The Air Force has employed the Small Diameter Bomb for the first time in Afghanistan. An F-15E Strike Eagle deployed to Bagram Air Base from the 391st Fighter Squadron at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, dropped the GPS-aided GBU-39B on a close air support mission on Jan. 27 to aid International Security Assistance Forces under attack by enemy fighters. “The [joint terminal attack controller] asked us to drop that specific weapon on that specific spot, and that’s what we did,” said Wrangler, one of the F-15E’s two-person crewmembers. An Air Force release notes, “The enemy stopped fighting and retreated.”
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.