Six high-ranking Air Force officials will say goodbye to the service Jan. 14 as they prepare to leave their posts when the Trump administration departs next week. The Department of the Air Force will bid farewell to Secretary Barbara M. Barrett in a ceremony. Also on the way out are acting Air Force Undersecretary Shon J. Manasco, Comptroller John P. Roth, General Counsel Thomas E. Ayres, acquisition boss Will Roper, and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment, and Energy John W. Henderson, according to the event’s livestream page. Their last day on the job will be Jan. 19, the day before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. An Air Force spokeswoman said the department does not yet have a full slate of acting officials to fill the positions that will be open starting Jan. 20.

After years of struggling with high failure rates at the Air Force’s rigorous Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape Specialist Apprentice Course, officials think they’ve finally cracked the code. Twenty-six of 28 new SERE specialists graduated on Jan. 7, the highest-ever graduation rate. Of the two who didn’t make it, one dropped because of an injury and will retake the course. In the past, only about half the candidates completed the apprentice course, the longest of three parts in the six-month SERE trainer pipeline, said Col. Nicholas Dipoma, 336th Training Group commander. Although the possibility of great power conflict with Russia and China make these skills increasingly important, the SERE career field is only about 80 percent manned. The field is “healthy enough to function,” Dipoma said, but historically high attrition rates are “unsustainable.”

A group of networked bombs failed to hit the right target in the Air Force’s first flight test of its nascent weapon-swarming technology last month, posing a new obstacle as the service tries to speed the concept to the battlefield. On Dec. 15, the Air Force Test Center dropped two Collaborative Small Diameter Bombs from an F-16 jet to see whether the modified weapons could work together. The weapons defaulted to hit a fail-safe location instead of their intended target because of an “improper software load,” the Air Force said Jan. 7.

The National Guard Bureau plans to send 10,000 troops to the National Capital Region in the lead-up to the 2020 Presidential inauguration, with permission to tap another 5,000 if the need arises, NGB Chief Gen. Daniel R. Hokanson told reporters Jan. 11. The U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Capitol Police, and U.S. Park Police have all requested NGB support, he said during a joint press briefing with Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Rath Hoffman.

A Michigan Congresswoman asked the Defense Department to allow Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police Officer and New Jersey Air National Guard veteran who was killed in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building, to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.