On March 6, 1945, the Navy found its solution in Jane Kendeigh and her 11 fellow flight nurses. For the first time in the war, the U.S. Navy began deploying combat nurses to an active battlefield. With only six weeks of training, these nurses began to instantly triage and evacuate wounded Marines, working in frigid, unpressurized aircraft amid constant enemy assaults.

Oftentimes called “mom” by their wounded comrades, these 12 women evacuated 2,393 men on 125 flights — more than 13% of everyone evacuated from Iwo Jima — and continued their bloody, lifesaving work in what was to become the largest Allied amphibious landing in the Pacific theater and the final island battle of the Pacific, Okinawa.

Author and professor at Hunter College, City University of New York, Leah Garrett, sat down with Military Times to discuss her latest work, The Flight Nurses’ War: The American Women Who Saved Thousands of Lives at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, as well as the conditions these women worked under and how researching her latest book left her with one of “the most moving moments of my life.”

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity.

Military Times: When one thinks of Iwo Jima, images come to mind of the blackened sand, brutal conditions and Mount Suribachi, but never women. How did the story of these 12 women come to your attention?

Leah Garrett: When I was writing my last book, I kept hearing these rumors that there had been women at Iwo Jima, and I thought there was no way that there were women at Iwo Jima. I reached out to the Navy, and I got military clearance and worked with an archivist there. He had written a bit about it, but there had never been a book about it — the full story of who these women were and what they were doing there.

Once I started to search about it, I found out that there had indeed been these 12 Navy flight nurses who had landed at Iwo Jima under fire, and in the worst kind of nightmare anyone can imagine, and flew out these men. Part of the reason that no one had done their stories is that these women themselves … I don’t think they realized how extraordinary it was what they had done.

I started to reach out to the families of those 12 flight nurses, and discovered that every historian wants to discover — there was a massive amount of material. Most of the story was actually in these well-cared-for boxes in basements and garages, and so the way I wrote the story was I worked with the military archivists, but then I flew around the country and met with the families themselves, interviewed the children, and went through the boxes and found just all this extraordinary first-person material: photographs, letters, memoirs.

Before we get into the nurses themselves, can you talk about the creation of flight nurses?

All of the flight nurses signed up to join the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor. For each of them, that was the watershed moment when they said, “I need to serve.”

There’s this one woman named Mary O’Connor who goes to Washington and says, “Look, we want you to set up a flight nurses program.” The reason that they wanted to set it up is that the Army had women in combat positions who were nurses, but the Navy didn’t.

As we get into 1945, the final two battles in the Pacific were really far more horrific than anyone expected them to be in the Navy, particularly at Iwo Jima. The Japanese were targeting the medical corps as well, so there was a massive attrition rate, and they did not have enough people there to take care of the men. And also, Iwo Jima is really complicated because you can’t set up field hospitals in Iwo Jima because of the landscape; it’s just too exposed. So then the question becomes: “Well, how do we get these men out?”

What happens is all these different nurses are serving in the Navy at different military hospitals, Navy hospitals around the country, and their supervisors reach out to the best one or two of each group and say, “Look, would you be interested in overseas service?” Nobody knows what it will be, but these women say yes. O’Connor gets hundreds of applications. She picks the top 24 that seem the best to her — basically smart, very capable, very brave women. So these 24 women are then sent out to Alameda, California, to do … this very intense six-week training.

The cream de la creme of the 24 were then flown to Guam, and once they’re in Guam, they’re going to be given their assignment. This had never been done before. The Navy had never put women in combat positions under direct fire, and it was a very incredibly dangerous thing to do. I mean, what if they’re killed? What if they’re captured? What if they’re used for propaganda? Like, there’s so much that could have gone wrong, and I think, much to everyone’s surprise, probably including some of the women, they were so effective in getting those men out.

On March 6, 1945, Jane Kendeigh became the first Navy flight nurse to appear on an active Pacific battlefield. Ultimately, she and 11 other nurses evacuated 2,393 men from Iwo Jima. That’s an incredible statistic, but does any story in particular stand out to you?

One of the crazy aspects of this story is that when you’re in an aircraft flying from Iwo Jima to Guam, there are no doctors on these flights. They fly over there with their corpsman and then a pilot, maybe a navigator. And when they get to Iwo Jima, it’s active fire.

Every time they’re supposed to be landing, there’s supposed to be a lull. There’s no lull because it’s such a horrific battle. They can’t turn around. They have to land. And when they land, they all talked about this visceral aspect of it. The smell of death. The sulfur smell. That the airstrip is shaking. And again, because there are no field hospitals there, they walk over to scores of extremely wounded Marines who are just lying there on stretchers on the ground in terrible, terrible shape.

It’s absolute chaos that they have to face, and then they’re on the aircraft, and they’re by themselves. One of them said, “I can’t even phone anyone to ask what I should do. I’m in the middle of the Pacific. There are these men who are dying or near death all around me, and I have to figure out what to do.” All of it was this learning curve on the plane. It’s freezing cold. There’s no air pressure.

One of the stories that moved me so much — it’s actually one of the more famous stories — but I think one of the most moving ones is about Kendeigh’s first flight. She’s actually not supposed to go on the first flight. There’s this photo a Navy photographer takes of Jane, where she gets off the plane, and she walks over to a Marine, Sgt. Bill Wyckoff, lying there. He’s got bandages all over his face. Wyckoff later said it was like an angel took my hand. He’s lying there near death, and he hears this woman whispering in his ear, “It’s going to be okay.”

Albeit brief, what kind of relationship did these Marines and nurses forge?

The men called them mom. They would say, “Mom, can you come here?”

“Mom, can you put on your lipstick?”

“Can I watch you put on your lipstick like my mom used to do?”

When the book was published, I insisted the font color on the cover be that lipstick red.

The women always said, “We were treated with the greatest respect by these men.” They never dealt with any hassling, no sexualization, none of that. It was just pure respect and love that they received and gave back.

One of my colleagues likes to talk about “research rapture.” What was the process like researching for The Flight Nurses’ War?

The families were incredible because I think that they were so glad somebody was finally telling these amazing stories of their role. And I had so many extraordinary moments. Part of the way that the unpacking of the boxes would work was that I would be with the children as we unpacked the boxes, so it was this extremely moving and rich moment that the kids would remember: “Oh wait, like there’s a shell necklace from Guam,” and then they would tell the story of how the mom got it when she was there.

I talk about this moment a lot in the book, and I always get very seriously teary when I talk about it. Another one of the flight nurses, Mary Leahy Hudnall, came from Massachusetts. She didn’t particularly want to go on planes. She joined the Navy because she thought that she would be on a ship. There you go.

She ends up on these flights, and in one instance they’re putting these men on the aircraft who are mortally wounded, right? There’s no doctor; it’s just them and the corpsman. One of the Marines on her flight out of Iwo Jima, who she knows is very, very, very wounded. He’s probably not going to make it, and he insists that she take a vial of sand from Iwo Jima that he took. She says, “No, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine,” but he keeps saying, “No, can you please take this. I need you to take it because you need to tell the story of what we went through.”

So she takes the vial of sand, and then he unfortunately passes away. She gives that vial of sand to her daughter, and then when I’m in Canada visiting with her daughter, we find that vial of sand in one of the boxes. I got to hold it, and it was honestly one of the most moving moments of my life.

I took a picture of it and put it in the book because, as a historian, it’s my imperative to tell his story. I’m not only telling the story of the nurses, but I’m equally telling the story of the wounded men under their care whose stories need to be told.

At roughly 10:13 p.m., officers with the Prince William County Police Department responded to calls about property destruction near Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.

Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, 27, was arrested at the scene and has been charged with felony destruction of property, trespass with intent to damage property, and felony injury to a monument, per the police department.

The alleged destruction via a sledgehammer has caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the historic military monument, police said.

Per the Washington Post, a second Marine from the statue is missing the bayonet from the rifle slung over his back, while a third figure’s helmet and face had been “chipped and gouged.”

The memorial was created in honor of Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of U.S. Marines raising the flag over Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945.

Austrian-born American sculptor Felix de Weldon, serving with the U.S. Navy at the time, was so moved by the image that he immediately constructed a scale model of the flag raising.

It would take him another nine and a half years to complete the full-sized model now standing in Arlington, Virginia. The smaller monument, allegedly defaced by Maldonado Soriano, stands near the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

Maldonado Soriano is being held without bond pending a court appearance.

During a review period from June 1, 2024, through May 31, 2025, the VA made at least one error in 17,900 cases, roughly 38%, regarding disability decisions for painful scars, according to a recent VA Office of Inspector General report.

920 of those decisions, per the report, led to millions in overpayment and will continue to accrue without “corrective action.”

For service-connected painful scars, as a result of burns, surgeries, shrapnel and gunshot wounds, among other sources, the VA requires a physical examination to support a veteran’s claim.

However, the OIG found that the Disability Benefits Questionnaire “does not clearly define objective versus subjective evidence.

Therefore, claims processors sometimes provided evaluations for painful scars without objective evidence to support the evaluations, which led to overpayments in disability compensation.”

In addition, the report found that physical manifestations of the disability were often evaluated under two separate diagnostic codes, often resulting in “pyramiding” and overpayment.

The report notes that more than a half-million veterans currently receive VA disability benefits for painful scarring caused or worsened by military service, but it took a random sample of 70 decisions from a review population of 47,300.

It further notes that the OIG took the findings to the VBA in February 2026 and following the briefing, “30 additional decisions completed from January 1 through January 31, 2026… identified a 43 percent error rate.”

The VBA, while agreeing with many of the OIG’s recommendations, including revising the “Scars/Disfigurement” section of the DBQ; ensuring employees understand how to accurately evaluate painful scars; and reviewing and correcting the processing errors on decisions the Office of Inspector General team identified, took issue with the statistical sample and the contextualization of those estimates.

“The OIG examined 130 decisions, representing approximately 0.27 percent of the total review population of about 47,300 decisions, and identified 60 errors, which form the basis for the projected 17,900 errors referenced throughout the report,” per VA comments in the report.

“Importantly, only seven of the 60 errors OIG found resulted in improper payments, which represents about 5.4 percent of the sample, and when viewed across the full review population, only about 0.015 percent of all decisions reviewed. The remaining 53 errors, more than 88 percent of the sample, were technical or procedural issues that did not result in improper payments.”

The VA is working to complete the OIG’s suggestions by February 2027 at the latest.

The relocation is expected to be completed later this year and executed as a permanent change of station for the aircraft carrier’s crew and family members. The move, while long planned, had left many family members in limbo after the USS Abraham Lincoln’s routine six-month deployment was extended twice after the U.S. jointly launched Operation Epic Fury with Israel on Feb. 28.

The ship, which returned to San Diego, California, on Oct. 8, spent 322 days at sea — and 265 consecutive days without a port call.

At an August town hall meeting in San Diego, family members spoke with Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao and other senior officials, expressing frustration with Navy officials over reported food shortages, concerns about self-harm and confusion over the timeline regarding the impending move to Washington.

According to the release, the home port shift is part of the Navy’s “strategic dispersal of ships,” while noting that “Regularly scheduled depot-level maintenance maximizes the lifespan of our Navy vessels and keeps our fleets lethal, modern, and ready to defend the nation. The work conducted during the maintenance period will maximize the lifespan of Abraham Lincoln and re-establish the carrier at the highest state of material and combat readiness.”

The Navy did not provide a start date for the maintenance period. Naval Base Kitsap is the Navy’s third-largest Fleet Concentration Area and its most complex multi-mission installation, according to its website. The Lincoln will join its fellow Nimitz-class carrier, USS Ronald Reagan, in Kitsap.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Oct. 7 that the carrier strike group had been awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the military’s highest unit-level valor award.

Hegseth, who visited the carrier one day prior to the ship reaching shore, announced the award to the 5,000 sailors aboard the Lincoln, citing the “historic mission” that included completing “3,693 combat flights, sinking 64 Iranian warships, launching 450 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and shooting down 77 one-way aerial attack drones.”

The three-man team traveled from Kościuszko’s native Poland to use 3D scanning, aerial photography and other digital technology to digitally document Revolutionary War-era sites and artifacts associated with the Polish-American hero, according to West Point.

As West Point’s earthwork fortifications and landscapes face continual erosion, the project, titled “Tadeusz Kościuszko at West Point: The Digital Heritage of the Polish-American Hero of Freedom,” seeks to preserve the physical traces of the Polish Revolutionary War hero’s contribution to buttressing West Point from the invading British forces.

From Sept. 14 to 29, the Polish team comprising Piotr Bialobrzycki, Damian Kuc and Jerzy Pajo worked to create “3D digital records of the sites as they exist today,” with the project providing “a benchmark for future conservation while eventually allowing people around the world to virtually explore historic resources at West Point… [and] create a precise and lasting digital record of Kościuszko’s material heritage at West Point,” a news release reads.

Project director Bialobrzycki led the terrestrial laser scanning of eight heritage sites at West Point, while Kuc, “the project’s lead specialist in 3D scanning and modeling, used structured-light scanning to document cannons, commemorative plaques, elements of the Kościuszko Monument, the Great Chain and selected artifacts, including Kościuszko’s sword at the West Point Museum,” according to West Point.

For his part, Pajor used his background in professional photography to document the sites with multimedia and gigapixel imagery, which will eventually support virtual walkthroughs of the historic site.

“We wanted to use this moment to demonstrate that the Polish contribution to the American Revolution was concrete and consequential,” Bialobrzycki said. “Its traces can still be read in the terrain, fortifications, monuments, documents and historical objects at West Point.”

Kościuszko’s journey from Polish tutor to war hero was non sequitur — all thanks to an unsuccessful attempt to elope with a lord’s daughter back in Poland.

After discovering his brother had spent all the family’s inheritance, Kościuszko was hired to tutor Louise Sosnowska, a wealthy lord’s daughter. The pair fell in love and attempted to elope in the fall of 1775 after Lord Sosnowski refused Kosciuszko’s request.

According to the Smithsonian, “Kosciuszko told various friends, Sosnowski’s guards overtook their carriage on horseback, dragged it to a stop, knocked Kosciuszko unconscious, and took Louise home by force.”

Broke, heartbroken and perhaps fearing repercussions for his actions, Kościuszko set sail across the Atlantic in June 1776. Upon arriving in Philadelphia, John Hancock appointed him a colonel in the Continental Army that October, and Benjamin Franklin hired him to design and build forts on the Delaware River to help defend Philadelphia from the British navy, according to the Smithsonian.

The Pole oversaw the damming of rivers and flooded fields to stem a British pursuit following their victory at Fort Ticonderoga in 1777. This action bought time for the patriots to regroup and prepare for their first major victory of the war — Saratoga.

Fortifying Bemis Heights overlooking the Hudson, Kościuszko’s design contributed to the surrender of Gen. John Burgoyne and precipitated the French’s entry into the war.

From there, Kościuszko oversaw the defense of West Point, with his fortifications so thorough that the British never deigned to attempt an assault.

At war’s end, he was promoted to brigadier general, with Thomas Jefferson praising the Pole: “As pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.”

From Sept. 11 to 19, 11 squads battled at Fort Benning, Georgia, to earn the titles of Soldier of the Year, Noncommissioned Officer of the Year and Best Squad.

Cpl. Michael Shield was named the Army’s Soldier of the Year, and Staff Sgt. Colin Doyle as the Army’s non-commissioned officer of the year. The announcement cements the Rangers as a dominant force within the Army competition, with the special forces unit sweeping the last three events in four years.

“The 75th Ranger Regiment is a one-of-a-kind unit,” Doyle said, an Army release states. “We simply show up to work every day focused on marksmanship, small unit tactics, medical training and mobility.”

Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael R. Weimer presented the awards to Shield and Doyle, as well as to the soldiers that rounded out the best squad, which included Sgt. William Masters, Spc. William Schaeffer and Spc. Marshall Garren.

After securing its place in the competition and being named the Army Special Operations Command top squad in August, the five-soldier squad found themselves in the muck and mire of Fort Benning.

During the 2026 competition, events ranged from fitness assessments, weapons qualifications, medical scenarios and an 18.6-mile nighttime foot march and obstacle course. Competitors also experienced the “First 100 Yards” evolution that replaced the traditional “shark attack” opening day for recruits, the release said. The soldiers also completed the combat water survival course, loaded and fired from an M1A2 Abrams and rounded out the competition with interviews with review boards.

“The Army Best Squad Competition is important because it shows where the readiness of the different commands is at across the entire Army,” Shield said. “And on top of that, competition is a huge part of the Army. And who doesn’t want to be first?”

This is the first Best Squad competition in two years after the yearly competition was canceled in 2025 due to a “lapse in appropriations” caused by Congress’ failure to pass a fiscal 2026 budget.

In 2022, Rangers earned the title of Best Squad and swept all three awards the following year. In 2024, a team from the U.S. Army Pacific won Best Squad.

Despite massive technological shifts, that paradigm still holds, which is why the U.S. Army and Navy have teamed up to keep systems operational — even in the extreme cold of the Arctic.

As the Department of Defense eyes greater operability in the far north, these low temperatures can wreak havoc on equipment and machinery (and toilets), with ice becoming enemy No. 1.

Which is why the Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center, or NAVFAC EXWC, and the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, or CRREL, began working with both branches to field a rapidly deployable Triple Container rigid-wall shelter system usable in temperatures as low as -50 degrees Fahrenheit.

The already fielded version can operate in temperatures as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit. The team focused on different configurations of thermal wrappings, insulation and other components to ensure that parts of the kit’s components that are particularly vulnerable to cracking and freezing — hoses, valves, bladders and pumps — were able to withstand the greater threshold for cold, according to a recent Army release.

The result, per the release, far exceeded the objectives, with the TRICON-based system staying operational down to -65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Testing took place in CRREL’s New Hampshire-based Extreme Cold Chamber, a 288-square-foot cold room capable of reaching temperatures as low as -90 degrees Fahrenheit, per the release. While military units typically have to wait until the Alaskan winter reaches its peak to simulate similar conditions, the controlled environment allowed the research team to create conditions similar to those of the real world.

“Our armed forces live and operate in extremely cold and difficult conditions, so having these facilities operational is important for their physical and mental health while serving in the Arctic and other high-north environments,” said Dr. Dan Tague, a research chemist at CRREL, one of seven U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center laboratories.

In 2024, the DoD released its “Arctic Strategy,” citing “Major geopolitical changes are driving the need for this new strategic approach to the Arctic, including Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the accession of Finland and Sweden to the NATO Alliance, increasing collaboration between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.”

The region, according to the report, had become “a venue for strategic competition,” and a space where the United States intends to build a more persistent presence.

The latest successes with TRICORN-based systems provide, beyond the obvious comforts for personnel stationed in the Arctic — Toilets! Laundry! Showers! — an expanded operational footprint for the U.S. military as a whole, according to James Pilkington, a project manager in NAVFAC EXWC Expeditionary Technical Department.

“This extends the operational range of base camps in terms of geographic locations and durations,” said Pilkington. “In turn [it] extend[s] force posture.”

“Ten and a half months is a significant amount of time away from home. The mission required that sacrifice, but it does not make up for missed birthdays, anniversaries and other important family milestones,” Lt. Cmdr. Tyler Barker, USS Abraham Lincoln’s public affairs officer, said during a news conference Thursday. “There are 122 new dads that are going to walk off the ship today. From the air wing and from my ship, they’re waiting to meet their children for the very first time.”

As thousands of sailors poured off the aircraft carrier to thunderous cheers and distant cowbell clangs, some of the first to touch solid ground were those 122 sailors, making a beeline to embrace the babies they had “met” via screens but never physically touched.

Among those sailors was Brent Ledbetter, an air traffic control center officer, whose son was born shortly after the Lincoln’s Nov. 21, 2025, departure.

“I just want to hold him, play with him,” Ledbetter told NBC News. “He’s crawling around now, so I’m excited to chase him around the house and give him all the love that, that, you know — has been kind of withheld for the last 10 months. I’m so excited.”

According to the outlet, Ledbetter’s wife was also assigned to what would become a storied deployment, but the sailor had relieved his wife shortly before her birth due to Navy regulations that they can’t be on the ship at the same time. Ledbetter’s wife, also an air traffic controller, will now swap positions with the sailor and deploy, while he will stay home with their son.

Ledbetter has served in the U.S. Navy for 13 years and deployed two other times on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower; once to the Red Sea and another time, in 2020, was 206 days at sea, NBC News reported.

In November 2025, the Lincoln departed San Diego for a routine six-month deployment, which was extended twice after the U.S. jointly launched Operation Epic Fury with Israel on Feb. 28.

For Mackenzie Adkins, she and her husband Alex had planned to start their growing family around his deployment schedule, but the path to conceiving is often not linear. Adkins found herself giving birth 10 weeks ago — with Alex video-calling in.

“I’m feeling a little bit of everything,” Adkins told KFMB. “I’m excited above all else, just so ready to have my husband back, to have him finally meet his son. I’m nervous, just the excited nerves of, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s finally happening’ after we thought it was going to happen so many other times, but this is finally it, and so [I’m] extremely happy.

“We were ready to start our family, and so we took the original return home date and used that to plan the pregnancy, and with military life, things just happen,” she said. “And well, here we are 10 weeks later, and he’s finally going to get to meet his son.”

On Wednesday, as the Abraham Lincoln and elements of its carrier strike group neared the California coast, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the carrier strike group had been awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the military’s highest unit-level valor award.

Hegseth announced the award to the 5,000 sailors aboard the Lincoln, citing the “historic mission” that included completing “3,693 combat flights, sinking 64 Iranian warships, launching 450 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and shooting down 77 one-way aerial attack drones.”

“Congratulations to @CNV_72 and all of CSG-3 on this well-earned Presidential Unit Citation for their extreme heroism over the last 10 months in defense of our homeland,” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao wrote on social media.

That defense included 40 days in combat and an “ironclad maritime blockade against Iran in support of Operation Epic Fury,” according to the citation.

Hegseth, who visited the carrier one day prior to the ship reaching shore, announced the award to the 5,000 sailors aboard the Lincoln, citing the “historic mission” that included completing “3,693 combat flights, sinking 64 Iranian warships, launching 450 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and shooting down 77 one-way aerial attack drones.”

“You have changed the arc of history, ensuring that crazy people, theocrats, never get a nuclear weapon,” Hegseth said.

The first ship in Carrier Strike Group 3, destroyer USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., returned to Hawaii on Sept. 28, while the Lincoln continued to sail towards the California coast.

“Congratulations to @CNV_72 and all of CSG-3 on this well-earned Presidential Unit Citation for their extreme heroism over the last 10 months in defense of our homeland,” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao wrote on social media.

That defense included 40 days in combat and an “ironclad maritime blockade against Iran in support of Operation Epic Fury,” according to the citation.

The increasingly long deployments of U.S. vessels — the USS Gerald R. Ford returned to its home port in May 2026 after a record 327-day deployment — have raised growing concerns regarding the demand of prolonged combat deployments.

Public concern over deteriorating mental health aboard the Abraham Lincoln and within the carrier group grew to a crescendo in mid-August, when Military Times reported that two sailors attempted to jump overboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The carrier, at that time, had gone 265 consecutive days without a port call.

Cao confirmed on Sept. 22 that eight sailors aboard ships from the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide but also said that no sailor had died from the attempts.

“There were some in the media who wanted to mischaracterize your great success or characterize it as something else,” Hegseth said. “Some in the media … wanted to define your mission by that. Or make it seem that that was all that people should take away.”

Hegseth refuted that characterization, instead noting faces “beaming with pride” aboard the ship — “and rightfully so,” he added. “You’re a part of history.”

Ultimately, the aircraft carrier USS George Washington was sent to relieve the Lincoln, which left the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in late August. The carrier group made a brief port call in Thailand, then a logistics stop in Guam, before heading toward the coast of southern California.

“Early investment and a relentless focus on quality and execution have positioned us to now deliver seekers at unprecedented levels in the near-term, and we’re committed to building on that momentum,” Steve Parker, president and CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, said in a release. “Our Boeing teammates could not be prouder of the role they play in protecting U.S. and allied service members, civilians and critical infrastructure worldwide.”

The agreement follows the framework deal that was announced in April. Production will be spread over seven years, matching Lockheed Martin’s push to surge production on the PAC-3 MSE all-up round.

Lockheed in January announced a seven-year framework agreement to increase annual PAC-3 interceptor production from approximately 600 to 2,000.

Work on the seekers began immediately, the company announced in April, and will be completed at Boeing’s facility in Huntsville, Alabama.

Boeing’s PAC-3 seekers work by identifying, tracking and knocking out a range of threats, from ballistic missiles and hypersonics to hostile air platforms.

Once the seeker identifies the target, the highly maneuverable interceptor, which uses a two-pulse solid rocket motor, engages and eliminates threats via direct body-to-body contact.

Monday’s announcement, meanwhile, comes as the U.S. military’s reliance on costly interceptors against cheap munitions, particularly those deployed by Iran during Operation Epic Fury, has come under increased scrutiny over the past eight months.

The announcement also follows a busy week for Boeing. Last Tuesday, the U.S. Navy selected the company to build its F/A-XX sixth-generation carrier-based fighter under a development contract worth more than $20 billion. The same day, the Air Force signed a $2.38 billion order for 22 more F-15EX Eagle II fighters.

Military Times reporter Michael Scanlon contributed to this report.