SMSgt. Robert Fisher, a KC-10A flight engineer deployed in Southwest Asia with the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing’s 908th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron, surpassed 10,000 flight hours during a tanker sortie March 29. “It feels excellent to be among such a rarified group of people,” said Fisher after the landmark mission, which gave him 10,003 hours in total in the air. He is a native of St. Petersburg, Fla., and a member of the 305th Air Mobility Wing at McGuire AFB, N.J. He has been flying since 1986, starting out in the now-retired C-141 Starlifter and then moving to the KC-10A. “I’ve been really lucky in my life, in that the Air Force has given me the opportunities to see a lot of really excellent places and travel the world,” said Fischer. (USAF report by SrA. Ross M. Tweten)
The rate of building B-21 bombers would speed up if the fiscal 2026 defense budget passes. But it remains unclear how much capacity would be added, and whether the Air Force would simply build the bombers faster, or buy more.
