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B-1B bomber was damaged March 7 during a ground mishap at Andersen AFB, Guam, but there were no injuries, Air Combat Command spokesman Maj. Tom Crosson tells the Daily Report. The B-1B had stopped on the island while transiting home to Ellsworth AFB, S.D., from the Singapore Air Show, Crosson said. The bomber had taken off from Anderson for home, but then returned shortly thereafter after the aircrew declared an in-flight emergency, he said. Upon landing, the aircraft taxied to the designated spot off of the runway to be met by emergency response vehicles. The aircraft stopped there, but then unexpectedly began to move again, rolling into two emergency vehicles, causing the damage, Crosson said. He did not know the extent of damage to the aircraft as information was still trickling in from the scene, but reiterated that neither aircrew nor first responders suffered injuries. Guam TV news station KUAM News reported that the incident occurred at around noon local time. This is the second incident involving a bomber at Guam in the past two weeks. On Feb. 23, a B-2A stealth bomber crashed after takeoff from Andersen as a four-ship pack of B-2s was heading home to Whiteman, AFB, Mo., after a four-month deployment to the island. They were there as part of the continual bomber presence that the US maintains in the region on a rotational basis to dissuade aggression. Replacing them is a unit of B-52Hs that arrived in late February and will be there for the next four months.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.