In a letter sent to Austin on Thursday, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and Rep. Richard Neal called the decision to return Ospreys to limited flight status “misguided.”

In March, Naval Air Systems Command said the aircraft had been approved to return to limited flight operations, but only with tight restrictions in place that currently keep it from doing some of the aircraft carrier, amphibious transport and special operations missions it was purchased for. The Osprey’s joint program office within the Pentagon has said those restrictions are likely to remain in place until mid-2025.

The Ospreys had been grounded military-wide for three months following a horrific crash in Japan in November that killed eight Air Force Special Operations Command service members.

There’s no other aircraft like the Osprey in the fleet. It is loved by pilots for its ability to fly fast to a target like an airplane and land on it like a helicopter. But the Osprey is aging faster than expected, and parts are failing in unexpected ways. The Japan crash was the fourth fatal accident in two years, killing a total of 20 service members.

Marine Corps Capt. Ross Reynolds, who was killed in a 2022 crash in Norway, and Air Force Staff Sgt. Jacob Galliher, who was killed in the November Japan crash, were from Massachusetts, the lawmakers said.

“The Department of Defense should be making service members’ safety a top priority,” the lawmakers said. “That means grounding the V-22 until the root cause of the aircraft’s many accidents is identified and permanent fixes are put in place.”

The lawmakers’ letter, which was accompanied by a long list of safety questions about the aircraft, is among many formal queries into the V-22 program. There are multiple ongoing investigations by Congress and internal reviews of the program by the Naval Air Systems Command and the Air Force.

The Pentagon did not immediately confirm on Friday whether it was in receipt of the letter.

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander at U.S. Central Command, told reporters in a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday that the pier achieved its intended effect in what he called an “unprecedented operation.”

As the U.S. military steps away from the sea route for humanitarian aid, questions swirl about Israel’s new plan to use the port at Ashdod as a substitute. There are few details on how it will work and lingering concerns about whether aid groups will have enough viable land crossings to get assistance into the territory besieged by war between Israel and Hamas. But Cooper said the Ashdod corridor will be more sustainable.

Critics call the pier a $230 million boondoggle that failed to bring in the level of aid needed to stem a looming famine. The U.S. military, however, has maintained that it served as the best hope as aid only trickled in during a critical time of near-famine in Gaza and that it got close to 20 million pounds (9 million kilograms) of desperately needed supplies to the Palestinians.

President Joe Biden, who announced the building of the pier during his State of the Union speech in March, expressed disappointment that it didn’t do as well as hoped.

“I’ve been disappointed that some of the things that I put forward have not succeeded as well — like the port we attached from Cyprus,” Biden, a Democrat, said during a news conference last week. “I was hopeful that would be more successful.”

Planned as a temporary fix to get aid to starving Palestinians, the project was panned from the start by aid groups that condemned it as a waste of time and money. While U.S. defense officials acknowledged that the weather was worse than expected and limited the days the pier could operate, they also expressed frustration with humanitarian groups for being unable and unwilling to distribute the aid that got through the system, only to have it pile up onshore.

A critical element that neither the aid groups nor the U.S. military could control, however, was the Israeli defense forces whose military operation into Gaza put humanitarian workers in persistent danger and in a number of cases cost them their lives.

As a result, the pier operated for fewer than 25 days after its installation May 16, and aid agencies used it only about half that time due to security concerns.

Stuck in the middle were the more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors who largely lived on boats off the Gaza shore and struggled to keep the pier working but spent many days repairing it or detaching it, moving it and reinstalling it due to the bad weather.

The tensions played out until the final moments, as senior Biden administration officials signaled the end of the pier project days ago but U.S. Central Command balked, holding out hope the military could reinstall it one last time to move any final pallets of aid ashore.

Most would agree that use of the maritime route and what is known as the Army’s Joint Logistics Over the Shore capability, or JLOTS, fell short of early expectations. Even at the start, officials warned of challenges because the sea is shallow, the weather is unpredictable and it was an active war zone.

The U.S. also had to train Israeli troops and others on how to anchor the pier to the shore because no U.S. troops could step foot on Gaza soil, a condition Biden has had since the beginning of the Hamas-Israel conflict in October.

However, enough aid to feed 450,000 people for a month flowed through the pier, according to the United States Agency for International Development, which coordinated with the United Nations and others to get supplies to people in need. As important, humanitarian leaders say, the pier operation laid the groundwork for a coordination system with the Israeli government and military that they can expand on.

The one place where deconfliction with the Israeli military worked well was at the pier, which came online at a time of some of the greatest despair and food shortages, USAID Administrator Samantha Power said. She said Israel and the military have now agreed to extend that coordination plan to “all of Gaza.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday that a new Pier 28 will soon be established at Israel’s Ashdod port for delivering aid to the Gaza Strip as a replacement for the U.S. military-built pier. He did not say when it would start operating.

Other aid groups, however, slammed the U.S. military pier as a distraction, saying the U.S. should have instead pressured Israel to open more land crossings and allow the aid to flow more quickly and efficiently through them.

Everyone has agreed all along that land crossings are the most productive way to get aid into Gaza, but the Israeli military routinely has blocked routes and slowed deliveries due to inspections. Aid groups also were terrorized by attacks, from Hamas, gunmen who stripped convoys of supplies and the Israeli military. More than 278 workers have been killed in the conflict, Power said.

As the Pentagon and the Army take stock of how the pier did, questions will loom about whether officials underestimated the persistent weather challenges and security hurdles that hindered the operation.

The system is run by the Army’s 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia. And it’s like a huge LEGO system — an array of 40-foot-long (12-meter-long) pieces of steel that can be locked together to form a pier and causeway.

It’s unclear if U.S. forces were adequately prepared for the unpredictable and turbulent weather in the Gaza region. Nine days after the pier was installed on the Gaza shore, bad weather broke it, forcing troops to dismantle it and take it to the Israeli port at Ashdod for more than two weeks for repairs.

Weather forced troops to detach the pier from the shore two more times and move it to Ashdod. It was detached for the final time on June 28, and poor weather prevented the U.S. from reinstalling it.

Aid groups struggled to distribute the supplies from the pier into Gaza, and their efforts came to an abrupt halt after a June 8 Israeli military raid that rescued four hostages but killed hundreds of Palestinians.

Troops used an area near the pier to land a helicopter and fly out the hostages. To have even a small part of an Israeli military operation so close to the pier creates problems for aid groups who rely on being independent and separate from troops to remain safe.

As a result, the U.N. suspended all World Food Program deliveries while it conducted a review, which has not been released. WFP personnel have not distributed aid from the pier since but hired contractors to move aid that piled up on shore to warehouses so it would not spoil.

On July 17, 1944, munitions being loaded onto a cargo ship detonated, causing secondary blasts that ignited 5,000 tons (4,535 metric tonnes) of explosives at Port Chicago naval weapons station near San Francisco.

The explosion killed 320 sailors and civilians, nearly 75% of whom were Black, and injured another 400 personnel. Surviving Black sailors had to pick up the human remains and clear the blast site while white officers were granted leave to recuperate.

The pier was a critical ammunition supply site for forces in the Pacific during World War II, and the job of loading those ships was left primarily to Black enlisted sailors overseen by white officers.

Before the explosion, the Black sailors working the dock had expressed concerns about the loading operations. Shortly after the blast, they were ordered to return to loading ships even though no changes had been made to improve their safety.

The sailors refused, saying they needed training on how to more safely handle the bombs before they returned.

What followed affected the rest of their lives, including punishments that kept them from receiving honorable discharges even as the vast majority returned to work at the pier under immense pressure and served throughout the war. Fifty sailors who held fast to their demands for safety and training were tried as a group on charges of conspiracy to commit mutiny and were convicted and sent to prison.

The whole episode was unjust, and none of the sailors received the legal due process they were owed, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said in an interview with The Associated Press.

It was “a horrific situation for those Black sailors that remained,” Del Toro said. The Navy’s office of general counsel reviewed the military judicial proceedings used to punish the sailors and found “there were so many inconsistencies and so many legal violations that came to the forefront,” he said.

Thurgood Marshall, who was then a defense attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, defended the 50 sailors who were convicted of mutiny. Marshall went on to become the first Black justice on the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, the 80th anniversary of the Port Chicago disaster, Del Toro signed paperwork officially clearing the sailors, who are now deceased. Del Toro handed the first pen to Thurgood Marshall Jr., the late justice’s son.

The exonerations “are deeply moving,” Marshall Jr. said. “They, of course, are all gone, and that’s a painful aspect of it. But so many fought for so long for that kind of fairness and recognition.”

The events have stung surviving family members for decades, but an earlier effort in the 1990s to pardon the sailors fell short. Two additional sailors were previously cleared — one was found mentally incompetent to stand trial, and one was cleared on insufficient evidence. Wednesday’s action goes beyond a pardon and vacates the military judicial proceedings carried out in 1944 against all of the men.

“This decision clears their names and restores their honor and acknowledges the courage that they displayed in the face of immense danger,” Del Toro said.

The racism that the Black sailors faced reflected the military’s views at the time — ranks were segregated, and the Navy had only reluctantly opened some positions it considered less desirable to Black service members.

The official court of inquiry looking into why the explosion occurred cleared all the white officers and praised them for the “great effort” they had to exert to run the dock. It left open the suggestion that the Black sailors were to blame for the accident.

Del Toro’s action converts the discharges to honorable unless there were other circumstances surrounding them. After the Navy upgrades the discharges, surviving family members can work with the Department of Veterans Affairs on past benefits that may be owed, the Navy said.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Navy at https://apnews.com/hub/us-navy.

Humanitarian aid groups stopped distributing supplies that arrived by sea on June 9 due to security concerns and have not started again. U.S. officials say the pier may not be reinstalled unless aid agencies reach an agreement to begin distributing the aid again. Meanwhile, food and other provisions shipped from Cyprus are piling up on shore, and soon the the secure area on the beach in Gaza will reach capacity.

It’s been a long and difficult road for the pier, which has been battered by weather and troubled by security problems. Here’s a look at how it started and where it is now.

March: announcement and prep

MARCH 7: President Joe Biden announces his plan for the U.S. military to build a pier during his State of the Union address.

“Tonight, I’m directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters,” he said.

But even in those first few moments, he noted the pier would increase the amount of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza but that Israel “must do its part” and let more aid in.

MARCH 8: Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon spokesman, tells reporters it will take “up to 60 days” to deploy the forces and build the project.

MARCH 12: Four U.S. Army boats loaded with tons of equipment and steel pier segments leave Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia and head to the Atlantic Ocean for what is expected to be a monthlong voyage to Gaza.

The brigade’s commander, Army Col. Sam Miller, warns that the transit and construction will be heavily dependent on the weather and any high seas they encounter.

LATE MARCH: U.S. Army vessels hit high seas and rough weather as they cross the Atlantic, slowing their pace.

April: construction and hope

APRIL 1: Seven World Central Kitchen aid workers are killed in an Israeli airstrike as they travel in clearly marked vehicles on a delivery mission authorized by Israel.

The strike fuels ongoing worries about security for relief workers and prompts aid agencies to pause delivery of humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

APRIL 19: U.S. officials confirm that the U.N. World Food Program has agreed to help deliver aid brought to Gaza via the maritime route once construction is done.

APRIL 25: Major construction of the port facility on the shore near Gaza City begins to take shape. The onshore site is where aid from the causeway will be delivered and given to aid agencies.

APRIL 30: Satellite photos show the U.S. Navy ship USNS Roy P. Benavidez and Army vessels working on assembling the pier and causeway about 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) from the port on shore.

May: The pier opens … then closes

MAY 9: The U.S. vessel Sagamore is the first ship loaded with aid to leave Cyprus and head toward Gaza and ultimately the pier. An elaborate security and inspection station has been built in Cyprus to screen the aid coming from a number of countries.

MAY 16: Well past the 60-day target time, the construction and assembly of the pier off the Gaza coast and the causeway attached to the shoreline are finished after more than a week of weather and other delays.

MAY 17: The first trucks carrying aid for the Gaza Strip roll down the newly built pier and into the secure area on shore, where they will be unloaded and the cargo distributed to aid agencies for delivery by truck into Gaza.

May 18: Crowds of desperate Palestinians overrun a convoy of aid trucks coming from the pier, stripping the cargo from 11 of the 16 vehicles before they reach a U.N. warehouse for distribution.

May 19-20: The first food from the pier — a limited number of high-nutrition biscuits — reaches people in need in central Gaza, according to the World Food Program.

Aid organizations suspend deliveries from the pier for two days while the U.S. works with Israel to open alternate land routes from the pier and improve security.

MAY 24: So far, a bit more than 1,000 metric tons of aid has been delivered to Gaza via the U.S.-built pier, and USAID later says all of it has been distributed within Gaza.

MAY 25: High winds and heavy seas damage the pier and cause four U.S. Army vessels operating there to become beached, injuring three service members, including one who is in critical condition.

Two vessels went aground in Gaza near the base of the pier and two went aground near Ashkelon in Israel.

MAY 28: Large portions of the causeway were pulled from the beach and moved to an Israeli port for repairs. The base of the causeway remains at the Gaza shore.

June: big crises for the pier

JUNE 7: The damaged causeway was rebuilt and reconnected to the beach in Gaza.

JUNE 8: The U.S. military announced that deliveries resumed off the repaired and reinstalled dock.

The same day, Israel rescued four hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attacks in an operation that killed 270 Palestinians.

JUNE 9: World Food Program chief Cindy McCain announced a “pause” in cooperation with the U.S. pier during a TV interview, citing the previous day’s “incident” and the rocketing of two WFP warehouses that injured a staffer.

JUNE 10: WFP said the U.N. would conduct a security review to assess the safety of its staff in handling aid deliveries from the pier. In the meantime, the U.S. military said it would stockpile aid shipments on a secure beach in Gaza.

Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said no aspect of the pier or its equipment had been used in Israel’s rescue operation. The Pentagon says an area south of the pier was used for the return of the freed hostages back to Israel.

JUNE 14: The pier was detached from the beach in Gaza to prevent damage during rough seas and allow the military to reattach it more quickly later, U.S. officials said.

JUNE 19: The pier was re-anchored in Gaza and more than 656 metric tons, or 1.4 million pounds, of aid was delivered in the hours after it resumed operations, Ryder said.

Aid agencies, however, did not restart their distribution of the aid, so workers have been storing it in the secure area.

JUNE 28: The pier is removed due to weather, and the U.S. is considering not putting it back unless aid begins heading again to Palestinians in need, several U.S. officials said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The military’s hundreds of V-22 Ospreys will not be permitted to fly their full range of missions until at least 2025 as the Pentagon addresses safety concerns in the fleet, the head of the program told lawmakers at a hearing Wednesday.

Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, head of U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, which has responsibility for the aircraft military-wide, told lawmakers at a House oversight hearing into a series of recent crashes that it will be at least another six to nine months before the command will be able to complete all of the safety and performance assessments for the Osprey.

Over the lifespan of the program, Chebi said a total of 64 service members have been killed in air and ground accidents, and 93 have been injured. In the last two years, four separate crashes killed a total of 20 service members, and two of those crashes involved catastrophic materiel or mechanical failures the program had not experienced before.

Following a November crash off the coast of Japan that killed eight service members, the fleet was grounded for months. The Ospreys started flying again in a very limited format in March and do not perform the full range of missions, including carrier operations, that the aircraft was made to carry out.

In use since only 2007, the Osprey can fly like an airplane and land like a helicopter. Critics say its innovative design has systemic flaws that are driving the unexpected failures.

One of the reasons for the extension of restricted flight: The military is still working to fix a clutch failure that was identified as one of the primary factors in a June 2022 crash that killed five Marines in California.

The clutch component, like many other parts of the aircraft, has been wearing out far faster than expected. This led to an unprecedented dual hard clutch engagement in the 2022 crash, creating a situation in which the pilots had no way to save the aircraft.

The military has not yet said what exact part failed in the November crash, but Chebi told the panel Wednesday that the cause was something “we’d never seen before.”

Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Chebi to reground the entire fleet until all safety issues were fixed.

“What do you think the consequences will be if we have another V-22 go down and we lose more brave Marines or Airmen between now and the time?” Lynch said. “Your whole program’s done. It’s done. If another Osprey goes down, we’re done. This program’s done. So why don’t we ground this now?”

Families of service members killed in Osprey accidents sat behind Chebi as he testified. Each held a photograph of their family member killed, and after the hearing, he stayed to listen as they told him their concerns.

“We’re afraid that they’re aging out, and now we are having all these crashes,” said Bart Collart, whose son Marine Corps Cpl. Spencer Collart was killed in a 2023 Osprey crash off the coast of Australia.

The committee is looking into whether the program has adequate oversight, but to date, it has not received the data and documents it has requested, members said at the hearing.

Among the information that the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs has requested but has yet to receive is the wear and replacement rates on Osprey proprotor gearboxes, a component that was a factor in the crash off Japan.

Committee members also have asked for internal crash reports that the military conducts with surviving air and ground crews and witnesses. The reports aren’t available to the public and cannot be used to punish a crew — they are in place to identify and quickly share any safety issues among the fleet.

To date, the staffers said they had received about 3,500 pages of documents, but information was redacted, leaving them unable to conduct oversight. The committee staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The staffers said the documents they have reviewed left them concerned about whether Pentagon leadership has maintained a close watch on the Osprey program. Some of the problems with the aircraft date back a decade or more but still haven’t been fixed.

After mechanical and material failures led to the 2022 Osprey crash in California, the military said it had instituted changes to prevent the issue from happening again.

“However, the recent fatal crash and ongoing investigations suggest that more transparency and rigorous testing is needed to verify these claims,” Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the committee, said in a statement to the AP ahead of the hearing.

The Marine Corps is planning on using the Osprey through 2050, while Air Force Special Operations Command has already begun to talk publicly about finding another type of aircraft to conduct missions.

Osprey producers Bell Flight, the Boeing Co. and Rolls-Royce, which supplies the engines, are facing a new lawsuit from families of the five Marines killed in the 2022 California crash. The lawsuit alleges that the companies did not address known parts failures or safety issues that were a factor in the crash.

Boeing and Bell have declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

The staffers say the Pentagon has not provided details on what the restrictions are as the aircraft returns to operations.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The first aid from an American-built pier arrived in Gaza on Saturday since storm damage required repairs to the project, the U.S. military said, relaunching an effort to bring supplies to Palestinians by sea that had been plagued with problems.

The pier constructed by the U.S. military was operational for only about a week before it was blown apart in high winds and heavy seas on May 25. A damaged section was reconnected to the beach in Gaza on Friday after being repaired at an Israeli port.

Four U.S. Army boats loaded with tons of equipment and steel pier segments left March 12 from Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia Beach.

About 1.1 million pounds (492 metric tons) of humanitarian aid was delivered to Gaza through the pier on Saturday, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. It reiterated that no U.S. military personnel went ashore in Gaza. The U.S. Agency for International Development works with the U.N. World Food Program and their humanitarian partners in Gaza to distribute food and other aid coming from the U.S.-operated pier.

The deliveries came the same day that Israel mounted a heavy air and ground assault that rescued four hostages, who had been taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack that launched the war in Gaza. At least 210 Palestinians, including children, were killed, a Gaza health official said.

Pushing back against social media claims, U.S. Central Command said in a tweet that neither the pier nor any of its equipment, personnel or other assets were used in the Israeli operation. It noted that Israel used an area south of the pier “to safely return hostages.”

“The temporary pier on the coast of Gaza was put in place for one purpose only, to help move additional, urgently needed lifesaving assistance into Gaza,” the U.S. military said.

USAID said in a separate statement that no humanitarian workers were involved in the Israeli operation.

“Humanitarian aid workers in Gaza are operating in extremely difficult and insecure conditions and must be protected,” the agency said by email. “Aid workers operate under the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.”

The movement of aid through the pier brings back online one way to get desperately needed food and other emergency supplies to Palestinians trapped by the eight-month-old Israel-Hamas war. Israeli restrictions on land crossings, and fighting, have greatly limited the flow of food and other vital supplies into the territory.

The damage to the pier had been the latest stumbling block for the project and the persistent struggle to get food to starving Palestinians. Three U.S. service members were injured, one critically, and four vessels were beached due to heavy seas.

Early efforts to get aid from the pier into the Gaza Strip also were disrupted as crowds overran a convoy of trucks that aid agencies were using to transport the food, stripping the cargo from many of them before they could reach a U.N. warehouse. Officials responded by altering the travel routes, and aid began reaching those in need.

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters on Friday that the lessons learned from that initial week of operations made him confident greater amounts of aid could be delivered now.

He said the goal was to get to 1 million pounds of food and other supplies moving through the pier into Gaza every two days. To date, about 3.5 million pounds of humanitarian aid has been delivered through the maritime route, Central Command said Saturday.

Relief agencies have pressed Israel to reopen land routes that could bring in all the needed aid. Israel says it has allowed hundreds of trucks to enter through a southern checkpoint and pointed the finger at the U.N. for not distributing aid. The U.N. says it is often unable to retrieve the aid because of the security situation.

U.N. agencies have warned that over 1 million Palestinians in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by the middle of next month if hostilities continue.

President Joe Biden’s administration has said from the start that the pier wasn’t meant to be a total solution and that any amount of aid helps.

Biden, a Democrat, announced his plan for the U.S. military to build a pier during his State of the Union address in early March, and the military said it would take about 60 days to get it installed and operational. It took a bit longer than planned, with the first trucks carrying aid for the Gaza Strip rolling down the pier on May 17.

The initial cost was estimated at $320 million, but the Pentagon said this past week that the price had dropped to $230 million, due to contributions from Britain and because the cost of contracting trucks and other equipment was less than expected.

The fatal shooting of Roger Fortson by a Florida sheriff’s deputy when the Air Force senior airman opened his door armed with a handgun pointed down happened almost a month ago, but the information released so far hasn’t clarified why the officer was directed to his apartment.

The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office has released the deputy’s body camera video of the May 3 shooting and redacted 911 calls and reports, but not the deputy’s name. The agency also has not said if the deputy has made any statement to investigators. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating, but since its probe is ongoing, it won’t comment. Fortson was Black. The deputy’s race has not been released.

Fortson, 23, had no criminal record, and there is no evidence he was involved in the disturbance that led to the deputy being called to the apartment complex. Fortson was alone in his apartment, and his girlfriend has said she and Fortson were having a normal video conversation when the deputy began pounding on the door.

Ben Crump, the family’s attorney, has called the shooting “an unjustifiable killing,” and Matt Gaetz, the area’s staunchly Republican congressman, said Fortson did nothing wrong.

Here are some of the key issues surrounding the case:

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Why was the deputy at Fortson’s apartment?

Just before 4:25 p.m. on May 3, a female employee of the Elan Apartments in the Florida Panhandle community of Fort Walton Beach called the sheriff’s office, saying a resident had reported a loud argument that had been going on for 20 minutes. It was said that it “sounded like it was getting physical” and that “it happens often.”

She gave Fortson’s fourth-floor apartment as the location of the disturbance, but he was home alone. At the operator’s suggestion, the employee walked near Fortson’s unit and reported that she didn’t hear anything.

The deputy arrived about three minutes later, according to body camera video. He went into the office, where a man directed him to the parking lot. A woman met him there. On video she sounds like the employee who told the operator she would meet the deputy. Her face has been blurred out in the video.

“Are they fighting or something?” the deputy asked.

She responded that there was an apparent argument in one of the apartments and it “is getting out of hand.”

He asked which apartment.

“I don’t know. So I’m not sure,” she responded. She then told the deputy that two weeks earlier she heard someone yelling and cursing in the apartment, followed by a noise that sounded like a slap, but she hadn’t reported it.

The deputy again asked which apartment, and this time the woman gave Fortson’s apartment number. The deputy repeated the number. She confirmed the apartment was on the fourth floor and gave the deputy directions.

Fortson lived alone and had no visitors at the time of the shooting. That has raised questions over whether the deputy was directed to the wrong apartment. County 911 dispatch records show deputies had never been called to his apartment before. However deputies had been called to another fourth-floor apartment 10 times in the previous eight months, including once for a family disturbance.

A 911 call made by a resident apparently just after the fatal shooting referenced arguing between a man and woman in an apartment where a child lives.

Crump has said he believes police were sent to the wrong apartment. It’s not clear if he is referencing the apartment where police had previously been called.

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What happened when the deputy arrived at Fortson’s door?

The deputy arrived outside Fortson’s door less than three minutes after he got to the complex. He listened silently for 20 seconds outside, but no voices inside are heard on his body camera.

He then pounded on the door, but didn’t identify himself. He then moved to the side of the door, about 5 feet away (1.5 meters). He waited 15 seconds before pounding on the door again. This time he yelled, “Sheriff’s office — open the door!” He again moved to the side.

Less then 10 seconds later, he moved back in front of the door and pounded again, announcing himself once more.

Fortson opened the door, his legally purchased gun in his right hand. It was at his side, pointing to the ground. The deputy said “Step back” then immediately began firing. Fortson fell backward onto the floor.

Only then did the deputy yell, “Drop the gun!”

Fortson replied, “It’s over there.”

The deputy called for paramedics, but Fortson died a short time later at the hospital.

What happened after the shooting?

In the hours after the shooting, the sheriff’s office issued a short press release that offered few details. It said the deputy had responded to a call about a disturbance and had heard it himself, which is not corroborated by the body camera audio.

“He reacted in self defense after he encountered a 23-year old man armed with a gun and after the deputy had identified himself as law enforcement,” the statement said.

The shooting gained little media attention for several days. It wasn’t until Fortson’s family questioned how an airman with no record could be shot by a deputy in his doorway and hired Crump that it gained national notice.

“One thing is clear from the body cam and should be stated unequivocally: Roger did not deserve to die. He did nothing wrong,” Rep. Gaetz said in a statement.

Hundreds attended Fortson’s funeral near his family home in suburban Atlanta, with fellow airmen filing past his flag-draped coffin as they paid their respect.

The apartment where Fortson lived is about 8 miles (13 kilometers) from Hurlburt Field, where Fortson was assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron as a special missions aviator serving on an AC-130J Ghostrider gunship. One of his roles was to load the plane’s 30mm and 105mm cannons during battles.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin underwent a medical procedure at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Friday evening and has resumed duty after temporarily transferring power to his deputy, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement.

Austin is continuing to deal with bladder issues that arose in December following his treatment for prostate cancer, Ryder said.

The procedure was successful, elective and minimally invasive, “is not related to his cancer diagnosis and has had no effect on his excellent cancer prognosis,” the press secretary said.

Austin transferred authority to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks for about two-and-a-half hours while he was indisposed, the Pentagon said.

The Pentagon chief returned home after the procedure. “No changes in his official schedule are anticipated at this time, to include his participation in scheduled Memorial Day events,” Ryder said.

Austin, 70, has had ongoing health issues since undergoing surgery to address a prostate cancer diagnosis. He spent two weeks in the hospital following complications from a prostatectomy. Austin faced criticism at the time for not immediately informing the president or Congress of either his diagnosis or hospitalization.

Austin was taken back to Walter Reed in February for a bladder issue, admitted to intensive care for a second time and underwent a non-surgical procedure under general anesthesia at the time.

The Pentagon has notified the White House and Congress, Ryder said.

Senior Airman Roger Fortson, 23, died at his off-base residence, the U.S. Air Force said in a statement released Monday.

A deputy responding to the call of a disturbance in progress “reacted in self defense after he encountered a 23-year old man armed with a gun,” the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release on Friday.

Fortson was taken to the hospital where he died, officials said.

Fortson was assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron as a special missions aviator, where one of his roles as a member of the squadron’s AC-130J Ghostrider aircrew was to load the gunship’s 30mm and 105mm cannons during missions.

In a statement, the Air Force’s 1st Special Operations Wing said its priorities are “providing casualty affairs service to the family, supporting the squadron during this tragic time, and ensuring resources are available for all who are impacted.”

The sheriff’s office said the deputy was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into the incident.

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Frisaro reported from Fort Lauderdale.

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) —

With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of U.S. airpower. But the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence, not a human pilot. And riding in the front seat was Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.

AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning for an AI-enabled fleet of more than 1,000 unmanned warplanes, the first of them operating by 2028.

It was fitting that the dogfight took place at Edwards Air Force Base, a vast desert facility where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound and the military has incubated its most secret aerospace advances. Inside classified simulators and buildings with layers of shielding against surveillance, a new test-pilot generation is training AI agents to fly in war. Kendall traveled here to see AI fly in real time and make a public statement of confidence in its future role in air combat.

“It’s a security risk not to have it. At this point, we have to have it,” Kendall said in an interview with The Associated Press after he landed. The AP, along with NBC, was granted permission to witness the secret flight on the condition that it would not be reported until it was complete because of operational security concerns.

The AI-controlled F-16, called Vista, flew Kendall in lightning-fast maneuvers at more than 550 miles an hour that put pressure on his body at five times the force of gravity. It went nearly nose to nose with a second human-piloted F-16 as both aircraft raced within 1,000 feet of each other, twisting and looping to try force their opponent into vulnerable positions.

At the end of the hourlong flight, Kendall climbed out of the cockpit grinning. He said he’d seen enough during his flight that he’d trust this still-learning AI with the ability to decide whether or not to launch weapons in war.

There’s a lot of opposition to that idea. Arms control experts and humanitarian groups are deeply concerned that AI one day might be able to autonomously drop bombs that kill people without further human consultation, and they are seeking greater restrictions on its use.

“There are widespread and serious concerns about ceding life-and-death decisions to sensors and software,” the International Committee of the Red Cross has warned. Autonomous weapons “are an immediate cause of concern and demand an urgent, international political response.”

Kendall said there will always be human oversight in the system when weapons are used.

The military’s shift to AI-enabled planes is driven by security, cost and strategic capability. If the U.S. and China should end up in conflict, for example, today’s Air Force fleet of expensive, manned fighters will be vulnerable because of gains on both sides in electronic warfare, space and air defense systems. China’s air force is on pace to outnumber the U.S. and it is also amassing a fleet of flying unmanned weapons.

Future war scenarios envision swarms of American unmanned aircraft providing an advance attack on enemy defenses to give the U.S. the ability to penetrate an airspace without high risk to pilot lives. But the shift is also driven by money. The Air Force is still hampered by production delays and cost overruns in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will cost an estimated of $1.7 trillion.

Smaller and cheaper AI-controlled unmanned jets are the way ahead, Kendall said.

Vista’s military operators say no other country in the world has an AI jet like it, where the software first learns on millions of data points in a simulator, then tests its conclusions during actual flights. That real-world performance data is then put back into the simulator where the AI then processes it to learn more.

China has AI, but there’s no indication it has found a way to run tests outside a simulator. And, like a junior officer first learning tactics, some lessons can only be learned in the air, Vista’s test pilots said.

Until you actually fly, “it’s all guesswork,” chief test pilot Bill Gray said. “And the longer it takes you to figure that out, the longer it takes before you have useful systems.”

Vista flew its first AI-controlled dogfight in September 2023, and there have only been about two dozen similar flights since. But the programs are learning so quickly from each engagement that some AI versions getting tested on Vista are already beating human pilots in air-to-air combat.

The pilots at this base are aware that in some respects, they may be training their replacements or shaping a future construct where fewer of them are needed.

But they also say they would not want to be up in the sky against an adversary that has AI-controlled aircraft if the U.S. does not also have its own fleet.

“We have to keep running. And we have to run fast,” Kendall said.