USAF Academy via AP

The U.S. Air Force has identified Capt. Lucas Gruenther, seen here in 2003, as the pilot of an F-16 fighter jet that went missing Monday on a training mission over the Adriatic Sea.

The body of a U.S. Air Force pilot whose F-16 fighter jet went missing Monday after it took off for a training exercise from Aviano Air Base, Italy, has been found in the Adriatic Sea.

According to a statement released by the family, the body of Capt. Lucas Gruenther, 32, was found Thursday afternoon.

"A compassionate husband, a loving son, and a devoted brother; Luc leaves behind a family who loves him dearly and a legacy of achievement," the statement reads. "We will never fully recover from our loss, but take heart in the knowledge that during his all-too-short time in this world, he made a significant difference in the lives of all whom he met."

The Air Force also issued a statement, offering condolences to the family.

"Captain Gruenther was an outstanding officer who epitomized what it means to be an Airman," said Brig. Gen. Scott J. Zobrist, 31st FW commander. "He was not only a first-rate pilot; he was an exceptional leader whose presence will be sorely missed."

The statement said Gruenther, an Air Force Academy graduate, had flown numerous combat sorties during a six month deployment to Afghanistan in 2011, and that a board of officers will investigate the incident.

Earlier in the week, fragments of carbon steel and other debris were found floating in the northern Adriatic. At the time, the Air Force said it believed the debris belonged to the wreckage of the missing aircraft and continued its search-and-rescue operation.

The family kept its hopes up, and in a blog post published on the base's website, his wife, Cassy, wrote: "If anyone could survive something like this, it would be Luc."

Officials then confirmed that Gruenther's drogue parachute and his helmet were among the debris found in the water. Cassy wrote that they remained optimistic, as they were told the helmet was found in good shape.

"That's why I know he's coming home," Cassy wrote in the blog post. "If he has his mind set on something, he will find a way to make it happen. He'll find a way; whatever he has to do."

NBC Bay Area said Gruenther was from Twaine Harte, Calif. He married his high school sweetheart, who is expecting the couple’s first child, Serene, in a few weeks.

The Gruenther family thanked "the many people who volunteered their time and resources to help bring Luc home." The search operation included aircraft and ships from the United States and Italy.

NBC New staff writer Kari Huus contributed to this report.

Alessandro Garofalo / Reuters, file

A U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jet like the one shown flying over Aviano Air Base, Italy, is presumed to have crashed in the Adriatic Sea while on a training exercise. Aviano controllers lost contact with the plane about 8 p.m. local time Monday.

U.S. and Italian authorities searched the Adriatic Sea on Tuesday after a U.S. Air Force fighter jet was lost and presumed to have crashed.

Divers focused on waters where a fishing boat had found fragments believed to belong to the F-16, a Coast Guard official told Reuters.

Fragments of carbon steel and other debris were found floating in the northern Adriatic overnight, Rear Admiral Francesco Saverio Ferrara told Reuters. The U.S. Air Force said in a statement it believed the debris belonged to the wreckage of the missing aircraft, Reuters reported.

"We hope to find out more during the day so we can have a more complete picture of what happened," Ferrara said, according to Reuters.

Controllers lost contact with the F-16 at about 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET) Monday, after it took off for a training exercise from Aviano Air Base, Italy, the Aviano-based 31st Fighter Wing said in a statement.

Italian aircraft and ships were dispatched to the missing jet's last known location, and U.S. and Italian aircraft were flying over the area Tuesday, the Air Force said.

The Italian national news agency ANSA reported that a fuel slick was seen off the coast near the town of Cervia and that a fishing boat had found fragments that could have belonged to a military jet.

Weather was bad at the time the plane vanished, with sleet falling and visibility poor, the Associated Press quoted an Italian coast guard commander as saying. 

The Italian news agency LaPresse reported that the pilot sent an alarm signal to Aviano before contact was lost and that three other planes on the training mission had made it back to the base safely.  

No information was released about the pilot, who was the plane's sole occupant.

Search-and-rescue operations are still being conducted by sea and air, Reuters reported.

"Wing leadership remains hopeful that we will safely rescue our pilot," an Air Force statement said, according to Reuters.

The Associated Press, Reuters, ANSA and LaPresse contributed to this report

(This report has been updated to correct an error.)

Updated at 5:03 a.m. ET: A senior Army leader was among three servicemen killed by a suicide bomber in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, a senior U.S. military official told NBC News.

www.carson.army.mil

Command Sgt. Maj. Kevin Griffin earned a Bronze Star.

The victims included Command Sgt. Maj. Kevin J. Griffin, the most senior enlisted soldier for the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. Griffin, 45, of Riverton, Wyo., was a Bronze Star recipient who first enlisted in the Army in 1988.

Maj. Thomas E. Kennedy, 35, of West Point, N.Y., and Air Force Maj. Walter D. Gray, 38, of Conyers, Ga., were also killed.

The attack occurred in Kunar province.

Afghan officials: 3 US special forces troops killed

(Citing a military official, NBC News earlier reported that Brigade Commander Col. James J. Mingus was badly wounded in the attack. However, an ISAF official said early Friday said that Mingus had not been injured.)

While their names may be not be well known, U.S. officials consider this a significant attack because the brigade leadership was taken out by a suicide bomber. 

The soldiers were all assigned to the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division based in Colorado Springs, Colo.

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AFP - Getty Images

Fighters with the Free Syria Army are shown at an undisclosed location on Thursday.

Saudi Arabian officials will pay the salaries of the Free Syria Army in order to encourage mass military defections and increase pressure on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad's, the Guardian of London newspaper reported Friday.

The move has been discussed by Riyadh with senior U.S. and Arab world officials, the Guardian said.

The Guardian did not specify sources for its report. However, it said, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., an active supporter of the Syrian opposition, recently endorsed the idea of ensuring pay for armed Syrian opposition, though not necessarily with U.S funds.

The plan is gaining support as weapons sent recently to rebel forces by Saudi Arabia and Qatar make a difference on battlefields in Syria.

Saudi officials embraced the pay idea when it suggested by Arab officials in May, sources in three Arab states told the Guardian.

At that time, weapons started to flow across the southern Turkish border to Free Syria Army leaders, the Guardian said.

PhotoBlog: Glimpses of escalating conflict in Syria

Turkey also allowed the establishment of an Istanbul command center staffed by 22 people, mostly Syrian, to coordinate supply lines in consultation with rebel army leaders inside Syria, the newspaper reported.

News of the pay plan emerged as international mediator Kofi Annan said Friday that Iran, an ally and neighbor of Syria, must be part of any solution to end the crisis in Syria and pave the way for a political transition.

The United States and Russia are in a standoff over Syria and Iran's nuclear program.

Syria air force colonel flies to Jordan, gets political asylum

Annan wants the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and governments with influence on Syria's government or the opposition to agree on recommendations for next steps at a meeting that has been penciled in for June 30 in Geneva.

Iran's involvement is opposed by the United States, Britain and France, but Annan said it should be at the table.

"We are discussing the composition and other aspects of the meeting, but I have made it quite clear that I believe Iran should be part of the solution," Annan told a news conference in Geneva.

In response to Annan's remarks, the U.S. State Department repeated its opposition to Iran taking part, saying Tehran was playing a "destructive" role in Syria.

This article includes reporting by Reuters.

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- / AFP - Getty Images

A handout picture obtained from Ammon News and supplied by Syrian activists shows the Syrian air force Russian-made MiG-21 plane that a pilot landed with in the King Hussein military base in Mafraq in northern Jordan on Thursday.

Updated at 10:45 a.m. ET: A Syrian fighter pilot flew his plane to Jordan on Thursday and was granted political asylum, the first defection of an air force pilot with his plane during the 15-month uprising against President Bashar Assad.

Jordanian Information Minister Sameeh Maaytah confirmed that the pilot had defected, with the plane landing in Jordan at 10:45 a.m. local time (3:45 a.m. ET), The Associated Press reported.

Maaytah later told Reuters that the pilot had been granted political asylum by the Jordanian authorities.

Initially, three Jordanian officials said the Russian-made MiG-21 made an emergency landing at the northern King Hussein Air Base in Mafraq, 43 miles north of the Jordanian capital and near the Syrian border, while Syrian state TV reported its authorities had lost contact with the jet during a training mission.

Syrian state TV, the rebel Free Syrian Army, and a Jordanian security official all said the pilot was a colonel named Hassan Merei Hammadeh.

Reports: West may offer Syria's Bashar Assad immunity if he gives up power

The Jordanian official -- who insisted on anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the matter -- said the pilot took off his air force tag and kneeled on the ground in prayer at the air base after he landed his aircraft.

A spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army, Ahmad Kassem, said the group had encouraged the pilot to defect and monitored his activity until the jet landed safely in Jordan.

The defection could have serious repercussions on relations between Jordan and Syrian, which so far have maintained their business ties despite political tensions between them.

Jordan has taken in 125,000 Syrian refugees, including hundreds of army and police defectors, which Syria has desperately sought their extradition.

Since an uprising against Assad's regime began in March last year, Syrian troops have refrained from using military warplanes against rebels.

Evacuated thwarted by gunfire
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Thursday that its aid workers were forced to turn back as they tried to begin the evacuation of wounded and sick people from the city of Homs.

PhotoBlog: Syrian army shells Homs and Qusayr

The independent aid agency said on Wednesday that Syrian forces and rebel militants had agreed to its request for a humanitarian truce to evacuate trapped civilians and the wounded after more than 10 days of intense fighting.

"An ICRC and Syrian Arab Red Crescent team was heading to the old city of Homs early this morning, however we had to turn back due to the shooting," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan told Reuters. "We will attempt to go back to the area today (Thursday) in order to evacuate persons wounded and sick, women and children."

NBC News, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Marian Smith / msnbc.com

Barbara Westgate, a senior civilian executive in the US Air Force, recalled how a general once patted her on the head and remarked on how "pretty" she was after he was told of her promotion. She now helps to manage more than $822 billion in Air Force funding.

LONDON — When Barbara Westgate joined the U.S. Air Force as a secretary in 1973, her career goal was to earn $5,000 a year.

"I thought I wanted to be a housewife," she recalled.

Today, Westgate is the civilian equivalent of a three-star general who helps to manage $822 billion (over five years*) in the Air Force's future defense program.

Westgate was among the pioneering women serving in the military, intelligence and security services from around the world who gathered in London this week to discuss their experiences in leadership positions.

She told msnbc.com how an older male general offered his congratulations when she was promoted to director of logistics for the Air Force's advanced tactical aircraft program in 1988. "Of course you got the job, Barb, you're just so pretty," he said, before patting Westgate on the head.

"He was just from that generation," said Westgate, who is now a Washington, D.C.-based officer in the senior executive service of the Air Force. "He thought he was paying me a compliment." Furious as she was, Westgate didn't take it personally.

Amid the neat uniforms, gold insignia, polished medals, ribbons and brass buttons, the stories were often similar. The Royal Norwegian Navy commander who was the world's first woman to serve on a submarine, the British Royal Navy commander who was the first female flag officer, the Swedish Air Force colonel who was the first woman to command a regiment. When the latter was asked how it felt to be a woman in command, she said, "Well, I’ve always been a woman."

There was little bitterness. Delegates were quick to point out that their militaries had only really begun to open their doors to women in the past 20 years. It will take time for women to reach senior leadership roles, they reminded each other.

U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Carol Pottenger said she started her career in 1978 on a tour in Pearl Harbor, a non-operational assignment far from any front line. It was a typical assignment for women then.

In the 1990s, the Navy began opening up ships and other divisions to women. Now 93 percent of assignments allow them – including the Navy SEALs in support capacity roles. However, that's not 100 percent. Pottenger explained the reality of what that meant for her current role as deputy chief of staff for capability and development at NATO Headquarters Supreme Allied Commander Transformation in Norfolk, Va.: "I could command 40,000 sailors, but in one of the … [divisions] I commanded, women couldn't even serve."

Marian Smith / msnbc.com

Colonel Lena Hallin, center, is a Swedish defense attache.

Speaking to a room full of nodding heads, she added: "If you're going to recruit and retain the best and the brightest, you can't afford to ignore half the population."

Pottenger commended the mentorship programs and other policies that have opened up the military to women but urged young cadets to actively put themselves forward for more leadership roles and encouraged senior officers to aggressively support the policies from the top.

'I guess the message got through'
"Don’t be silly, we didn’t mean women,” Commodore Elizabeth Steele was told when she applied for a post with Canada's navy on a U.N. mission in Cambodia in 1992. She had joined the navy in 1986, when women weren't allowed to be maritime officers because of a policy that deemed them "not qualified."

But by then sea logistics had opened up to women and Steele submitted her application for the tour. Disgruntled by the response she got, Steele shot back that they should have specified that women need not apply.

"I guess the message got through because I ended up in Cambodia," she said.

Steele, who is now the deputy chief of staff and associate deputy minister at Canada's department of defense, advocates the concept of gender intelligence – or recognizing the different strengths men and women have and using them effectively.

"We have better teams … if we have teams that are diverse," Steele added.

However, one of the most important results Steele has seen of women entering the military is the influence it has on people in countries like Afghanistan — where women are not considered equal citizens.

It is important "for a young child to see women in a combat or military role," she said. “There is a connection that a female soldier makes with a person" that is unique and powerful.

Hosted by the Royal United Services Institute, an independent think tank for defense and security, the Women in Defence and Security Leadership conference wraps up today.

*The initial post failed to indicate that the $822 billion budget was over a five-year period.