The new bundles weigh between 80 and 500 pounds and are released lower to the ground, attached to disposable parachutes.

The new airdrop method will be used to augment the main methods of delivering supplies — landing at airfields and offloading, and dropping larger bundles to bigger units — Air Force officials said.

The first low-cost, low-altitude drop happened last month at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, and the concept became operational this month.

Conducting airdrops at low altitudes provides more accuracy and cuts down on “stray bundles” that might land far from the drop zone.

“This type of mission has given military members — the ones working in these villages, one day, one yard at a time — another opportunity to be successful,” Gen. Raymond Johns, commander of Air Mobility Command, said in a statement. “A random bundle destroying someone's property or even worse, hurting someone, can undo all the progress our folks are making within a village.”

The low altitude airdrops can be conducted from a variety of aircraft and do not require specialized training for parachute riggers.

In written testimony provided Wednesday to a Senate committee, the Navy’s assistant secretary for manpower said efforts are underway to begin training women to serve in submarines, beginning with officers assigned to large guided-missile and ballistic-missile submarines.

“As a measure of extra caution, the Navy will not reduce the number of male officers training and qualified for submarine duty until we have experience with successfully placing female officers in those roles,” said Juan Garcia, in a statement for the Senate Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on personnel.

No questions about the Navy’s plans were raised during the hearing.

Garcia said the plan to end the ban would lift “one of the last gender barriers” and also helps “insulate us from the anticipated surge in hiring by the civilian nuclear power industry in the decades to come.

“Because of the critical mission and demanding environment of the submarine force, we envision a gradual and measured approach to this integration,” Garcia said. Initial efforts will concentrate on officers serving in bigger subs “where the existing infrastructure will accommodate these changes without material alteration,” he said.

The grounding order affects the first four varieties of Hornet — models A through D — and does not apply to aircraft now flying combat missions over Iraq or Afghanistan. The number of Hornets affected makes up 16 percent of the Navy-Marine A through D fleet.

There have been no crashes or other mishaps related to the problem, said Navy spokesman Lt. Nate Christensen. The crash Wednesday of a Marine F/A-18D Hornet from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 224 off South Carolina — in which both the pilot and weapons officer were rescued — was not related to this problem, he said.

Of the 104 grounded jets, 77 are in flight status. Of those, 23 are in Navy and Marine Corps fleet squadrons; five are forward-deployed at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan; five belong to the Blue Angels flight demonstration team; and 44 are in fleet replacement squadrons. The other 27 Hornets are in a maintenance status.

The grounding notice from NavAir covered a “high stress focus area” that engineers already knew about as part of the Hornets’ service-life assessment program, Christensen said, so NavAir issued a set of instructions for affected aircraft.

Squadrons have been ordered to perform a magnetic field inspection on jets included in the grounding. If they don’t find cracks, their Hornets go back to unrestricted flight status, although crews are required to visually inspect the wings after every 100 hours of flight.

If a squadron can’t do the magnetic inspection on a jet included in the grounding, its crews have been ordered to inspect its wings visually. Even if they find no cracks, the Hornet pilots will not be allowed to pull more than four Gs during flight.

Christensen said most of the problems had been reported on C and D model Hornets across the Navy and Marine Corps, although there was a potential for cracks on all versions of the jet. He said cracking was taking place at the “aft wing shear attach fitting” — approximately the seam where part of a Hornet’s wing joins to the fuselage.

There are a total of 635 A- through D-model jets in the Navy and Marine Corps fleet.

Gary Payton, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for space programs, told members of Congress on Wednesday that the Obama administration had not asked the Air Force to examine the effects of canceling NASA’s Constellation program before the Feb. 1 announcement.

The military and intelligence community rely on the same manufacturers as NASA to build the rockets that launch their satellites, but the White House plans to turn to commercially owned rockets to launch astronauts following retirement of the shuttle later this year.

Early information shows the price of rocket propulsion systems for the military and NRO “might double” as a result, Payton said.

Lawmakers, including Sen. David Vitter, R-La., are fighting back.

Constituents in Vitter’s home state were counting on the Constellation program to bring new jobs to NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, where NASA and Lockheed Martin build components of the space shuttle.

At the Senate Armed Service Committee hearing Wednesday, Vitter asked Payton: “Was the Air Force explicitly asked the impact on you of canceling Constellation before the decision was made?”

“No sir,” Payton said. Six studies are now underway together with NASA and NRO to examine price questions, workforce issues and reliability concerns, he said.

The Constellation decision could not have come as a complete surprise to the Air Force. Gen. Robert C. Kehler, commander of Air Force Space Command, said the service had submitted two columns of information — one for possible “opportunities” and one with possible “challenges” — at the request of a panel assembled by the White House last year to examine options for the NASA’s post-shuttle future.

“We don’t have answers yet. What we do have is a potential concern,” Kehler said during the hearing.

Kehler said some aspects of NASA’s plan, such as research and development on a new engine, and improvements to the “launch infrastructure” in Florida could be good for the Air Force.

Christine Fox, director of the Defense Department’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, told lawmakers Thursday that the formal declaration of the breach will occur April 1.

She said the Pentagon has known of this since October. That’s one month earlier than had previously been reported.

The Defense Department’s latest estimates predict that each of the jets slated to be purchased will carry a price tag of between $80 million and $95 million in 2002 dollars. That's $95 million and $113 million in 2009 dollars, respectively.

In 2001, the Defense Department pegged the cost per Joint Strike Fighter at $50.2 million apiece for 2,852 jets. The Pentagon updated that estimate to $69.2 million in 2007 for a planned order of 2,443 jets.

The Pentagon expects to have a final estimate on the plane’s cost ready in early June, when it completes the Nunn-McCurdy re-certification package, Fox told the Senate Armed Services committee during a hearing.

Fox compared the F-35 program to earlier Pentagon aircraft that ultimately produced planes that are “valuable to DoD,” such as the C-17 and the F-22. She noted that F-22 “repeatedly failed to meet key performance, schedule and cost goals throughout its development program,” yet Lockheed Martin was ultimately able to produce “a capable aircraft.”

Ashton Carter, defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics, said at the hearing that the Initial Operational Capability dates for the U.S. Air Force and Navy F-35 have been shifted to 2016, a three- and two-year delay respectively. The Marine Corps date remains 2012, he said.

The Marine aircraft will use Block 2 software, whereas the Navy and Air Force jets will use the Block 3 version.

Carter said Air Force Secretary Michael Donley would inform Congress of the breach within days.

Christine Fox, director of the Defense Department’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, told lawmakers Thursday that the formal declaration of the breach will occur April 1.

She said the Pentagon has known of this since October. That’s one month earlier than had previously been reported.

The Defense Department’s latest estimates predict that each of the jets slated to be purchased will carry a price tag of between $80 million and $95 million in 2002 dollars. That's $95 million and $113 million in 2009 dollars, respectively.

In 2001, the Defense Department pegged the cost per Joint Strike Fighter at $50.2 million apiece for 2,852 jets. The Pentagon updated that estimate to $69.2 million in 2007 for a planned order of 2,443 jets.

The Pentagon expects to have a final estimate on the plane’s cost ready in early June, when it completes the Nunn-McCurdy re-certification package, Fox told the Senate Armed Services committee during a hearing.

Fox compared the F-35 program to earlier Pentagon aircraft that ultimately produced planes that are “valuable to DoD,” such as the C-17 and the F-22. She noted that F-22 “repeatedly failed to meet key performance, schedule and cost goals throughout its development program,” yet Lockheed Martin was ultimately able to produce “a capable aircraft.”

Ashton Carter, defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics, said at the hearing that the Initial Operational Capability dates for the U.S. Air Force and Navy F-35 have been shifted to 2016, a three- and two-year delay respectively. The Marine Corps date remains 2012, he said.

The Marine aircraft will use Block 2 software, whereas the Navy and Air Force jets will use the Block 3 version.

Carter said Air Force Secretary Michael Donley would inform Congress of the breach within days.