Congress may be on the road to authorization of pilot programs that would enable some servicemembers to leave the service for perhaps three years and then return with no loss of time or grade. Apparently the idea started in the Navy, which has found it is losing some young female officers who want to make the service a career but who found they had to make a choice between a military career and family. Markups of the 2009 defense policy bill do not indicate that the legislation would be limited to women.
A-10 Thunderbolt II attack planes in the Middle East are flying with fresh modifications as the Air Force looks to make the plane more versatile amid America’s ongoing blockade of Iranian ports and a tenuous ceasefire in the U.S. air war against Iran.