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draft version of the Senate’s defense authorization bill for next fiscal year includes language that would switch ownership of the Air Force’s MC-12 Liberty intelligence-gathering aircraft to the Army. The Senate Armed Services Committee included this provision in its bill mark-up, completed last week. The measure would require the Defense Secretary “to develop and implement a plan for the orderly transfer” of the MC-12s, according to the SASC release summarizing the bill, which now goes to the Senate floor for consideration. The Air Force rapidly fielded a force of 37 MC-12s to bolster US intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance capability in the conflicts in Southwest Asia. MC-12s began operating in Iraq two years ago; they arrived in Afghanistan in December 2009. They have been providing invaluable support to ground troops at the tactical level via overhead streaming video and signals intelligence. In April, the Air Force announced that Beale AFB, Calif., would be the stateside home of the MC-12s.
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.