For the first time this fiscal year, the Air Force’s active duty force, the Air National Guard, and the Air Force Reserve all met their year-to-date recruiting goals, according to the Pentagon’s latest recruiting data for Fiscal 2012 through February. The active duty component and AFR have met their fiscal-year-to-date accession goals each month so far in 2013. That trend continued through February, with the active duty force accepting 12,314 new accessions, exactly matching its target, and the Reserve doing the same by bringing in 3,564 new recruits. The Air Guard got off to a slower start in Fiscal 2012, but has been inching its way towards meeting its year-to-date target, which it did reach—and actually surpass—in February by attracting 3,389 accessions, 14 more than its year-to-date goal. Across the other services and their reserve components, only the Army National Guard did not meet or exceed its accessions goal through February, according to the data.
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.