Boeing executive Ted Colbert is out as head of the troubled firm’s defense sector, effective immediately, the company announced Friday.

Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a memo to employees that Steve Parker will temporarily lead Boeing Defense, Space and Security until a permanent replacement for Colbert is named. Parker is the chief operating officer for Boeing’s $32.7 billion defense sector.

In the memo, Ortberg thanked Colbert for 15 years of service to Boeing. But he also spoke about the need for Boeing — which has had a series of prominent failures over the last year — to do better.

“At this critical juncture, our priority is to restore the trust of our customers and meet the high standards they expect of us to enable their critical missions around the world,” Ortberg said. “Working together we can and will improve our performance and ensure we deliver on our commitments.”

Colbert took over Boeing’s defense sector in March 2022 after running Boeing Global Services. Later that year, he reorganized it amid steep revenue losses and quality concerns.

Colbert also stuck firm to the company’s commitment to no longer agree to fixed-price contracts with the Pentagon. Such contracts have led to billions of dollars in losses for Boeing, leading the company to swear them off, even if it meant passing on some major programs like the Survivable Airborne Operations Center, or SAOC.

At the Farnborough Air Show in England in July, Colbert told reporters that the Air Force’s plan for SAOC would have required Boeing to agree to fixed-price elements and other components it felt were unacceptable. He said if the Air Force were to require fixed-price deals for its new collaborative combat aircraft autonomous drones, Boeing would similarly steer clear of that program.

“If it’s a fixed-price development program that requires a ton of maturity … that is a recipe for failure,” Colbert said.

But losses at Boeing Defense continued during Colbert’s tenure. The sector lost $1.8 billion in 2023 and is down $762 million so far in the first half of 2024.

Colbert’s removal marks Ortberg’s first major management change since taking the reins of Boeing last month.

And it comes nearly two weeks after Boeing’s Starliner space capsule returned to Earth from the International Space Station without its crew amid safety concerns.

During Starliner’s June 5 flight to the space station, engineers observed several helium leaks and problems with its thrusters, according to NASA. NASA and Boeing engineers spent nearly three months testing thrusters and reviewing data to try to figure out how to fix the problems. But on Aug. 24, NASA determined it was too risky to fly the two astronauts home on Starliner and opted to instead bring them home on a planned SpaceX mission next February.

Ortberg is trying to put Boeing back on course after years of quality and safety troubles with aircraft such as the Max airliners, the KC-46 Pegasus refueling tanker and the new Air Force One presidential transport planes, which upended the company’s once-strong reputation as an aerospace giant.

Boeing is also reeling from a massive strike declared Sept. 13 by tens of thousands of its machinists, which is also impacting the firm’s defense programs like the KC-46. Ortberg has been speaking directly with workers to try to find a way to resolve the disagreement over issues such as pay and end the strike, the company said. A lengthy strike would harm its production, deliveries and operations.

In July, Boeing pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States over charges stemming from the crashes of two 737 Max aircraft. In January, the door plug of another 737 Max blew out midflight, with videos of the frightening scene aboard going viral. The incidents prompted congressional hearings into Boeing’s safety problems.

The U.S. is in the final stages of sending almost $570 million in security assistance to Taiwan — the largest such package to date, and one sure to frustrate China — according to multiple congressional aides and a U.S. official.

The administration will use its fastest tool available to deliver the aid: directly shipping its own stocks, a process it’s heavily relied on to support Ukraine’s self-defense. This $567 million package has already received the Pentagon’s approval and is now awaiting the president’s signature.

As it stands, it would be almost double a package of $345 million sent last year. The president will likely approve the tranche before the fiscal year expires at the end of the month, said one aide and an official, who like others speaking for this story were not permitted to talk to the press and were granted anonymity.

The new package of aid has not been previously reported.

Taiwan is by far the most delicate issue in America’s relationship with China. Beijing maintains the democratically governed island is part of its rightful territory, and won’t rule out military force to one day unite with it. The U.S., meanwhile, is Taiwan’s oldest and largest supplier of military aid.

The impasse often leads to public displays of frustration. At this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s largest defense summit, China’s Minister of National Defense Adm. Dong Jun warned that supporters of Taiwanese “separatists” would be punished — shortly after China’s military held large drills around the island.

And in a briefing this week, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned U.S. military support, arguing it “sends a wrong message to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”

Still, at a September defense conference hosted in Beijing, which a top Pentagon official for China attended, members of the People’s Liberation Army were gentler. The month before, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also traveled to China, where he met with senior members of the government and helped schedule a long-sought call between America’s top military leader in the region and his Chinese counterpart.

The security assistance will fund training, stockpiles, anti-armor weapons, air defense and multi-domain awareness, according to a U.S. official, who would not be more specific. It will also include drones, which are key to America and Taiwan’s “asymmetric” strategy to defend the island against China’s much larger military.

The ambiguity is typical for aid to Taiwan, which the U.S. rarely discusses in detail due to its sensitivity. Neither the Pentagon nor the National Security Council would comment for this story, except to say that America maintains the right to support Taiwan’s self-defense, per longstanding government policy.

“We have no comment on this matter. Taiwan will continue to enhance defense capabilities and closely work with the United States so as to actively uphold peace, stability and prosperity across the Taiwan Strait and in the Indo-Pacific region,” a spokesperson for Taiwan’s unofficial embassy in Washington said in a statement.

In an effort to hasten support for Taiwan, Congress gave the administration the authority to send Taiwan up to $1 billion in its own stocks each year — a more direct show of support than previous assistance from arms sales. That said, lawmakers didn’t give the Pentagon an actual budget, and the department has been loathe to send equipment it can’t replace.

After debating a further package of aid last year — one supported by members of the State Department and White House — Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin paused any further aid to Taiwan without funding.

That money arrived in April, when Congress included $1.9 billion to replenish U.S. stocks sent to countries in the Indo-Pacific. Leaders across the Pentagon have since been planning how to use that funding, most of which will go to Taiwan.

The package now close to approval went through several rounds of revisions, according to multiple officials. The Pentagon initially planned a smaller amount, but in a meeting of different parts of the administration this summer, multiple senior officials said it needed to be far larger — leading to the expanded $567 million figure.

The Pentagon is also now working on a third package of drawdown aid to Taiwan, which the government plans to complete by the end of the administration in January, the U.S. official said.

The April bill featured a further $2 billion in longer-term security aid for the region, $1.4 billion of which went to Taiwan in a separate package approved — though never announced — this summer. The U.S. green-lit the sale of $228 million in repairs and spare parts for military kit this week, adding to the $19 billion in such foreign military sales Taiwan is waiting on for delivery.

A Pentagon watchdog recently published a scathing report on the first round of support last year. It found that shipping issues caused by the American military led to aid arriving in Taiwan later than expected, covered in mold and in some cases expired. Fixing the issues cost the two sides a further $730,000.

“More broadly, the delivery of non-mission-capable items inhibits the [Defense Department’s] ability to achieve established security cooperation goals and may lead to loss of partner confidence in the United States,” the report said.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — Air Force Special Operations Command has returned about 60% of its CV-22 Osprey fleet to fully operational flight status and expects to once again deploy the tilt-rotor aircraft to support combatant commands in a matter of weeks.

In a roundtable with reporters at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Space Cyber conference, AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Michael Conley said the command is clearing about three Ospreys for flight operations every 10 days as it gradually lifts the fleet’s grounding.

AFSOC has roughly 50 CV-22s, and expects to have all its Ospreys back to normal flying operations by late 2024 or early 2025. Conley would not say where Ospreys are likely to deploy.

The military in December 2023 grounded all its V-22s, which are flown by AFSOC, the Navy and the Marine Corps, following the fatal crash of an Air Force Osprey off the coast of Japan a week earlier. That crash killed all eight crew members aboard.

An Air Force investigation later found the crash was caused in part by cracks in a crucial gear driving the tilt-rotor aircraft’s proprotors, and also by the pilot’s decision not to land the aircraft after multiple alerts known as “chip burn warnings” sounded in the aircraft. Those alerts let Osprey air crews know when metal flakes are starting to come off of its gears, which can be a sign the aircraft is stressed.

After a three-month grounding, the Pentagon announced it would start to return its Osprey fleet to flight operations, after revising training for troops flying them and changing maintenance procedures. There were no equipment modifications instituted as a prerequisite for returning the aircraft to flight.

AFSOC put new operating guidance in place earlier this year to require Osprey pilots to land sooner when chip burn warnings go off, Conley said. Now, Osprey air crews are instructed to land as soon as practical after the first warning sounds, and after a second, land as soon as possible.

Pilots always have discretion to fly their aircraft the way they think it requires, Conley said, since each flight has its own unique circumstances. But the tighter guidance on landing is meant to “make it less ambiguous to the crews” to decide what they should do in dangerous situations.

AFSOC had to quickly requalify its Osprey instructors and evaluators before it could start retraining air crew members, Conley said.

And Conley said AFSOC has been “very deliberate and slow and methodical” as it goes through its Osprey fleet one by one, and paying particular attention to aircraft parts.

Naval Air Systems Command Boss Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, who oversees the military’s Osprey program, told lawmakers in June that the entire V-22 fleet would likely not be back to normal flight operations until at least mid-2025.