All C-5A model aircraft reside with Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Command units. USAF’s plan to retire 22 over the next two years would strip 10 from the AFRC unit at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and the other 12 likely would come from three Air National Guard units at Martinsburg, W.Va., Memphis, Tenn., or Stewart AFB, N.Y. USAF has already said it would put C-17s at Wright-Patt and, according to Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, one ANG unit. The service’s recent basing announcement indicated all three Air Guard C-5A units are under consideration for the C-17, but it did not specify if it would select one or more.
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.