The Pentagon confirmed Dec. 3 that Maj. Troy L. Gilbert, the pilot whose F-16 crashed in Iraq on Nov. 27, died when the fighter crashed some 20 miles northwest of Baghdad. Officials had listed Gilbert, who was deployed to Balad AB, Iraq, from the 309th Fighter Wing at Luke AFB, Ariz., as whereabouts unknown while remains found at the crash site underwent DNA analysis. An Air Force statement says the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s office made formal identification on Dec. 1.
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.