A US special operations raid late Oct. 26 killed Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in northwestern Syria, President Donald Trump announced Oct. 27. The “dangerous and daring” nighttime raid included special operators flying more than an hour, likely from the US base in Erbil, Iraq, to Idlib Province. During the raid, Baghdadi fled into a tunnel and detonated his own suicide vest, killing himself and three children he took with him. “The United States has been searching for Baghdadi for many years,” Trump said in a weekend address from the White House. “Capturing or killing Baghdadi has been the top national security priority of my administration.” Read the full story by Brian Everstine.

A month-long Air Force review of its travel policies and accommodations regulations found that aircrews did not break the rules by staying at President Donald Trump’s resort in Scotland, and that the service’s current standards for such stopovers are strong. In early September, reports emerged of mobility aircrews staying at the luxury Turnberry Resort about 40 minutes away from the struggling Prestwick Airport outside Glasgow. “The data collected during this review convincingly confirmed that patterns across the 2015-2019 timeframe conform to use on the basis of operational military necessity,” the report states. Read the full story by Brian Everstine.

The Air Force’s secretive X-37B space plane landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida on Oct. 27, after spending a record-breaking 780 days on orbit. The Orbital Test Vehicle, a reusable and unmanned spacecraft, was completing its fifth mission. Mission four lasted 718 days in space, though the spacecraft was designed to last only 270 days aloft. A sixth mission will launch in 2020. Read the full story by Rachel S. Cohen, Jennifer Hlad, and John A. Tirpak.

The Air Force plans to buy a small number of AT-6 and A-29 aircraft, to be split between Air Combat Command and Air Force Special Operations Command, as its light-attack experiment shifts into an acquisition program. The service on Oct. 24 released its final request for proposals, which states it plans to purchase two to three light-attack aircraft each from Textron Aviation, which produces the AT-6, and the Sierra Nevada Corp.-Embraer team that offers the A-29. The Air Force expects to issue a contract for the A-29 by end of the year, and for the AT-6 in early 2020. Read the full story by Brian Everstine.

The Air Force’s C-130 program office is looking into what caused a torque tube and spring to recently fall off of a special operations plane in Japan, a service spokesman said Oct. 25. “It is not an issue we have seen before,” Air Force Life Cycle Management Center spokesman Brian Brackens said in an email. “Therefore, we will be sending the part to the lab for failure analysis. The findings of this analysis will help us to determine whether this was an isolated incident or if it will impact the C-130 fleet.” Airmen discovered the torque tube and spring missing from the MC-130J during an post-flight inspection Oct. 18, Kadena AB, Japan, officials told Air Force Magazine. Read the full story by Rachel S. Cohen and Jennifer Hlad.

An undisclosed number of B-1B Lancer bombers touched down at Prince Sultan AB, Saudi Arabia, their first deployment to the Middle East since they left the region in March. Their arrival marks a major addition of combat power to the newly opened location. The Lancers join a growing US presence at the Saudi base, including F-22s, Navy E/A-18Gs, and Patriot air defense systems. Read the full story by Brian Everstine.