The Air Force plans to hold a reduction in force board this month to identify 322 officers—as of May 31, the latest numbers available—in four year groups to leave the service by January 2008. That is a drop of 137 officers from data reported as of May 4. The Air Force has identified 208 RIF eligibles in the 1995 year group, 163 for 1996, 254 for 2000, and 591 for 2001. Helicopter, bomber, and reconnaissance aircraft pilots are no longer on the list of RIF eligibles. The career field that must cut the greatest number across the four groups is communications/information. (The May 31 RIF numbers for each year group by specialty are available here.) The Air Force plans to announce its Fiscal 2008 force shaping programs in July.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.