Members of the 96th Security Forces Squadron found the burnt vehicle with the deceased individual inside while on a routine patrol at 4:30 a.m. local time on Range Road 234 and Lewis Turner Boulevard, according to a base release.

Next of kin notification is currently underway, per the statement.

The base did not release the identity of the individual or say if they are affiliated with the installation.

The incident is under investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office.

Around 20,000 personnel work at Eglin, with five wings, four wing equivalents and 35 associate units. The base comprises personnel from the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy. It supports five major commands, including Air Combat Command and Air Education and Training Command.

Eglin houses the 96th Test Wing, which is the test and evaluation center for air-delivered weapons, navigation and guidance systems, command and control systems and Air Force Special Operations Command systems.

On Dec. 3, 2025, a F-16CM Fighting Falcon, assigned to the Air Demonstration Squadron “Thunderbirds” at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, crashed near Trona, California. The aircraft, which was destroyed upon impact, resulted in the complete loss of the $33.4 million aircraft.

The pilot was able to safely eject and only suffered minor injuries. There were no fatalities or reported damage to civilian property.

During the training flight, the pilot experienced a loss of thrust at low altitude and initiated corrective action procedures but was unable to regain sufficient thrust, according to the recently released Air Combat Command report.

The planned mission was to perform a vertical loop followed by a barrel roll, with the pilot separating from the formation during the loops to rejoin during the rolls due to neck stiffness.

As the pilot was rejoining the formation, the engine experienced a stall and “the jet just … stopped midair,” the pilot describes in the report. The pilot placed the engine control switch to its secondary control, causing the engine to “flameout” and later reported that “it sounded like things were grinding” in the engine.

Around four minutes after the loss of thrust, the pilot ejected from the aircraft, which tumbled down at a rate of approximately 1,200 feet per minute, according to the report.

The investigation found that the cause of the mishap was three turned variable vanes, or blades, in the 4th and 5th stages of the Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-229 engine, which caused irregular airflow and increased “vibratory stresses” on the 5th and 6th stage compressor blades.

Then, one blade each in the 5th and 6th stages failed due to fatigue and fractured and separated during flight, causing “catastrophic” engine damage at low altitude with no ability to sustain operations or recover, per the report.

The investigators could not determine what caused the turned vanes due to a lack of sufficient evidence, but a subsequent inspection of the engine revealed missing blades from the 5th and 6th stages.

The aircraft in question had also been flown the day prior to the accident and had no discrepancies or maintenance write-ups, but the report detailed that maintenance personnel cannot easily inspect the 4th and 5th stage variable vanes or the 5th and 6th stage of the engine core without removing the engine from the aircraft and opening the rear compressor case.

The report highlighted that a documented foreign object damage event occurred in October 2021 when the engine was previously installed in a separate aircraft. It resulted in damage to the 3rd stage of the Inlet Fan Module and to the turbine exhaust cone assembly, but maintenance technicians did not note any damage to the 4th, 7th or 8th stages.

This resulted in no further inspections of the core, but since that event, damage was detected on three separate occasions in the 1st stage and a “foreign material” was recovered from the 4th stage.

The report notes that the foreign object damage “substantially contributed” to the mishap since the 5th and 6th stages of the engine were not inspected afterward, as damage was not seen in the engine’s preceding section.

“Additionally,” the investigator writes, “the core of the engine is only inspected during scheduled maintenance when a core component reaches its overhaul threshold, leaving time for potential damage to progress undetected.”

Now, under a new U.S. defense agreement signed this week, the outpost at Mestersvig could soon become a key American military foothold in the Arctic.

Mestersvig sits 149 miles from the nearest settlement (population 330), at the edge of an uninhabited national park larger than Germany and France combined. The place is covered in darkness during winter, with average temperatures of around 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

“This is as remote, as cold, and as extreme as you can find in the world. You have to go to Antarctica to find similar conditions,” said Anders Ibsen, a former officer with Denmark’s Sirius dog sled patrol, an elite unit that uses Mestersvig to resupply.

STRATEGIC CHOKEPOINT

It oversees the stretch of ocean between Greenland, Iceland and Britain — known as the GIUK gap — that Russia’s Northern Fleet must cross to reach the Atlantic. For NATO, controlling this chokepoint is critical to containing Russian naval power.

Local member of parliament Justus Hansen welcomed the expansion, saying, “In east Greenland, we really need that new money.”

Under the defense agreement, Washington will be allowed to establish a new base at Mestersvig and Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland, potentially marking the first U.S. military expansion on the vast, semi-autonomous Arctic island in decades.

Currently, only three soldiers maintain the facility, which was built in the 1960s and includes barracks to house 150 soldiers.

The U.S. has made no public announcement about its plans for the base.

A HISTORY OF OUTSIDE INTEREST

During World War II, this stretch of the Arctic island’s coast became a front line in the “weather war,” a race between Germany and the Allies to read Greenland’s weather, which shaped conditions over the North Atlantic and Europe days later.

Germany secretly built manned stations here, but Danish dog sled patrols tracked them down, and Allied forces drove them out.

Nearby, an EU-backed project aims to mine molybdenum — a critical metal for aerospace and defence — some 12 miles away. A Texas oil company plans to drill for oil this winter at an untested basin just south of Mestersvig, although it still lacks a permit to do so.

The previous owner, ARCO, spent heavily on seismic work in the 1970s but never drilled.

“Any infrastructural improvements in Greenland would be very welcome,” said Robert Price, CEO of Greenland Energy, the oil company.

The 1.1-mile airstrip — long enough for military transport planes to land — can collect up to 5 meters of snow a year.

“When it’s snowing, you’re basically removing snow 24/7,” said Ibsen, the former dog sled patrol officer who spent a year at Mestersvig.

“You have plenty to do just staying alive.”

The drills get underway Saturday at the Jodhpur air base in Rajasthan state, which lies about 200 kilometers from India’s border with Pakistan. Eight countries are participating and 32 more are attending as observers.

India does not have a fifth-generation fighter aircraft. It will deploy its major fighters such as Rafales, Su-30MKIs, Tejas and the Mirage 2000 in the combat drills. France is bringing Rafale jets and the United Arab Emirates is bringing F-16s.

At a time when India’s rival China is rapidly expanding its fleet of fifth-generation fighters, the exercise could give the Indian Air Force a first-hand experience of tactical missions with advanced stealth aircraft and gain insight into how such jets can integrate sensor data, operate as part of a networked force and complicate detection by adversary radars.

Indian vice chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit, said as the character of warfare changes, the drills, named “Tarang Shakti,” will help participants prepare for the challenges “of tomorrow.”

“We do not conduct Tarang Shakti to demonstrate what we already know. We conduct it to discover what we still need to learn,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “Our partners bring their own operational experience. Bringing these together in a realistic training environment allows us to test assumptions, challenge procedures, understand different methods of employing air power and improve interoperability.”

The participation of F-35 stealth fighters in the Indian drills also underscores that New Delhi’s and Washington’s defense ties remain on a steady keel, despite their broader relationship coming under some strain over trade disputes and India’s purchases of Russian oil.

While the U.S. stealth fighter has twice featured at defense exhibitions in India and the Indian Air Force operated alongside F-35s during joint exercises in Australia two years ago, the upcoming drill marks the first time the aircraft will undertake tactical missions with Indian fighters from an Indian airbase.

Dixit said the air force also wants to use the air exercises to test lessons learned during India’s brief conflict with Pakistan in May last year in which both countries deployed fighter jets.

Besides the United States, France and UAE, other countries bringing air assets like surveillance and transport aircraft are Germany, Australia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Greece.

The drills are being held soon after India held bilateral air exercises with Japan in which Tokyo deployed its fighter aircraft, the Mitsubishi F-2A fighter aircraft in India for the first time. That exercise, held Sept. 9-22, was seen as a signal of growing defense ties between New Delhi and Tokyo amid an assertive China in the Indo-Pacific.

“Our partnership has progressed beyond simply conducting exercises together to refining our tactical capabilities at a practical level,” Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force Chief of Staff Gen. Takehiro Morita said Sept. 20 in Jodhpur where the drill was conducted.

The multinational air drill starting Saturday will conclude on Oct. 12.

The Defense Manpower Data Center, or DMDC, discovered the vulnerability on July 16 in a file-sharing system, according to a notification sent Sept. 18 to an individual whose information was contained in the affected files.

An analysis conducted after the discovery found that unauthorized users had accessed files on a server containing unencrypted personally identifiable information, or PII, between October 2025 and July 16, 2026, according to the letter, the authenticity of which was confirmed by two defense officials.

The unauthorized users gained access to the Social Security number of the letter’s recipient, as well as at least one additional piece of identifying information, such as a name, date of birth, contact information, sex, race or military personnel information, including occupational specialty, according to the notification.

The notice states that the department had no indication that the individual’s information had been misused.

The potential scope of the breach remains unclear. Two people familiar with the incident told Military Times that approximately four million Defense Department personnel may be affected.

The department is offering the affected individuals one year of credit monitoring and identity-restoration services through IDX, a private company contracted by the DoD, according to the notice.

DMDC describes itself as the Defense Department’s central source for identifying, authenticating, authorizing and providing information on personnel during and after their affiliation with the department. The agency’s website says it maintains more than 60 million DoD records involving military and civilian personnel, contractors, family members, retirees and veterans.

The notification letter said a “security vulnerability” in a file-sharing system allowed unauthorized users to gain access. The Defense Department and DMDC did not immediately respond to questions about the number of people affected or who accessed the files.

The notification letter says DMDC updated the file-sharing system to patch the vulnerability after discovering the problem and restored the system.

Around 70 Nellis Air Force Base airmen sent off the “Warthog” on its final flight with a salute, closing a chapter on nearly 50 years of training, testing and maintenance at the base, according to a recent release.

The first Warthog arrived at Nellis in 1977, beginning five decades of serving as the primary proving ground for the aircraft’s tactical employment. Units at the base polished the aircraft’s software, avionics and precision weapons as the service’s Weapons School’s 66th Weapons Squadron trained A-10 weapons officers across 100 classes, per the release.

As the service retires the A-10 fleet, tactical expertise, operational roles and personnel are transitioning to multirole and advanced fighter platforms across the force to ensure air support capability is sustained.

Airmen previously assigned to the 757th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron’s Thunder Aircraft Maintenance Unit are being transferred to other squadrons and airframes, like the F-35 and F-16.

“The transition marks less of a retirement and more of an evolution, ensuring that the Warthog’s legendary commitment to protecting troops on the ground is carried forward by the airmen and advanced platforms shaping the future fight,” the release reads.

With the Nellis retirement, the last base with active-duty operational Warthogs is Moody Air Force Base, Georgia. Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, operates a reserve A-10 squadron.

Previously, the Air Force announced that one active-duty squadron at Moody and a reserve squadron at Whiteman would be extended to 2030, while an additional active-duty squadron at Moody would be extended to 2029, instead of a set 2029 retirement for the A-10s.

In July, a House of Representatives bill was filed that would require the Air Force to keep at least 126 Warthogs in service and to reverse course from the previous work done to dissolve the aircraft’s maintenance depot, pilot training pipeline and weapons course.

The bill, known as the BRRRRT Act, came as the force sped up A-10 divestment while asserting that the role of close air support and combat search and rescue would be filled by a combination of platforms such as the F-35A, F-15E and F-16.

“The BRRRRT Act ensures we do not retire a proven weapons system before a certified replacement exists,” Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., who introduced the bill said, referring to the service not yet revealing which aircraft will take over the role of the A-10.

In Operation Epic Fury, the aircraft offered support and targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fast-attack watercraft in the Strait of Hormuz.

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 or 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.