Several news outlets are reporting that the Air Force is investigating the death of SSgt. Rom Walters with Air Force Reserve Command’s 944th Fighter Wing at Luke AFB, Ariz. The 40-year-old Reservist died May 27, a day after taking an incentive flight aboard an F-16. According to The (Key West, Fla.) Citizen, the F-16 pilot made an emergency landing Friday afternoon at a Key West airfield, from which Walters was taken to a nearby medical center and then to a hospital in Miami, where he died Saturday night. Elements of the 944th have been in Key West on a training mission.
A three-month continuing resolution that ended in December inflicted less pain on the Department of the Air Force than it had expected, as procurement and construction continue in the new year. The federal government operated under a stopgap spending measure that stretched from the beginning of the fiscal year on…