Col. Gregory Jones surpassed 4,000 flying hours in the F-16 fighter during a training sortie from Luke AFB, Ariz., on Jan. 8. “I’ve been lucky in that I’ve consistently been assigned to jobs that included flying the F-16,” Jones said in a Luke release. He is currently serving as operations group commander of Air Force Reserve Command’s 944th Operations Group at Luke. Jones flew his first F-16 sortie during type conversion training at Luke in 1990. Jones is one of only 42 other F-16 pilots in the Air Force to log more than 4,000 hours in the type, including one other at Luke—also a Reservist—said Col. Kurt Gallegos, commander of AFRC’s 944th Fighter Wing.
The Air Force on March 12 awarded contract modifications worth a combined $2.4 billion to Boeing to procure an undisclosed number of E-7 Wedgetail as part of the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase and continue work on the airborne battle management aircraft’s radar.