Starting next month, Air Force Reserve Command will begin a year-long trial of the new force support structure already instituted by active duty units. Reserve mission support squadrons and services squadrons will merge at seven locations throughout the United States for the evaluation, thereby combining their manpower and personnel functions with services, AFRC said in a release Sept. 4. “By combining [them] under one manager, we will reduce overall costs and give our people more flexibility to respond to their customers,” said Col. Joseph Vivori, AFRC’s director of manpower and personnel. The stand-alone test locations are March ARB, Calif.; NAS JRB Ft. Worth, Tex.; and Youngstown ARS, Ohio. The test locations that will receive some support from their active duty hosts are MacDill AFB, Fla.; Hill AFB, Utah; Elmendorf AFB, Alaska; and McGuire AFB, N.J. Upon completion of the trial, AFRC said it will determine how to implement force support squadrons across the entire command.
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.