying casualty information.

A defense official said the classification used in DCAS is separate from determinations concerning a service member’s pay and benefits.

DCAS lists Wilkerson’s death as non-hostile, with the cause listed as “undetermined.” The Army has separately described her death as non-combat-related, while the defense official said she died following a medical incident.

The incident remains under investigation, and an autopsy is pending, according to the Army.

Wilkerson graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve as a transportation officer in 2013, according to the Army.

She served as an executive officer with the 678th Transportation Company in Newport News, Virginia, before moving into active-duty assignments that included logistics and transportation positions with units in the 1st Armored Division and 25th Infantry Division. She later commanded a forward-support company with the 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.

In 2023, Wilkerson became company commander of the Huntington Beach Recruiting Company with the Southern California Recruiting Battalion. In 2025, she was reassigned as the G4 supply and services chief for Headquarters, U.S. Army Central & Third Army at Shaw Air Force Base.

Her military awards include the Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal (1 Oak Leaf Cluster), Army Superior Unit Award, Army Reserve Component Medal, National Defense Service Medal and Army Service Ribbon, according to the Army.

Bianca Wilkerson loved animals and was a longtime volunteer at her local animal shelter, continuing to help out wherever the Army took her next. Those who served alongside Wilkerson remember her as a demanding leader who took responsibility for the people and missions entrusted to her. Lt. Col. Markus Hopkins, who served with her, said she understood the weight that came with that responsibility.

“She understood what it meant to be accountable for something bigger than herself,” Hopkins said. “She carried that weight with pride and seriousness.”

Two weeks ago, a divestment ceremony and final flight was held for the last operational Pave Hawk from the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing at Moffett Air National Guard Base, California, according to a recent release.

“The ceremony commemorated more than the retirement of tail number 27045,” the announcement reads. “It honored a legacy built by the pilots, special mission aviators, pararescuemen, maintainers and support personnel who transformed the Pave Hawk from a helicopter into a symbol of hope and survival.”

From serving in combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq to assisting communities devastated by disasters in California, the aircraft represents the people who kept it operational and the lives it helped save.

The aircraft from the 129th supported missions following hurricanes Katrina, Ike and Harvey as well as carrying crews during Afghanistan deployments, assisting in more than 300 combat saves.

“When you’re flying the [Pave Hawk], you kind of become one with that machine,” Lt. Col. Benjamin Buchta, HH-60 pilot and commander of the 129th Rescue Squadron, said in the release. “The Golf feels like home when I sit in it.”

When the Air Force converted six Army UH-60L Black Hawk helicopters into HH-60G Pave Hawks, the tail number 27045, the last operational Pave Hawk was one of them.

For many airmen, the Pave Hawk was the aircraft they learned their profession on, deployed with and devoted their lives to in an effort to help save others, the release highlights.

The Pave Hawk built the helicopter search and rescue community into what it is today, Buchta said, since it’s the “cornerstone” for many current Air Force tactics.

“While the last HH-60G has flown its final Air Force mission, the legacy those Airmen built will continue wherever rescue crews answer the call to bring someone home,” the release reads.

The Air Force is transitioning to the next-generation combat search and rescue helicopter, the HH-60W Jolly Green II, with advanced technology and increased capabilities.

The class action, filed before the Merit Systems Protection Board, pursues compensation for five current and former federal civilian employees who also serve in the military. The suit is against the Departments of Defense, Justice and Veterans Affairs, according to the motion shared with Military Times.

The suit says the reservists served on qualifying active duty during a declared national emergency and were not paid the difference between their civilian salary and military pay.

Those listed in the class action are: Army Reserve Capt. Lacy Jaudon, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Shahara Timbrook, Army reservist Shea Matthew Gibbons, Navy reservist Bryce Miller, and Army Reserve Capt. John Mezzanotte.

Some of the reservists served on active duty dating back to 2016, while two are still under orders through Sept. 30.

Reservist differential pay was enacted by Congress in 2009 to protect eligible federal civilian employees who are members of the Reserve of National Guard from taking a pay cut when called to active duty during a declared national emergency.

Following that passage, the Office of Personnel Management restricted the types of active-duty service that are eligible for differential pay.

The class action comes over a year after the Supreme Court ruled in Feliciano v. Department of Transportation that federal employees called to active-duty service are entitled to such pay, dismissing OPM’s guidance that it has to be related to a national emergency.

“The Supreme Court could not have been clearer: These men and women earned this pay, and the law requires the government to make them whole,” Andrew Tutt, who argued Feliciano v. DoT and is now the reservists’ counsel, said in the statement. “They held up their end of the bargain. It is long past time for the government to hold up its own.”

The suit asserts that the government told the Supreme Court it would change its guidance twice but has not yet done so. The delay prompted multiple lawsuits, including one filed in August by an Army reservist and Department of Veterans Affairs attorney Marcus Colicelli against OPM.

The new suit also aims to recover compensation from an existing class action, Platero v. United States, which is being argued before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. That lawsuit argues that USERRA claims brought before the Merit Systems Protection Board can have no statute of limitations.

“As a part of the ongoing civilian restructure within Air Education and Training Command, civilian positions will no longer be assigned to China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI),” an Air Force spokesperson said in a statement to Defense News on Tuesday. “The CASI mission continues, with the organization leveraging assigned military service members to accomplish its objectives.”

Civilians affected by the restructuring will stay in their current positions until further notice and will be evaluated for reassignment, the spokesperson said.

CASI Director Brendan Mulvaney described the fallout differently. All of the institute’s civilian billets are being eliminated, “effectively ending CASI,” he said Tuesday. No military positions are affected, he said, noting the institute has two master sergeant billets and a deputy position that has remained unfilled for over a year.

Asked how the cut would impact the institute’s research, Mulvaney said, “All of the research has always been done by the civilian personnel.”

According to Mulvaney, the decision was made by the previous Air University commander and forwarded by AETC under a requirement to cut civilian jobs across the Department of the Air Force. The quota originated with the Air Force’s manpower and reserve affairs office, he said.

The cut “had nothing to do with CASI’s mission,” Mulvaney said, but due to the fact that the institute does not produce professional military education students, which is Air University’s primary mission.

Asked whether another organization would take on CASI’s China aerospace research, Mulvaney said, “Nothing has been identified.” It is also unknown whether CASI’s reports, translations and course materials will remain publicly available, or whether its website will remain online, he said.

The cuts became public Monday, when a note from a CASI civilian circulated on social media. The employee wrote that every CASI civilian position would be unfunded as of Oct. 1 and that the staff would become “surplus federal employees,” a federal personnel term for workers whose positions are being eliminated.

The note described CASI’s future as “uncertain,” adding that “CASI punched above its weight given our small team and budget.”

Will Yale, a Navy surface warfare officer who posted the note on X, wrote that it was “extremely unfortunate and regrettable” that the Department of the Air Force “has decided to shutter” CASI. He described the institute as one of the most prominent in its field and wrote that it had “measurably increased knowledge about the PLA” inside the U.S. government and outside it.

Andrew Erickson, a Naval War College professor and CASI associate, noted that the news is “specific to CASI only.” Mulvaney said the action does not affect the Navy’s China Maritime Studies Institute, the Army War College’s China Landpower Studies Center or the Marine Corps War College’s China Warfighting Initiative.

CASI was established in 2017 and formally chartered on June 15, 2021, by then-Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. The charter tasked the institute with studying “everything that flies” in China, calling CASI the Air Force’s leading center for the study of China and its aerospace capabilities. It has offices at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and Fort McNair in Washington.

The institute’s research was unclassified by design, according to its charter, which directed CASI to use publicly available native-language sources and publish its findings. CASI translated PLA textbooks and doctrine, published reference primers and ran a free three-day PLA Fundamentals course that required no security clearance.

Its biennial CASI Conference, held in May at National Defense University, drew more than 250 attendees and featured the release of the fifth edition of its “PLA Aerospace Power” primer, CASI said.

In 2025, nearly 80,000 people visited CASI’s website and downloaded more than 50,000 reports, according to the institute. The site remains live and posted a new paper on Sept. 21, “From Vision to Vigilance: How Beijing’s Space-Science Roadmap Builds a Real-Time Kill Web.”

CASI had already lost staff a year ago. In an October 2025 quarterly update, the institute said a Defense Department efficiency drive had eliminated its director of education and education program manager positions as the Department of the Air Force was “reorganizing, inactivating, and realigning organizations.” CASI said things were “in flux” and it would provide a status update once it knew more.

Ryan Fedasiuk, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, called the move “a devastating loss for the analytic community” and an “incomprehensible decision.”

The Air Force said CASI’s mission will continue, with military members carrying on the work Mulvaney said civilians have always done.

“I am incredibly relieved and think the outcome is very sensible. We can be satisfied,” Naaja Nathanielsen, a Greenlandic MP in the Danish parliament, told Reuters.

Parliament speaker Kim Kielsen urged households to raise the Greenlandic flag on Wednesday. Activist and influencer Orla Joelsen encouraged residents in the capital, Nuuk, to show up at the airport to welcome the prime minister and foreign minister back from New York, where they struck the deal.

New US bases

The agreement allows the U.S. to expand its military presence on Greenland, reopening Cold War-era bases in the settlements of Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig, with a prospect of renewed spending and employment potential.

But it stopped short of Trump’s unsettling previous demand that the U.S. annex Greenland to head off the growing Arctic presence of Russia and China.

“There has previously been a significant American presence in Greenland, so this is nothing new,” added Nathanielsen. “However, in light of the unrest over the past few years, there is likely greater scepticism in Greenland, and consequently, work needs to be done to reassure the local population.”

The U.S. first built military bases in Greenland during World War II. During the Cold War, it maintained 17 military installations and more than 10,000 personnel to monitor Soviet forces. Today, only Pituffik Space Base remains, with some 150 U.S. military personnel.

Residents divided

Pitanguaq Mikissen, 69, a retired ship assistant, said the potential reopening of some old U.S. bases gave greater security to the territory’s 57,000 people.

But not all residents were happy.

“I think that Trump is really good at creating a lot of worry and a lot of fear,” said Jensia Dam-Davidsen, 40, a voice and choir teacher.

“It (the deal) seems wrong in every way — especially now that Denmark has expanded their military presence here.”

Denmark has significantly increased its own military footprint in Greenland since Trump’s threats peaked in January, deploying additional troops, boosting Arctic defence spending and hosting allies under military exercises.

Malene Vahl Rasmussen, mayor of Kujalleq municipality in southern Greenland, where the U.S. is looking to reopen the Narsasuaq military base, said that under the agreement, U.S. military expansion must respect the Greenlandic way of life to protect hunting and fishing.

“You can’t simply say, ‘OK, we’ve signed this, so now we trust you again’. Trust really needs to be rebuilt within that partnership,” she told Reuters.

Some Greenlanders worry that expanded military activity — including increased aircraft and vessel movement — could disrupt hunting and fishing grounds that communities rely on for a living, though the agreement states such activity must respect Greenlandic society and traditional ways of life.

The airman was assigned to the 31st Fighter Wing, located at Aviano Air Base, according to a recent release. The cause of death is currently under investigation, and the airman’s identity remains unknown pending notification to next of kin.

The death follows the passing of another Aviano airman last month. Airman 1st Class Malachi Robinson, a weapons loader in the 555th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, died in a water-related accident while swimming in Lake Barcis, Italy.

The 31st Fighter Wing’s mission is to defend and improve base infrastructure, further Agile Combat Employment capabilities and empower families and airmen at the base.

The wing maintains two F-16 fighter squadrons and hosts the 56th and 57th Rescue Squadrons and the 606th Air Control Squadron. The 31st is the only U.S. fighter wing south of the Alps and is essential to operations in NATO’s southern region.

Now, the Pentagon is adding a new measure for advancement: how officers perform when presented with a military problem and required to make decisions under pressure.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that eligible Army, Air Force and Marine Corps colonels and Navy captains screening for promotion to one-star will undergo a new Joint Warfighter Evaluation, or JWE. The assessment is intended to measure officers’ operational planning, decision-making and leadership under simulated combat conditions. It will supplement, rather than replace, existing service promotion processes.

The JWE grew out of Hegseth’s broader effort to change how the military evaluates and promotes senior leaders. In announcing the evaluation, Hegseth said the effort had been in development for about a year and that the assessment is intended to measure officers’ ability to “fight, adapt, and win” in a chaotic battlespace.

Internal service plans obtained and reviewed by Fox News show that the JWE consists of six versions, one for each of the five military services and another through the Joint Staff.

The assessments vary considerably, ranging from remote written assessments and digital simulations to hours-long, in-person wargames, Fox News reported. In some versions, officers will be presented with a military problem and make decisions as an AI-powered adversary responds to their moves; another brings officers to a war college for an in-person wargame in which evaluators observe their responses as an opposing force counters their decisions.

Service-specific figures and formats were made available by Fox News, which reported that it reviewed internal documents. The reporting had not been independently confirmed by the Pentagon as of Tuesday evening.

According to the news outlet, Army plans to assess roughly 900 eligible colonels through a remote written assessment, followed by a digital wargame. The Air Force intends to give a two-hour online analysis followed by a one-hour interactive simulation for roughly 1,330 colonels. The Space Force will follow a similar format for roughly 125 officers.

The Navy is planning an in-person assessment for roughly 308 captains in the unrestricted line and information warfare communities. Those officers are expected to travel to the Naval War College for a three-hour written assessment followed by a two- to three-hour wargame.

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps plans to use an eight-hour remote evaluation for up to 175 colonels using an AI-enabled platform that combines written assessments with situational-judgment tests. Comparable details about the format of the Joint Staff version have not been revealed.

The Pentagon has not established how heavily the results will influence promotion decisions.

Stuart Scheller, the senior Pentagon adviser leading the effort, told Fox News that existing performance reports will remain the “bedrock” of promotion decisions, with the JWE providing an additional data point.

“The secretary still has judgment based on how it will be weighted in the board, so we haven’t determined. We’re kind of waiting to see how well this thing is rolled out,” Scheller said.

The first assessments are expected to take place from February through June 2027, ahead of O-7 promotion boards scheduled for July through September. The Pentagon plans to study the results from that first cycle before determining how the assessment should evolve and how much influence it should have on future promotion boards.

Scheller also acknowledged that no exercise can perfectly recreate the pressures of combat and said the Pentagon expects to change the assessments as it learns from the first cycle.

“Right now in our current system, we have people that are very good at navigating their careers,” Scheller said. “We have very good — I want to be clear, very good — military personnel and leaders across the military, but there isn’t a stand-alone function that can truly assess the best military commanders on the battlefield.”

Hot Spots Charters in Florida fished out a unique catch while chartering near Eglin Air Force Base on Saturday: a delta-wing unmanned aerial drone.

The drone resembles a Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, or LUCAS, used by the U.S. military during Operation Epic Fury. The platform, built by SpektreWorks, is a one-way attack drone that was reverse-engineered after the Iranian Shahed-136 and can be launched by catapults, rocket-assisted takeoff and mobile ground systems.

LUCAS drones cost the U.S. military $35,000 per platform and are a variation of the company’s FLM 136 target model, which is designed for counter-drone training while resembling Iran’s Shahed-136.

On Thursday, two days prior to the charter crew finding the drone, a LUCAS UAS “impacted” the water during a routine, scheduled test on the Eglin range, a base spokesperson told Military Times.

“The aircraft has been recovered and is back in the Department’s possession,” the spokesperson said.

The base would neither confirm nor deny if it was the same drone.

The base’s test and training range is approximately 120,000 square miles of overwater airspace, covering part of the Gulf of Mexico from the Florida panhandle to the Florida Keys.

Hot Spots posted a photo of the drone alongside catches of red snapper and mahi-mahi, while a local aquatic photographer with the handle Aquatic Charlie also posted photos on his own social media account.

The images show the drone largely intact, only missing its engine, propeller and nose cone — damage likely to have occurred upon impact with the water.

Hot Spots Charter and the captain who found the drone did not immediately return a Military Times request for comment.

Eglin, located in the western Florida panhandle, is home to the 96th Test Wing, which is the test and evaluation center for Air Force-delivered weapons, navigation and guidance systems, command and control systems and Air Force Special Operations Command systems.

“The wing provides expert evaluation and validation of the performance of systems throughout the design, development, acquisition, and sustainment process to ensure the warfighter has technologically superior, reliable, maintainable, sustainable and safe systems,” the 96th’s fact sheet reads.

In December 2025, U.S. Central Command announced the launch of a unit, titled Task Force Scorpion Strike, that is equipped with LUCAS drones and based in the Middle East. Personnel from the U.S. Special Operations Command Central, housed at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, launched the unit and led the subsequent Task Force Falcon Strike, focused on multi-domain, multinational attack drones.

The LGM-35 Sentinel program finalized a four-month testing campaign by vertically stacked the inert missile at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, according to a recent release.

The campaign verified the viability of all missile stages, propulsion elements, shroud and subcomponents to be assembled into a single configuration test pad. The operation also showcased that all handling processes and personnel are capable of executing field assembly through verifying segments of the weapon system’s operational lifecycle, per the statement.

“From cross-country transport and specialized crane lifts to precision interface checks on the pad, bringing all of these elements together validated our technical baselines and proved Sentinel is ready to support the next phase of development,” Maj. Gen. William S. Rogers, Air Force portfolio acquisition executive for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, said in the release.

Alongside the on-pad integration, the first flight test design review, done by Air Force Test Center’s 719th Test Squadron, was completed, demonstrating that the missile’s design maturity and hardware testing satisfies requirements for safety and mission assurance ahead of 2027 flight testing.

Sentinel is on track to field initial capability in the early 2030s as a ground-based deterrent for decades, per the announcement.

“Sentinel is no longer conceptual or designs for what the nation’s next-generation ICBM looks like; it’s a physical, fully integrated system that is one major step closer to being ready for flight testing,” Gen. Dale White, Critical Major Weapon Systems director, said in the release.

“While this is a significant achievement, we will keep driving, firmly focused on delivering a modernized, credible strategic deterrent that will safeguard the nation and its allies well into the future,” he continued.

During a media roundtable last week at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference, White told reporters that the program is still on track for Milestone B, which allows the project to enter the engineering and manufacturing development phase.

“From a civil perspective, yes, we’re still on track for Milestone B,” he said during the roundtable. “In fact, that is going very well. That was one of the areas I had concern early on about how you navigate those waters and make sure you get that recertification right.”

White said that they are parsing through a large amount of data, and they have integrated the Air Force Cost Analysis Agency and the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation. But they are still unsure of the cost.

“I don’t think we’re anywhere near a number right now,” he said. “I’m very comfortable with what I have seen though, and I think that we’re certainly within the realm of what we have talked about all along.”

The Air Force announced earlier this year that the service is expected to achieve the Milestone B decision by the end of 2026.

Meant to keep the aircraft viable through 2050 as a part of the Nuclear Triad with long-range strike capability, these moves advance upgrades for the strategic bombers, according to a recent release.

The acquisition decisions include a June 1 Milestone B approval for the B-52J Commercial Engine Replacement Program, allowing the engine upgrade to move into development, as well as an Aug. 21 Milestone C approval for the B-52 Radar Modernization Program, which permits the radar upgrades to begin production.

“These programs are delivering the propulsion reliability, sensor capability and electrical power needed to keep this legendary bomber viable, lethal, and supportable well into the future,” Brig. Gen. Timothy Spaulding, portfolio acquisition executive for Bombers and director of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Bombers Directorate, said in the release.

CERP replaces the B-52s original TF33 engines with Rolls-Royce F130 engines and modernizes supporting subsystems, such as hydraulic pumps, cockpit displays and generators, per the release.

Milestone B demonstrates the program’s first official Acquisition Program Baseline and allows entry into the Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase. The total acquisition cost was set at $20.2 billion, which includes research, development, test and evaluation, procurement and military construction.

Since 2018, only $2.6 billion of that cost has been spent.

Currently, two test aircraft are flying operational missions after recent depot maintenance. Both are slated to enter modification at Boeing’s San Antonio facility in the coming months to receive both CERP and RMP upgrades.

The release highlighted the B-52’s structural integrity, saying the program office conducted structural assessments across the fleet as part of Milestone B to ensure the aircraft could safely support new engines, increased electrical power generation and decades of continued operations.

“These assessments confirmed that the B-52’s airframe — originally designed in the late 1940s and built into the early 1960s — retains substantial structural life,” the release reads. “Analyses project the airframes will have sufficient fatigue life to support operations well into the 2050s and beyond.”

RMP replaces the 1980s-era APQ-166 analog radar with the APQ-188, a “cousin” of the F-15 and F/A-18 radars that is an Active Electronically Scanned Array Radar.

Milestone C allowed Low-Rate Initial Production, the release says. On the same day, the program awarded LRIP contracts to Raytheon Technologies for the radars and Boeing for 74 aircraft integration kits.

A June 2026 Production Readiness Review showed that the systems could be built reliably and were ready for initial production, according to the statement.