Brian Everstine is the Pentagon Editor for Aviation Week, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining Aviation Week in August 2021, Brian covered the Pentagon for Air Force Magazine. Brian began covering defense aviation in 2011 as a reporter for Military Times. Over a decade as a defense journalist, he has reported from dozens of bases at home and abroad, including austere airstrips in Afghanistan, the cockpit of a B-52 over the South Pacific and the boom operator station of a KC-46. Before the military beat, Brian covered the Washington state legislature for the Associated Press.
Russia’s buildup of forces near Ukraine, including the deployment of combat aircraft and ballistic missiles, is at a scale not seen since the Cold War, and top U.S. and NATO officials are continuing to press the Kremlin to draw down and trying to make room for diplomacy.
The Pentagon has stood up new efforts to reduce civilian casualties following high-profile incidents across the Middle East in which civilians were killed in U.S. airstrikes, with a new mitigation plan expected within 90 days.
The U.S. Air Force plans to approve the redesign of the KC-46 tanker’s troubled remote vision system without an independent assessment of how ready the technology is and a plan for how it will mature, and a government watchdog is urging the service to slow its approval to avoid becoming financially responsible for more possible problems in the future.
