Nearly 400 students will be back at Keesler Friday to continue or complete their training. The first classes back in business will be those in “critical skills,” Looney says, such as “pararescue, boom operators, enlisted flying AFSCs.” The challenge for the next few months will be “providing quality-of-life amenities for the instructors,” such as a base exchange, commissary, recreation center, and other things that will take time to clean up and reconstitute. Looney said Keesler instructors may spend awhile in unaccompanied status.
The Space Force wants to launch hundreds of satellites in the coming years—and use contractor spacecraft to sweep them out of orbit later. The service’s Space Development Agency and the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit announced a trio of preliminary contracts for their Deorbit-as-a-Service project on Aug. 14, to Firefly Aerospace,…