The Air Force’s 221st C-17 transport touched down at JB Charleston, S.C., its beddown location, after a flight from Boeing’s C-17 assembly plant in Long Beach, Calif. Gen Paul Selva, head of Air Mobility Command, piloted the factory-fresh C-17 from Long Beach to Charleston on April 25. With this delivery, Boeing has supplied all but two of the C-17s that the Air Force has ordered, company spokeswoman Cindy Anderson told the Daily Report on Wednesday. Boeing is expected to deliver the service’s two remaining C-17s later this year, also to Charleston, according to AMC. The Air Force has ordered 224 C-17s in total, one of which the United States supplied to the multinational consortium of NATO and partner nations that operates three C-17s out of Papa AB, Hungary. That leaves 223 meant for the Air Force, said Anderson. Boeing supplied the previous C-17, the 220th in the series, in late March. The Air Force’s first C-17 entered the inventory in June 1993. (Includes Charleston photo caption by SrA. Dennis Sloan)
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.