Maj. Jill Metzger surfaced late Friday knocking on the door of a house in Kant about 20 miles from Bishkek, the Kyrgyzstan capital, from which she disappeared Sept. 5. According to various news reports, she told officials that she had been abducted and managed to escape. News reports revealed that Metzger says someone stuck an object in her back pocket with a note claiming it was a bomb and instructing her to walk to a site where three men and a woman put her in a van and drove her out of Bishkek. The Air Force flew her to a medical facility in the region, where a spokesman said she was receiving medical care and counseling prior to being returned Stateside. Metzger was at the end of her four-month deployment as a personnel officer at Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan.
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.