Do you think the Air Force will be sued?

I doubt the USAF will be successfully sued in this however, as SSG Matthew Howell stated, this is indeed a good time for the DoD to review all its records to be absolutely sure that its house is in order. Also, as Sgt Theodore (Ted) M. Hallock noted, the USAF must find out how this hapened and remedy it...NOW!

You can sue anybody or entity. The question is will it be thrown out by a judge during all the preliminary motions. Two for sure will deal with "sovereign immunity" and the second will be nonliability for an omission. Lawyers would have others. Since the suits would likely be a "tort". Even before that, there'd likely have to be a "claim" associated with some wrongful death theory which has to be denied before a suit can be filed. Really need a JD to weigh in on it as my engineering side just knows enough to go ask one knowledgeable about potential liability and process. That said, I would have expected if reporting was done and authorization to purchase denied, then he'd acquire the hardware through a private sale and have the same result.

SSG(P) (Join to see) The Air Force needs to find out what happened so that the process can be fixed. They need to find out of there are any other instances where a criminal record has not been reported.