Houthi rebels in Yemen have shot down seven U.S. Reaper drones in less than six weeks, a loss of aircraft worth more than $200 million in what is becoming the most dramatic cost to the Pentagon of the military campaign against the Iran-backed militants.

According to defense officials, three of the drones were shot down in the past week — suggesting the militants’ targeting of the unmanned aircraft flying over Yemen has improved. The drones were doing attack runs or conducting surveillance, and they crashed both into the water and onto land, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

The U.S. has increased its attacks on the Houthis, launching daily strikes since March 15, when President Donald Trump ordered a new, expanded campaign. He promised to use “overwhelming lethal force” until the Houthis cease their attacks on shipping along a vital maritime corridor.

Central Command spokesman Dave Eastburn said Thursday night that the U.S. has struck more than 800 Houthi targets. “These strikes have destroyed multiple command-and-control facilities, air defense systems, advanced weapons manufacturing facilities, advanced weapons storage locations, and killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and numerous Houthi leaders,” Eastburn said.

Another defense official said that although hostile fire is likely the cause of the drone losses, the incidents are still under investigation. The official noted that the increase in U.S. strikes can add to the risk to aircraft, but said the U.S. will take every measure possible to protect troops, equipment and interests in the region. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to comment on sensitive military issues.

US forces strike Yemen oil port in ongoing campaign against Houthis

The sophisticated drones, built by General Atomics, cost about $30 million each, and generally fly at altitudes of more than 40,000 feet. Houthis leaders have consistently touted the strikes in public statements. One of the defense officials said the U.S. lost Reaper drones on March 31 and on April 3, 9, 13, 18, 19 and 22.

U.S. senators, meanwhile, are raising concerns about civilian casualties caused by the American strikes in Yemen. Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tim Kaine of Virginia wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday questioning whether the Trump administration is “abandoning the measures necessary to meet its obligations to reducing civilian harm.”

Specifically, they questioned reports that U.S. strikes at the Ras Isa fuel terminal in Yemen last week potentially killed more than 70 civilians.

“Military leaders agree that ingraining civilian harm mitigation practices within U.S operations leads to better outcomes and that civilian casualties actually undermine the mission that the military has been sent in to do,” their letter said.

In addition to downing the drones, the Houthis have been persistently firing missiles and one-way attack drones at U.S. military ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. They haven’t hit any.

US sends F-35s to Middle East as strikes on Houthis continue

The U.S. has been using an array of warships, fighter jets, bombers and drones to strike the Houthis, and aircraft can now launch from two Navy carriers in the region.

Hegseth decided in March to beef up the Navy warship presence in the Middle East, ordering the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman to extend its deployment there, as the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson steamed toward the area.

The Truman, along with two of the destroyers and a cruiser in its strike group, is now in the Red Sea. And the Vinson, along with two destroyers and a cruiser, is in the Gulf of Aden.

The third destroyer assigned to the Truman is in the Mediterranean Sea. And two other U.S. Navy destroyers are in the Red Sea, but aren’t part of the Truman’s group.

Hegseth is weighing whether to grant a request by U.S. Central Command to once again extend the Truman’s deployment. A decision to do that could keep the Truman and at least some of its strike group in the region for several more weeks.

It has been rare in recent years for the U.S. to have two aircraft carriers in the Middle East at the same time. Navy leaders have generally been opposed to the idea because it disrupts ship maintenance schedules and delays time at home for sailors strained by the unusually high combat tempo.

Last year, the Biden administration ordered the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower to remain in the Red Sea for an extended time, as U.S. warships waged the most intense running sea battle since World War II.

Prior to that, it had been years since the U.S. had committed that much warship power to the Middle East.

The Houthis have been waging persistent missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in the region in what the group’s leadership has described as an effort to end the Israeli war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

From November 2023 until this January, the Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four civilian sailors. That has greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion of goods move through it annually.

The U.S. Air Force set a trial date for a lieutenant colonel who previously faced child sex abuse charges, according to the service.

Lt. Col. Kevin DiFalco — an active-duty service member stationed at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada — was arrested in 2022 by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and brought up on charges that included lewdness in the presence of a child and one charge of abuse or neglect.

The Air Force ultimately opted to move forward with administrative procedures and withdraw the charges, dismissing the case without prejudice on June 7, 2024.

But DiFalco finds himself staring down similar charges again.

“On December 6, 2024, charges were preferred anew in the case against Lt Col Kevin DiFalco,” a Nellis Air Force Base spokesperson told Military Times in an emailed statement. “On March 27, 2025, the Office of Special Trial Counsel referred the case to trial by general court-martial.”

The base said it could not elaborate on the nature of the charges or why new charges were preferred, as it could impede an impartial trial.

DiFalco is facing seven charges, including sexual assault, sexual abuse of a child, indecent exposure, indecent conduct, giving false testimony, conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman and possession of child pornography.

Army doctor pleads guilty to sexually abusing dozens of soldiers

His trial is expected to start September 15.

At the time of DiFalco’s arrest, he was commander of the 57th Operations Support Squadron, which manages Nellis Air Force Base’s airfield, airspace and flight scheduling operations, according to its website.

Military Times reported in September 2022 that the alleged victim informed school counselors that DiFalco had sexually assaulted her from December 2021 to June 2022, according to a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department report.

DiFalco sent the victim lewd Snapchat messages, asking her to wear lingerie he’d gifted her, the victim told authorities. The victim was also able to identify a tattoo in DiFalco’s groin area, which the police later confirmed.

The counselor alerted law enforcement, and DiFalco was arrested that same day.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with details of the pilot’s death.

HAMPTON, Va. — A pilot who was preparing for an upcoming air show in an experimental plane died Thursday when the aircraft crashed at a military base in coastal Virginia, officials said.

The civilian plane crashed shortly before noon while landing at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton, base officials said in a news release. The pilot was the only person onboard.

The person flying the plane has not been identified. The pilot was preparing for the Air Power Over Hampton Roads air show, which was scheduled for this weekend at the base.

“Today we lost a friend of our Air Force family,” Joint Base Langley-Eustis commander Col. Matthew Altman said in a statement. “On behalf of our entire JBLE team, I want to express our deepest sympathy to the family and friends of this incredible aviator.”

The National Transportation Safety Board said in a post on X that it was “investigating the crash of an experimental MX Aircraft MXS.”

The MXS is a single-seat airplane, according to the MX Aircraft website. The Australian company specializes in sport, aerobatic and race aircraft.

The base where the crash occurred is composed of the Army’s Fort Eustis and Langley Air Force Base, which sits near the southwestern edge of the Chesapeake Bay.

The installation is home to squadrons of F-22 Raptor fighter jets. One of them shot down a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic in 2023.

President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow enforcement of a ban on transgender people in the military, while legal challenges proceed.

Without an order from the nation’s highest court, the ban could not take effect for many months, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote, “a period far too long for the military to be forced to maintain a policy that it has determined, in its professional judgment, to be contrary to military readiness and the nation’s interests.”

The high court filing follows a brief order from a federal appeals court that kept in place a court order blocking the policy nationwide.

At the least, Sauer wrote, the court should allow the ban to take effect nationwide, except for the seven service members and one aspiring member of the military who sued.

The court gave lawyers for the service members challenging the ban a week to respond.

‘Utter chaos’: Amid confusing ban rollout, trans troops fight to serve

Just after beginning his second term in January, Trump moved aggressively to roll back the rights of transgender people. Among the Republican president’s actions was an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness.

In response, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy that presumptively disqualifies transgender people from military service.

But in March, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma, Washington, ruled for several long-serving transgender military members who say that the ban is insulting and discriminatory and that their firing would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations.

The Trump administration offered no explanation as to why transgender troops, who have been able to serve openly over the past four years with no evidence of problems, should suddenly be banned, Settle wrote. The judge is an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush and is a former captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps.

In 2016, during Barack Obama’s presidency, a Defense Department policy permitted transgender people to serve openly in the military. During Trump’s first term in the White House, the Republican issued a directive to ban transgender service members, with an exception for some of those who had already started transitioning under more lenient rules that were in effect during Obama’s Democratic administration.

The Supreme Court allowed that ban to take effect. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, scrapped it when he took office.

The rules the Defense Department wants to enforce contain no exceptions.

Sauer said the policy during Trump’s first term and the one that has been blocked are “materially indistinguishable.”

Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1% of the total number of active-duty service members.

The policy also has been blocked by a federal judge in the nation’s capital, but that ruling has been temporarily halted by a federal appeals court, which heard arguments on Tuesday. The three-judge panel, which includes two judges appointed by Trump during his first term, appeared to be in favor of the administration’s position.

In a more limited ruling, a judge in New Jersey also has barred the Air Force from removing two transgender men, saying they showed their separation would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations that no monetary settlement could repair.

Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.

The U.S. Navy paused its efforts Thursday to locate a sailor assigned to the carrier Nimitz who disappeared in Guam on April 18.

The search and rescue mission for sailor Gabriel D. Holt was halted at 9 a.m. after he was deemed “duty status whereabouts unknown,” the service said.

“The Sailor’s family has been notified,” a Navy press release said.

Holt was last seen at 11:57 p.m. on April 18 during a regularly scheduled port visit at Naval Base Guam, the Guam Police Department said.

Holt is described as being 6 feet tall, 192 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes, last seen wearing a white tank top, green shorts and gray shoes, according to an Instagram post from the department.

Search underway for missing Nimitz sailor

Crews from U.S. military branches and local emergency response teams conducted the search for Holt, including those from Navy Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 25, Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft from Commander Task Force 72, Coast Guard Sentinel-class cutter Oliver Henry, Station Apra Harbor’s 45-foot Response Boat-Mediums and Guam Fire Rescue.

The vessels collectively logged 120 hours and traversed 11,000 square nautical miles in their quest to find Holt.

“We are deeply grateful for the efforts of all involved, including the Guam Fire Department, the Guam Police Department, the Navy, and our Coast Guard crews,” said Sara Muir, spokesperson for U.S. Coast Guard Forces Micronesia. “We remain ready to act on new leads and will continue supporting our Navy partners and the sailor’s family. Our thoughts are with those affected by his disappearance.”

Anyone with information is urged to call 911 or the Guam Police Department’s Tumon Precinct Command at (671) 649-6330.

RICHMOND, Va. — Commissary officials are getting close to awarding a contract for the doorstep delivery of groceries, said John Hall, director of the Defense Commissary Agency.

“We need this. Our customers want and need this contract,” Hall said during a meeting of the American Logistics Association in Richmond, Virginia, on Tuesday. “I’m really excited about this.”

Hall did not provide a specific timeline for the broader rollout of the service, which is currently limited to select pilot locations.

“There are some hurdles left,” he said. “We’re going to work really hard to get over it.”

According to the contract solicitation documents, delivery service would be available to eligible customers living within a 20-mile radius of commissaries in the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The solicitation requires the service to start initially at 70 locations, but gives the Defense Commissary Agency the ability to add any of the remaining 108 commissaries at any time.

Commissary officials aren’t considering doorstep delivery for overseas commissaries, due to overseas regulatory constraints.

There are about 3.4 million eligible households living within a 20-mile radius of those 178 commissaries, which sell discounted groceries as a benefit to active duty, Guard and Reserve members, military retirees, Medal of Honor recipients and their authorized family members. Veterans with any Department of Veterans Affairs-documented, service-connected disability rating also have commissary privileges.

Officials launched a pilot program in 2022 for deliveries at eight commissaries, including Scott Air Force Base, Illinois; Fort Bragg South, North Carolina; MacDill Air Force Base, Florida; Fort Belvoir and Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar and Naval Base San Diego in California.

Delivery costs has been an issue in the service rollout. Officials are trying to keep delivery costs for customers as low as possible, Hall said.

“We want it comparable to what they would pay at a local grocery chain [for delivery],” he said.

When the pilot first launched in 2022, most delivery fees hovered around $4 per order. Customers pay the fee in addition to the cost of groceries, the 5% commissary surcharge, and, if desired, a tip for the driver. But those low delivery fees made it financially difficult for the two companies handling the deliveries to cover operating costs like gas prices and drivers’ salaries.

One of the companies, ChowCall, took over all the deliveries at the eight commissaries in March 2023, and was allowed to set prices to cover its costs. The cost depends on the miles driven, ranging from about $16 to about $30. ChowCall has delivered more than 28,000 commissary orders from the eight pilot locations, according to Todd Waldemar, founder and CEO of ChowCall.

Information is not yet available about whether the delivery fee will be subsidized in some way by the commissary system under the new contract.

Customers using the delivery service at the eight pilot stores buy nearly three times as much per order as customers shopping in person at commissaries, according to Hall. The average shopping basket is about $185 for customers using the delivery service, compared to the average basket of about $65 per trip for those shopping inside the stores. For those using the curbside pickup service available at all commissaries, the average order is about $120, according to Hall.

“Think about how much more benefit we can deliver to our customers, how much more we can combat food insecurity when we get this delivery contract in place,” Hall said.

In Sam Mendes’ World War I epic “1917,” violence doesn’t always come with a warning. The film’s structure — appearing to unfold in a single continuous take — immerses viewers in a real-time mission that hinges on urgency, isolation and chance.

But nowhere is that quiet intensity more brutally interrupted than during the bridge scene, a masterclass in tension, stillness and sudden chaos. What begins as a moment of eerie calm quickly erupts into a deadly confrontation, encapsulating the psychological rhythm of war: hours of waiting punctuated by seconds of terror.

In the scene, Lance Corporal William Schofield, one of two British soldiers tasked with delivering a message to halt a doomed offensive, comes upon the remnants of a canal bridge. The setting is ghostly. The sky hangs gray above charred buildings and a structure so damaged it barely clings to functionality.

There’s no gunfire, no shouting — only the ambient dread of open space in contested territory. For a brief moment, the war seems to have paused, and Schofield is simply a man trying to cross from one side of destruction to another.

The audience, lulled by the stillness, knows better.

Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins use the long take to draw the viewer in, walking them with Schofield across every step of the splintered planks. The moment he’s fired upon, it’s not just a character in danger — it’s the audience, too. There’s no cut to safety, no shift in perspective. The camera is trapped in the chaos with him, and what was once silence explodes into violence.

Director Sam Mendes emphasized that this immersive approach was by design.

“I wanted to travel every step with these men — to breathe every breath with them,” Mendes told Vanity Fair. “It needed to be visceral and immersive.”

The sniper duel that follows isn’t stylized or elegant. It’s sloppy, disorienting, real. Schofield takes cover, fires wildly and ultimately outmaneuvers the hidden enemy — but not before taking a near-fatal hit to the head.

He blacks out. The screen fades. The illusion of the continuous take is broken, if only briefly, symbolizing a fracture in the film’s rhythm and Schofield’s psyche. He wakes later, disoriented, alone and reborn in a more dangerous phase of his mission.

The bridge scene’s refusal to telegraph its intent makes it so impactful. In most war films, action is preceded by swelling music, a flurry of edits or dialogue that foreshadows the threat.

Not here. The gunshot doesn’t just pierce the air — it severs the film’s momentary peace. And that’s the point. War doesn’t wait for a dramatic build-up. The most lethal moments often follow the quietest.

Deakins, a veteran cinematographer and frequent collaborator with Mendes, admitted that this sequence — and the film as a whole — was one of his career’s most daunting technical challenges.

“We were very lucky,” he said in an interview. “It was the biggest challenge. I mean, that caused me the most anxiety.”

But beyond tension, the scene carries metaphorical weight.

The bridge is both literal and symbolic: a point of no return. Once crossed, Schofield’s mission enters a darker, more surreal phase. It’s the moment his journey stops being about duty and becomes more existential. He’s no longer just a messenger — he’s a lone figure clinging to purpose amid destruction. The bridge is broken, but he crosses it anyway, and that act underscores the film’s central message: perseverance in the face of chaos.

There’s also a stark commentary on vulnerability. Open ground becomes a deadly unknown in a war so often associated with trench-bound stalemates. The bridge offers no cover, no concealment — only exposure. Schofield’s survival is not the result of superior firepower or tactics, but grit and chance. He moves forward not because he’s fearless, but because he’s resigned to the idea that standing still is just as dangerous.

‘1917’ co-star discusses instant war cinema classic

George MacKay, who portrays Schofield, described the pressure of performing the film’s ambitious single-take illusion.

“It was stressful, but I felt like this one-take thing is just an actor’s dream,” MacKay told Vanity Fair. “It really does allow you to throw yourself into it.”

The bridge scene is particularly relevant when viewed through the lens of military service. Many veterans recognize the rhythm of quiet and violence that “1917″ portrays with brutal accuracy. The sudden switch from routine to survival mode mirrors real-life deployments where a seemingly routine foot patrol can turn into a firefight in seconds.

That’s why the scene resonates — it reflects the lived reality of those who know combat’s unpredictable rhythms.

It also reminds viewers of something easy to forget in stylized portrayals of war: survival often comes down to small decisions made in seconds. Ducking behind rubble, peering out at just the right angle, pulling the trigger half a second faster — these are the margins that matter, and “1917″ respects them.

Deakins’ camera doesn’t cut away because the truth of combat doesn’t. The viewer doesn’t get a breather. There’s no emotional reset. The camera holds steady as Schofield scrambles, breathes and bleeds. By keeping the audience locked in, Mendes ensures that every shot, every heartbeat, every fall feels earned.

In the broader narrative, the bridge scene is a turning point. It’s not the climax of the mission, but rather the moment when the stakes become real. It strips away any lingering notion that this is an adventure.

Schofield’s comrade is gone, but his orders remain. And now, with a concussion and dwindling resources, he must move alone through enemy territory, relying on nothing but instinct and will.

If “1917″ is a film about duty and sacrifice, the bridge scene is its violent awakening. It tells us that war doesn’t wait for clarity.

A sailor who disappeared during a scheduled port visit to Guam is still unaccounted for, according to local authorities and the U.S. Navy.

Sailor Gabriel D. Holt, assigned to the aircraft carrier Nimitz, was last seen at 11:57 p.m. on April 18 between Hotel Nikko and Gun Beach, the Guam Police Department said.

An April 19 Instagram post from the police department described Holt as 6 feet tall, 192 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes, last seen wearing a white tank top, green shorts and gray shoes.

Search and rescue efforts were underway for the sailor, according to Nimitz spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Tim Pietrack.

USS Nimitz waves goodbye to San Diego for likely final deployment

“At this time, all available agencies are actively engaged in efforts to locate the missing Sailor,” Pietrack said. “The search is ongoing, and we are committed to fully cooperating with local authorities while search and rescue efforts continue.”

Anyone with information is urged to call 911 or the Guam Police Department’s Tumon Precinct Command at (671) 649-6330.

The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group — which includes the aircraft carrier Nimitz, Carrier Air Wing 17, and Destroyer Squadron 9 — docked in Guam on April 18, the same day Holt went missing.

The aircraft carrier is currently on what’s likely to be its final deployment before it’s decommissioned in 2026. It left Guam on April 21, according to the Navy.

U.S. Marines will test one of the service’s newest counter-drone defense systems during this year’s Balikatan military exercise in collaboration with the Philippine military, according to the Marine Corps.

Marines with the 3rd Littoral Anti-Air Battalion’s Ground-Based Air Defense Battery will conduct live-fire training with the ground-based Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or MADIS, a short-range, surface-to-air system that specializes in the detection and destruction of unmanned aircraft systems, at the annual joint drills currently underway in the Philippines.

The exercise will mark MADIS’ second live-fire training, following training in January at the Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island of Hawaii, and the first time the system has been deployed outside the United States with a U.S. Marine Corps unit.

“The MADIS is a unique weapon system that enhances both the survivability and lethality of [the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment] by extending the reach of the airspace over which the formation has control, and by giving tactical flexibility to the friendly elements operating within our area of operations,” said Col. John G. Lehane, commanding officer of the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, in a release.

During an integrated air and missile defense event, U.S. Marines will perform a demonstration of the MADIS alongside Philippine Marines and soldiers, who will also utilize their own counter-drone systems.

With MADIS, Marines don’t have to exit their vehicle to manually target and take out an unmanned aerial vehicle.

The system, mounted to a tactical vehicle, comes equipped with radar and weapons capable of identifying aerial threats and neutralizing them out of the sky with jammers, Stinger missiles and a 30mm cannon.

This Marine unit now has its own tool to blast drones out of the sky

MADIS will replace a previous aerial defense system called the Man-Portable Air Defense System, or MANPADs, which includes a fire unit vehicle, section leader vehicle and a Stinger shoulder-fired missile as its primary weapon system, according to the Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps — which requested $130 million for 13 MADIS Increment 1 systems in its fiscal 2024 budget request — will seek to field 190 MADIS systems through 2035 to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Low-Altitude Air Defense Battalions and the 3rd, 4th and 12th Marine Littoral Regiments.

This year’s Balikatan, running through May 9 on the Philippine islands of Luzon and Palawan, marks 40 years of joint drills aimed at fortifying the Indo-Pacific. U.S. and Philippine troops will conduct coordinated military operations across land, sea, air, space and cyber domains for the exercise.

The I Marine Expeditionary Force Command Element, 1st Marine Division, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, 1st Marine Logistics Group, 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment and 1st Marine Aircraft Wing will participate in the event.

“The MADIS continues to exceed expectations, and the more repetitions we get to integrate it with the [Philippine Marine Corps] in training, the more it will enhance our collective lethality,” said Lt. Col. Matthew E. Sladek, commanding officer of the 3rd Littoral Anti-Air Battalion.

MANILA, Philippines — Thousands of allied American and Filipino forces opened annual combat drills April 21 that include repelling an island attack to simulate the defense of the Philippine archipelago and seas in a “full-scale battle scenario” that has antagonized China.

The annual Balikatan military exercises between the longtime treaty allies are scheduled from April 21 to May 9 with about 9,000 American and 5,000 Filipino military personnel. Fighter jets, warships and an array of weaponry including a U.S. Marine anti-ship missile system will be involved, U.S. and Philippine military officials said.

China has steadfastly opposed such war drills in or near the disputed South China Sea and in northern Philippine provinces close to Taiwan, especially if they involve U.S. and allied forces that Beijing says aim to contain it and, consequently, threaten regional stability and peace.

“We are ready,” U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Glynn told a news conference when asked if U.S. and Philippine forces have built up the capability to address any major act of aggression in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea after years of joint combat exercises.

“Our combined strength … possesses a degree of lethality for a force that possesses an indomitable warrior ethos and spirit,” Glynn said in a speech in the opening ceremony of the annual combat-readiness exercises. “It’s all dedicated to one purpose, to ensure the defense of the Philippines and to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

“All of us want to resolve any regional conflict peacefully, but should deterrence fail, we need to be prepared,” said Glynn, who previously helped lead special operations forces against the Islamic State group and served in Fallujah, Iraq.

Philippine Army Maj. Gen. Francisco Lorenzo said the exercises during Balikatan, meaning “shoulder to shoulder” in Tagalog, are not aimed at any particular country.

“It’s joint training with the U.S. forces to increase our capability in securing our territory and, of course, it will increase our capabilities and our preparedness and responsiveness to any eventuality,” Lorenzo said.

The exercises include a mock allied counter-assault against an enemy attack on an island, the use of a barrage of artillery and missile fire to sink a mock enemy ship, joint navy sails in or near the disputed South China Sea, and aerial combat surveillance, according to the Philippine military.

A Philippine military statement described this year’s large-scale combat exercises as “a full-scale battle scenario meticulously designed to rigorously test and enhance the combined capabilities of both nations’ armed forces under the most realistic and challenging conditions.”

Aside from U.S. and Philippine military personnel, Australia plans deploy about 260 participants, an Australian military officer said. Several countries, including Japan, intend to send military observers.

A midrange missile system, which was deployed to the northern Philippines by the U.S. Army last year, will be used again in the combat exercises, U.S. and Philippine military officials said without offering additional details.

China has repeatedly expressed alarm over the missile deployment and demanded that Filipino officials pull the weaponry from Philippine territory, saying it could spark an arms race.

The U.S. Army’s midrange missile system consisting of a mobile launcher and at least 16 Standard Missile-6 and Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles has been repositioned in the Philippines, a Philippine official told The Associated Press early this year.

The system was repositioned from the northern Philippine city of Laoag to a strategic area in a western coastal province facing a disputed South China Sea shoal, where Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy forces have had increasingly tense confrontations.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited Manila last month in his first trip to Asia and said the Trump administration would work with allies to ramp up deterrence against China’s aggression in the South China Sea.

The U.S. was not gearing up for war, Hegseth said, while underscoring that peace would be won “through strength."

During the Balikatan exercises, the U.S. would deploy an anti-ship missile system called the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, as well as unmanned sea vessels to enable the allies forces to train together to defend Philippine sovereignty, Hegseth said.

The allied forces also agreed to stage special operations forces training in Batanes province in the northernmost tip of the Philippine archipelago across a sea border from Taiwan, he said.

Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the busy waterway.

Washington does not lay any claim to the waterway but repeatedly has warned that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth created another Signal messaging chat that included his wife and brother where he shared similar details of a March military airstrike against Yemen’s Houthi militants that were sent in another chain with top Trump administration leaders, The New York Times reported.

A person familiar with the contents and those who received the messages, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, confirmed the second chat to The Associated Press.

The second chat on Signal — which is a commercially available app not authorized to be used to communicate sensitive or classified national defense information — included 13 people, the person said. The person also confirmed the chat was dubbed “Defense ' Team Huddle.”

The New York Times reported that the group included Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, who is a former Fox News producer, and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired at the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior adviser. Both have traveled with the defense secretary and attended high-level meetings.

The White House and Pentagon said late Sunday that disgruntled former employees were spreading false claims.

“No matter how many times the legacy media tries to resurrect the same non-story, they can’t change the fact that no classified information was shared,” said Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary. “Recently-fired ‘leakers’ are continuing to misrepresent the truth to soothe their shattered egos and undermine the President’s agenda, but the administration will continue to hold them accountable.”

‘Obviously classified’: Experts say Hegseth chat leaks invited danger

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell added in a post on X late Sunday that the report “relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the Secretary and the President’s agenda. There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story.”

The revelation of the additional chat group brought new calls for Hegseth to be ousted as President Donald Trump’s administration has faced criticism for failing to take action so far against the top national security officials who discussed plans for the military strike in Signal.

“The details keep coming out. We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X. “Pete Hegseth must be fired.”

The first chat, set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz, included a number of Cabinet members and came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was added to the group.

The contents of that chat, which The Atlantic published, shows that Hegseth listed weapons systems and a timeline for the attack on Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen last month.

Hegseth has previously contended that no classified information or war plans were shared in the chat with the journalist.

The Times reported Sunday that the second chat had the same warplane launch times that the first chat included. Multiple former and current officials have said sharing those operational details before a strike would have certainly been classified and their release could have put pilots in danger.

Hegseth’s use of Signal and the sharing of such plans are under investigation by the Defense Department’s acting inspector general. It came at the request of the leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee — Republican Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi and ranking Democratic member Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

Reed urged the Pentagon watchdog late Sunday to probe the reported second Signal chat as well, saying that Hegseth “must immediately explain why he reportedly texted classified information that could endanger American servicemembers’ lives.”

“I have grave concerns about Secretary Hegseth’s ability to maintain the trust and confidence of U.S. servicemembers and the Commander-in-Chief,” he added.

The new revelations come during further turmoil at the Pentagon. Four officials in Hegseth’s inner circle departed last week as the Pentagon conducts a widespread investigation for information leaks.

Dan Caldwell, a Hegseth aide; Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg; and Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, were escorted out of the Pentagon.

While the three initially had been placed on leave pending the investigation, a joint statement shared by Caldwell on X on Saturday said the three “still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with.”

Caldwell was the staff member designated as Hegseth’s point person in the Signal chat with Trump Cabinet members.

Former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot also announced he was resigning last week, unrelated to the leaks. The Pentagon said, however, that Ullyot was asked to resign.

The United States is consolidating its forces supporting counter-ISIS operations in Syria, reducing the number of U.S. troops in the country to fewer than 1,000 in the coming months, Pentagon officials said Friday.

“Recognizing the success the United States has had against ISIS, including its 2019 territorial defeat under President Trump, today the Secretary of Defense directed the consolidation of U.S. forces in Syria under Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve to select locations in Syria,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. “This consolidation reflects the significant steps we have made toward degrading ISIS’ appeal and operational capability regionally and globally.”

The Pentagon did not specify in the release how many troops will be withdrawn, but The New York Times reported Thursday that the number is 600. The release also did not provide a specific timeline for the withdrawal, beyond stating it would “bring the U.S. footprint in Syria down to less than 1,000 forces in the coming months.”

“As this consolidation takes place, consistent with President Trump’s commitment to peace through strength, U.S. Central Command will remain poised to continue strikes against the remnants of ISIS in Syria,” Parnell said. “We will also work closely with capable and willing Coalition partners to maintain pressure on ISIS and respond to any other terrorist threats that arise.”

The U.S. troops have been critical not only in the operations against the Islamic State but as a buffer for the Kurdish forces against Turkey, which considers them to be aligned with terror groups.

President Donald Trump tried to withdraw all forces from Syria during his first term, but he met opposition from the Pentagon because it was seen as abandoning allies and led to the resignation of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

The departure of 600 troops would return force levels to where they had been for years, after the U.S. and its allies waged a multiyear campaign to defeat IS. The U.S. had maintained about 900 troops in Syria to ensure that the IS militants did not regain a foothold, but also as a hedge to prevent Iranian-backed militants from trafficking weapons across southern Syria.

The number of U.S. troops was raised to more than 2,000 after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas in Israel, as Iranian-backed militants targeted U.S. troops and interests in the region in response to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

Three U.S. troops in Jordan were killed by a drone fired by an Iranian-backed militia in January 2024.

In December 2024, Syrian President Bashar Assad fled the country. In the months since, Syrians displaced by more than a decade of war have returned home, but the country remains unstable. Israel has targeted Syrian weapons installations, and there are some indications that the Islamic State group is trying to reconstitute itself, and Iranian-backed militias in Syria remain a threat to U.S. interests.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Marine Corps has identified two Marines who were killed in a vehicle accident Tuesday while deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Lance Cpl. Albert A. Aguilera, 22, and Lance Cpl. Marcelino M. Gamino, 28, both combat engineers assigned to 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division, were killed in a crash during a convoy movement supporting Joint Task Force Southern Border operations near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, the 1st Marine Division said in a release Thursday.

A third, unnamed Marine injured in the crash remains in critical condition, according to the release.

The three Marines were transported to University Medical Hospital in El Paso, Texas, where Aguilar and Gamino were pronounced dead, officials said.

“The loss of Lance Cpl. Aguilera and Lance Cpl. Gamino is deeply felt by all of us,” said U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Tyrone A. Barrion, commanding officer for 1st Combat Engineer Battalion and Task Force Sapper. “I extend my heartfelt condolences and prayers to the families of our fallen brothers. Our top priority right now is to ensure that their families, and the Marines affected by their passing, are fully supported during this difficult time.”

A native of Riverside, California, Aguilera enlisted in March 2023 and was promoted to lance corporal in May 2024. Gamino, from Fresno, California, enlisted in May 2022 and was promoted to lance corporal in August 2024. Gamino deployed to Darwin, Australia, with Marine Rotational Force-Darwin in 2024.

The accident, which occurred about 20 miles from Fort Bliss, is under investigation, officials said.

The Marines are among thousands of troops deployed to America’s southern border under President Donald Trump’s executive order to bolster border security. Roughly 7,100 active duty troops and 4,600 National Guard troops under state control are currently assigned to border operations, according to The Associated Press.

Dakota Meyer, a Marine who was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in the Afghanistan War but later became a sharp critic of the Biden administration over its chaotic withdrawal from that conflict, has reenlisted in the military and will serve in the Marine Corps Reserve.

In a briefing with reporters Thursday before the ceremony, Meyer said he is returning to military service after 15 years out of uniform because he felt he “had more to give.” He’s also close to President Donald Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who administered the oath to Meyer at the Pentagon and hugged him afterward.

But Meyer said he would refrain from politics while in uniform.

“The great part about being in the reserves is I'm still a citizen when I'm not on orders,” he said. “When I'm on orders I'll comply obviously with whatever the standard is."

Meyer was awarded the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest honor, by then-President Barack Obama in 2011 for his heroics in Afghanistan when he charged five times in a Humvee into heavy gunfire to rescue comrades under attack by Taliban insurgents.

On Sept. 8, 2009, Meyer was part of a security team supporting a patrol moving into a village in the Ganjgal Valley. Suddenly, the lights in a nearby village went out and gunfire erupted. About 50 Taliban insurgents on mountainsides and in the village had ambushed the patrol.

His actions during the six-hour attack and firefight saved the lives of 36 people, both Americans and Afghans. He killed at least eight Taliban insurgents. Firing from a gun turret on top of a Humvee driven by a fellow Marine, he provided cover for his team, allowing many to escape likely death.

Four American soldiers died in the ambush: 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, 25, from Virginia Beach, Virginia; Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick, 30, of Roswell, Georgia; Corpsman James Layton, 22, of Riverbank, California; and Edwin Wayne Johnson Jr., a 31-year-old gunnery sergeant from Columbus, Georgia. A fifth man, Army Sgt. Kenneth W. Westbrook, 41, of Shiprock, New Mexico, died later from his wounds.

After leaving the military, Meyer remained in the spotlight. In 2016 he married former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol, and they had two children.

He’s been outspoken about the jailing of another Marine — Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller — who criticized the Biden administration for the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan in social media posts while in uniform, which is a violation of military conduct.

American forces in the Middle East struck a major oil facility in western Yemen on Thursday — the first publicly acknowledged attack in weeks during the military’s ongoing airstrike campaign against the Houthis.

“Today, U.S. forces took action to eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue,” Central Command said in a statement.

Ras Isa is a critical oil pipeline and port, one of three on the country’s west coast through which the vast majority of imports and humanitarian assistance enter Yemen. Central Command argued the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, which America considers a terrorist group, were using the site as a fuel supply facility and for graft.

“The objective of these strikes was to degrade the economic source of power of the Houthis,” Central Command said.

In mid-March, the U.S. military began an extended bombing campaign against the group, threatening to continue the strikes until the Houthis stop targeting commercial ships passing through the Red Sea, a vital route for global trade.

The Pentagon briefed reporters on the campaign the week it began, but has since refused to comment on the number of strikes, targets or progress toward reopening shipping lanes. The refusal marks a break from the previous year of airstrikes on the Houthis, which Central Command would describe in public releases.

“They’re not going to admit the amount of their casualties or how much of their leadership structure has been decimated, but we know,” Hegseth said of the Houthis last week.

When asked to describe those estimates, Hegseth demurred.

What is clear, however, is America’s recent military buildup in the region. Hegseth has rushed a second carrier strike group, air defense batteries, advanced bombers and fighter jets to the Middle East to aid the campaign and send a message to Iran, which is now joining direct talks with the U.S. on the future of its nuclear program.

Central Command did not disclose the military assets involved in Thursday’s strike nor the number of casualties.

The Defense Health Agency must stop providing certain sexual assault resources for civilian workers and contractors overseas, a new Defense Department memo ordered.

The memo — signed March 13 by Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Stephen L. Ferrara — said that extending rape test kits to individuals who aren’t eligible for care within the Military Health System, or MHS, doesn’t comply with DOD policy and will be discontinued.

“Only Active-duty Service members, and their dependents are eligible to receive forensic healthcare examinations, including sexual assault forensic examinations,” the memo said.

According to Defense Department rules, civilian workers and contractors operating outside the United States are allowed to receive limited emergency services in specific situations, including treatment that is time-sensitive. The Pentagon defines those services as “triage and assessment” for symptoms related to “interpersonal violence,” as well as care for situations where their life, limb or eyesight is in danger.

While rape test kits had been included in the services offered to civilian workers and contractors, that’s no longer the case.

“Forensic healthcare examination or follow-up care is not included in the definition on limited emergency services,” the memo said.

The memo asked that all rape test kits for civilian workers that were collected between Oct. 1, 2019, and March 13, 2025, be tallied and located. The Defense Health Agency, the memo states, cannot destroy any of these rape kits.

Mariner suing government for rape on USNS Carson City speaks out

Retirees who are eligible for Military Health System medical care may still receive testing for sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, according to the memo, but they are not eligible to report rape or sexual assault through the MHS or receive advocacy services.

Any military medical treatment facilities assisting retirees in cases of rape or sexual assault are instructed to pass individuals off to civilian facilities and or law enforcement agencies, the memo reads. A retiree who prefers to have evidence collected at a military medical treatment facility may do so, but those kits must then be turned over to civilian law enforcement.

The memo specifically instructs military medical treatment facilities to develop a process through which non-beneficiaries of the Military Health System can be guided to other treatment centers — at their own expense — where they can receive a forensic healthcare examination, which may include a rape test kit.

Sexual assault victims who are eligible for the Military Health System must make a formal report of the assault to the Defense Department in order to receive a rape test kit, the memo says. Victims who don’t opt to report their assaults may still receive the medical components of forensic healthcare exams, but not evidence collection.

In “Top Gun: Maverick,” the bar scene at the Hard Deck stands out as one of the film’s most deliberate callbacks to the original 1986 classic, yet it does more than simply play on nostalgia.

The Hard Deck, owned by Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), is a spiritual successor to the bar where Maverick and Goose once serenaded civilians and fellow officers. Its modernized setting highlights how much has changed — and how much has stayed the same.

The choice to introduce the Hard Deck early in the film shows that Maverick is aware of the weight its legacy carries. Director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer didn’t just want a familiar setting; they wanted a place where Maverick’s (Tom Cruise) enduring identity as a rebellious aviator could collide with the fresh energy of a new generation.

The setting visually and emotionally bridges the gap between Maverick’s past and his uncertain future.

Within the Hard Deck’s lively, chaotic environment, “Top Gun: Maverick” efficiently introduces its key characters and their interpersonal dynamics. The young pilots’ camaraderie, competitiveness and bravado are all laid bare before they even step into a flight simulator.

Maverick’s flirtatious — yet tentative — interaction with Penny rekindles a long-dormant part of his character, showing viewers he is still searching for connection and meaning beneath his hardened, reckless exterior.

‘Top Gun: Maverick’ actors Phoenix and Bob love their call signs

Meanwhile, the stage is set for the challenges ahead through the playful arrogance of younger aviators — particularly Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), whose relationship with Maverick is deeply complicated.

Rooster’s performance of “Great Balls of Fire” at the piano is perhaps the emotional heart of the scene, offering a powerful callback to his father, Goose, who played the same song in the original. It’s a moment that roots the film in legacy and loss, adding emotional complexity to what might otherwise have been just another rowdy night out.

The bar scene also serves as a window into military culture — an important detail for a film closely tied to naval aviation. Director Joseph Kosinski emphasized authenticity, drawing inspiration from real officers’ clubs and watering holes frequented by Navy personnel.

From the strict enforcement of bar rules to the subtle displays of hierarchy among pilots, the scene showcases how important social spaces are in building bonds off the battlefield. These moments ground the larger-than-life dogfights Maverick is famous for, reminding viewers that the pilots are, first and foremost, people.

Beyond introducing characters and culture, the bar scene moves the story forward. Maverick’s anonymous encounter with the young pilots allows the audience to see him as they do — just another older face among a rowdy, younger group. The playful banter shifts abruptly when the pilots realize Maverick will be their instructor, setting the stage for the tension that fuels much of the film’s middle act.

Maverick’s early humiliation at the Hard Deck — being tossed out for failing to pay his tab — is more than comic relief. It signals Maverick no longer commands automatic respect. He must earn it again, just as he did decades earlier.

This sequence allows the film to explore the broader theme of legacy versus relevance. Maverick must confront a world that views him as outdated, even as he still possesses lessons the new generation desperately needs.

The contrast between Maverick and the young pilots is at the heart of “Top Gun: Maverick,” and the Hard Deck embodies this generational divide. The younger aviators approach flying — and life — with different values and assumptions. They are products of an era where technology often outpaces instinct, where rules and systems sometimes supersede gut decision-making.

Maverick, however, remains fiercely loyal to the idea that no machine can replace a pilot’s raw skill and courage. The bar, with its rustic decor and physical games like darts and pool, becomes a symbol of this analog sensibility in a digital world.

While the younger pilots joke, drink and posture, Maverick remains an outsider — watchful, seasoned and burdened by memory. His presence reminds them that experience and resilience matter just as much as raw talent.

Though the bar scene undoubtedly tugs at the heartstrings of anyone familiar with the original film, it succeeds because it is not a hollow homage. It functions as a crucial pivot point that sets up character arcs, thematic depth and emotional stakes.

“Top Gun: Maverick” bridges decades without relying solely on the past by rooting new emotional beats in old memories. The Hard Deck is not just a tribute — it is an evolution, symbolizing both what was and what could still be.

The scene is a masterclass in balancing nostalgia with narrative necessity. It encapsulates the movie’s broader themes of legacy, mentorship and resilience without slowing the story’s momentum. Far from being a simple nod to fans of the original, it’s a rich, layered moment that underpins much of what makes Maverick resonate today.

It reminds audiences — and Maverick himself — that while times change, some traditions are worth keeping.

The National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, is getting a facelift.

Since 2023, the Museum and Memorial “has been carrying out a multi-year upgrade plan, the most expansive changes to the buildings and grounds since opening in 2006,” according to its landing page.

The modifications, the announcement continued, “will not only see upgrades in technology to tell new and interesting narratives from WWI, they will create a richer and more immersive visitor experience.”

Opening over Memorial Day weekend, the museum’s latest exhibit, “Encounters,” will take viewers through the lives of 16 individuals that include: Allied and Central Power combat soldiers; British colonial Indian soldiers; women working in munitions factories; and dissenters arrested and tried for anti-war stances.

Crafted from diaries, letters and photos, “Encounters” includes state-of-the-art media displays that will feature 1.25 mm Pixel Pitch LED Display technology from Nanolumens — the first installation of its kind in a museum in the U.S.

The museum aims for “Encounters” to go beyond the simple showcasing of artifacts and historical data. Delving into more than troop movements and the number of rivets on a Sopwith Triplane, the installation aims to fully engage its visitors visually and audibly on “a deeply emotional level, focusing on the human side of the war through the stories of individuals who lived it,” according to a museum press release.

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This isn’t the museum’s first foray into immersing cutting edge technology and meshing it with the past.

In 2021, the National WWI Museum debuted its impressive virtual reality experience, “War Remains,” which allowed visitors to take a trip through time to the battlefields of World War I. The initiative was designed for viewers to feel — as much as possible — the true trench experience.

“We wanted to simulate what it was like to lose your hearing to an explosion,” director Brandon Oldenburg told Military Times in 2021. “Skywalker sound does an amazing job of putting ringing in your ears. You feel it, but you can’t hear it. … I think it makes a lasting memory of what it was like even though it is not even coming close to the real thing. You can walk out alive [and] unscathed.”

Now, the museum is once again leading the way when it comes to what museums of the present can and should be, with “stations” boasting recreated virtual scenes from the front lines, the home front and military hospitals replete with interactive soundscape technology found in just one other space in the U.S. — the Las Vegas Sphere.

According to the press release, “the spatial audio used in this exhibit creates a 360-degree sound environment, making it feel as if the voices, sounds, and stories are unfolding around visitors in real time.”

Despite more than a century separating museum-goers from the war’s end, the lives of the ordinary man and woman caught up in this titanic clash will once again be seen — and felt — like never before.

Renovations at the National WWI Museum and Memorial will continue through 2025.

“Encounters” opens Memorial Day weekend, 2025.

The United States Marine Corps removed a commander from his position after deciding he was unfit to lead, according to the Marine Corps.

Col. Mark D. Bortnem was relieved of his duties as commanding officer of Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort on April 14, and reassigned to duties at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island.

“This decision was made due to a loss of trust and confidence in Bortnem’s ability to command,” said Nat Fahy, a Marine Corps Installations East spokesperson.

Brig. Gen. Ralph J. Rizzo, Jr., commanding general of Marine Corps Installations East-Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, handed down the decision.

Lt. Col. Michael R. Eubanks - Air Station Beaufort’s headquarters and headquarters squadron executive officer - will assume Bortnem’s previous position in the interim until another individual is appointed.

The Marine Corps did not provide any further details as to the circumstances of the firing, which was first reported by The Island News.

Bortnem, who has served in the Marine Corps for over 30 years, took over as commander of Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in July 2023. He’s logged nearly 3,000 flight hours throughout the duration of his career, including more than 500 hours of combat time.

After enlisting in 1991, he served as a supply administration and operations specialist in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, before going on to join the Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program. He attended Ohio State University from 1994 to 1998 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant there, beginning his time as an officer.

In the early aughts, he became a naval flight officer after attending flight school, joined the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 332, and deployed to Iraq for several Operation Iraqi Freedom combat missions.

He continued to ascend the ranks until he was assigned in 2016 to be the Marine Forces Pacific air officer and director of aviation operations at Camp Smith, Hawaii. In 2022, he was eventually appointed as director of the commandant of the Marine Corps Safety Division, his last position before taking over as commanding officer of Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.

It was hard to miss Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Ahmed El Haroun among the throngs of uniformed sailors shuttling between sessions at the Surface Navy Association’s annual conference near Washington.

Over his enlisted “cracker jack” dress blues, El Haroun wore an elaborately knotted white boatswain’s mate’s lanyard, a traditional decoration he’d made himself over the course of his first deployment to the Middle East onboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer Mason — one launched shortly after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel unleashed chaos in the region.

El Haroun, 38, received one of the association’s Surface Warfare Operational Excellence Awards for his gutsy role in responding to a Somali pirate attack on a commercial tanker in the Gulf of Aden.

While Mason’s intervention in the tanker’s attempted seizure and capture of the five pirates made headlines at the time, El Haroun’s role in the rescue — one informed by his Egyptian heritage and knowledge of the pirates’ language and Middle Eastern culture — has never before been made public.

Now stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, and recently promoted to boatswain’s mate first class, El Haroun spoke with Military Times about the incident, during which he became the Navy’s primary contact point with the pirates and showed, as his award citation put it, “unparalleled courage” and “leadership under fire” in helping to capture the pirates and secure the release of 22 hostages onboard the tanker.

El Haroun, who grew up in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, traveled to the U.S. as an adult with his wife, an American Navy veteran. When their first child, born in 2016, was treated by Navy doctors at Balboa Naval Medical Center in San Diego for a life-threatening respiratory infection, El Haroun was deeply moved.

“After that, I wanted to do something back,” El Haroun said. “I wanted to say thank you for the country, for everything they did for me and for my family.”

When his wife suggested he join the Navy, he was uncertain at first.

“And I said, ‘What? Come on,’” he recalled. “I just came from Egypt. Like, they’re not gonna accept me.”

But the idea took hold, and he decided to go for it. Though El Haroun had, he said, earned multiple degrees in Egypt, he wasn’t yet a U.S. citizen. So, he pursued an enlisted path into the Navy, sure from the start he wanted to be a boatswain’s mate, a workhorse rating that requires physical acumen and expertise in seamanship.

“I love to work with my hands; I love to build a team,” he recalled. “This was exactly what I want.”

As El Haroun and his crew members trained in Mason’s home station of Mayport, Florida, news broke of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks, in which nearly 1,200 people, most civilians, were killed and approximately 250 more taken hostage.

The ship sailed that same month in what would end up being a 263-day deployment in and around the Red Sea. El Haroun said he knew things might get sporty, and as one of the older sailors of his rank in the crew, he took it upon himself to prepare for the worst.

“I talked to my chain of command: ‘I will order a lot of repair parts before deployment and keep them with me. And if something happens, I will actually repair it immediately, instead of actually waiting for the part to [arrive],’” he recalled.

During the deployment, he said, Mason’s crew was able to complete all repairs within 24 hours.

Then came Nov. 24, 2023, the day pirates attempted to hijack the chemical tanker M/V Central Park in the Gulf of Aden.

Mason was undergoing a multi-day replenishment mission near Djibouti when the ship’s skipper, Cmdr. Justin Smith, was informed about the attack. The crew wasn’t immediately briefed on the situation, but the ship set course for the tanker’s location, cruising nearly at full speed — around 29 knots, or 33 miles per hour, El Haroun recalled.

As the ship covered the distance, the boatswain’s mate got a call from his department head asking if he spoke Arabic. El Haroun answered that he spoke every dialect of the language and had served as the command’s translator.

Immediately, he was shifted to a new role in Mason’s Visit, Board, Search and Seizure (VBSS) team — one that ensured he’d be in direct confrontation with the pirates.

As the ship neared the tanker, El Haroun was given a megaphone. He saw the Somali pirates in a small wooden boat and delivered the commands in Arabic.

“You’re hearing the U.S. Navy,” he said. “Stop your engines. Stand by for further instruction.”

The pirates ignored the order and continued attempting to board the tanker, El Haroun said. Despite carrying no weapon, El Haroun suspected the pirates, who he believed to be armed, would respond to a show of bravado rather than diplomacy.

“In the Middle East, if you’re aggressive, if you put them in the [subordinate] position, they will listen to you,” he said.

Approaching the pirate’s vessel onboard one of Mason’s rigid-hulled inflatable boats (RHIBs), El Haroun said he kept going on the megaphone, positioning himself at the front of the small boat and yelling at the pirates to keep them disoriented and off-balance. He put himself between the pirates and the rest of his crew members, he said, to force them to have to interact with him.

Once the wooden boat had been cleared of weapons and the pirates had been apprehended, El Haroun said they looked decidedly less menacing.

Two, he said, were in their teens or early 20s; one was in his mid-20s; and two were in their 40s or 50s. Though the pirates had reason to be more afraid of the VBSS team than the sailors were of them, El Haroun said his first concern remained keeping the Mason’s crew safe.

When the captured pirates boarded Mason, he had them face out to sea, ensuring they’d be unable to make eye contact with any crew members. Ultimately, El Haroun said, they were in confinement on Mason for 30 days before U.S. Marines took them to Djibouti for eventual return to Somalia. He continued to act as their translator for communication and interrogation the entire time.

During the rescue, El Haroun and his teammates also had a close encounter with another threat that was an ever-present part of their deployment: incoming missiles, likely fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen. With the RHIB transporting pirates back to the ship, he said, incoming missiles added an almost surreal intensity.

In his everyday role as boatswain’s mate, El Haroun said, he tried to help sailors who were losing sleep over the regular missile attacks on the ship. A good day’s work apprehending pirates, meanwhile, provided an exclamation point to an intense deployment in the Red Sea.

“It was a great experience,” he said. “I feel … me and my team played a big role in saving a whole tanker and a whole crew. It feels … like an honor. I’m proud of what me and my team actually did.”

With what he aims to be many years of a military career ahead of him, El Haroun said he’s hoping to become an intelligence officer, putting his Arabic skills and prior experience to work for the Navy.

Two service members deployed to the U.S. southern border were killed and a third is in serious condition after a vehicle accident near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, the military announced late Tuesday.

The region where the accident took place is just over the state line and west of Fort Bliss, a major Army installation in west Texas that has played a critical role in dispatching military deportation flights and served as a touchpoint for thousands of soldiers and pieces of equipment now deployed along the border.

The troops are deployed there in support of President Donald Trump’s executive order to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

A defense official speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide additional details not yet made public said the accident occurred in a civilian vehicle, but no civilians were harmed in the incident.

The incident did not involve any of the Stryker vehicles the Pentagon has sent down to the border to perform patrols, the official said.

The accident occurred around 8:50 a.m. MDT Tuesday. The names of the deceased will not be released until the next of kin are notified.

President Donald Trump on April 9 signed an executive order aimed at revitalizing an American shipbuilding industry that has fallen well behind production levels of its rivals from the People’s Republic of China.

Language in the executive order, which cites the need to strengthen a “commercial shipbuilding capacity and maritime workforce,” mirrors many concerns expressed among the industry’s defense counterparts.

In an April 8 hearing of Navy leadership before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower, service officials voiced concerns regarding stagnant shipbuilding and what that could mean for success in great power conflicts.

Navy officials in March 2024 stated the service’s goal of growing its fleet of battle force ships to 381 over the next 30 years, a plan that would require investing at least $40 billion each year over the duration of the effort, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

There are currently fewer than 300 battle force ships in the fleet — and that number is expected to drop. Current projections indicate the Navy will retire close to a dozen more ships through 2027 than it expects to commission.

In a policy statement in February, officials from the nonprofit Navy League echoed the need to expand the service’s fleet while calling on Congress to increase funding for public shipyards and Coast Guard ice breakers.

An estimated 250,000 skilled or well-compensated workers must be hired over the next decade to accomplish shipbuilding and vessel maintenance goals, according to Matthew Sermon, the direct reporting program manager for the Navy’s maritime industrial base program.

Sermon, who spoke at the April 9 hearing, added the Navy is looking to expand supply chain capacity, partner with government and private organizations and address workforce challenges in what he described as an “all-hands-on-deck effort that will attract, train and retain American manufacturing and engineering workers.”

“Simply put, we need more ships delivered on time and on budget, and we are challenged in both of these arenas,” Dr. Brett Seidle, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month. “Costs are rising faster than inflation and schedules on multiple programs are delayed one to three years.”

The same day as Seidle’s testimony, the Government Accountability Office released a report calling for sweeping changes to U.S. shipbuilding if the 381-ship goal is ever to be realized.

The Navy failed to increase its fleet over the previous 20 years despite a shipbuilding budget that doubled during that period, the report said. Meanwhile, the Navy’s frigate program is running three years behind on delivery.

“We found that Navy ships cost billions more and take years longer to build than planned while often falling short of quality and performance expectations,” Shelby Oakley, a director at the GAO, said in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Discussing in his order an industry the GAO described as lingering in a “perpetual state of triage,” President Trump decried “decades of government neglect, leading to the decline of a once strong industrial base while simultaneously empowering our adversaries and eroding United States national security.”

In response to the April 9 mandate, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Mike Waltz has been instructed to submit an action plan to the president within 210 days. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is also expected to review different avenues for investing private capital in commercial and defense shipbuilding capabilities, supply chains, port infrastructure, workforce strength and ship repair.

Global ramifications

Navy leaders assessing the shipbuilding aspirations, meanwhile, are pushing for, among other items, a robust annual output of ballistic and fast attack submarines to counter near-peer threats in potential conflict areas like the Indo-Pacific and Arctic.

At present, the state of U.S. shipbuilding is impacting not only the delivery of U.S. vessels but also the demand for Virginia-class submarines by Australia as part of the trilateral AUKUS — Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. — security agreement.

While the Navy aims to deliver one Columbia-class and two Virginia-class submarines per year, AUKUS commitments increase the annual demand for Virginia-class boats to 2.33, Rear Adm. Jonathan Rucker, program executive officer for attack submarines, said during the April 8 hearing.

Those demands coincide with the Navy’s ongoing production issues with the future USS District of Columbia, the Navy’s first Columbia-class submarine — slated to replace Ohio-class boats — which has been floundering in production and is currently delayed by up to 18 months.

“While this delay is due to a variety of factors, it is unacceptable,” said Rear Adm. Todd Weeks, the Navy’s program executive officer for strategic submarines. “The Columbia class is the Navy’s No. 1 acquisition priority and a critical once-in-a-generation recapitalization effort for this foundational leg of the nation’s nuclear triad.”

The sluggish rate of producing U.S. submarines and surface vessels has ignited concern over whether the U.S. would even be able to replace disabled or sunken ships in a near-peer combat environment.

“When it’s a ... conflict and we’re losing ships — i.e., they’re destroyed and sunk — our ability to replace those at a rate higher than the adversary [is vital],” Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) said during the hearing. “Two things ... have to happen — one or both: We have to be eminently survivable under any combat conditions or we have to be able to replace [vessels]. And right now, we can’t replace.”

The Navy recently commissioned the Virginia-class attack submarine Iowa. Two additional Virginia-class submarines, Massachusetts and Idaho, are expected to be delivered this year, officials said at the hearing.

Additionally, the Coast Guard in December added its first polar ice breaker in a quarter-century, a critical development for use in an Arctic region that has yielded a surge in military activity.

The U.S. has for years been pushed by military officials and lawmakers to devote more resources to the rapidly evolving Arctic environment, but it is recent regional collaboration between China and Russia that is giving rise to an all-new sense of urgency.

Beijing is increasingly eyeing the Arctic as a domain that would further China’s power assertions and economic resources, Pentagon officials warned in December. Those concerns were amplified by a swarm of military activity in the region. Despite Russia being in its third year of war following its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it has remained committed to directing military and economic resources to the region — at times with China by its side.

In its 2024 Arctic Strategy, the Pentagon noted the “increasingly accessible region is becoming a venue for strategic competition, and the United States must stand ready to meet the challenge alongside allies and partners.”

Military Times editor Nikki Wentling contributed to this report.

A long sliver of federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border that President Donald Trump is turning over to the Department of Defense would be controlled by the Army as part of a base, which could allow troops to detain any trespassers, including migrants, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

The transfer of that border zone to military control — and making it part of an Army installation — is an attempt by the Trump administration to get around a federal law that prohibits U.S. troops from being used in domestic law enforcement on American soil.

But if the troops are providing security for land that is part of an Army base, they can perform that function. However, at least one presidential powers expert said the move is likely to be challenged in the courts.

The officials said the issue is still under review in the Pentagon, but even as any legal review goes on, the administration’s intent is to have troops detain migrants at the border.

Pentagon sending Stryker brigade, more troops to US-Mexico border

The corridor, known as the Roosevelt Reservation, is a 60-foot-wide federal buffer zone that ribbons along the border from New Mexico to California, except where it encounters tribal or privately owned land. It had been run by the Interior Department until Trump directed control be transferred to the Defense Department in a presidential memo released Friday night.

For the next 45 days, the Defense Department will test taking control of a section of the Roosevelt Reservation in New Mexico, east of Fort Huachuca, which is an Army installation in Arizona, one of the U.S. officials said. During that period, the Army will put up additional fencing and signs warning people not to trespass.

People not authorized to be in that area could be arrested by the Army’s security forces, the officials said, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public.

Any migrants in the country illegally who are detained by military personnel on those lands would be turned over to local civilian law enforcement agencies, the officials said.

Troops are prohibited from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil under the Posse Comitatus Act. An exception known as the military purpose doctrine allows it in some cases — but would not apply here and would likely be challenged in the courts, said Elizabeth Gotein, an expert on presidential emergency powers at the Brennan Center for Justice.

That’s because even though troops would be on land designated as an Army installation, they would have to prove that their primary mission there was not to conduct border security and law enforcement — and the whole point of Trump’s order transferring the Roosevelt Reservation to the military’s control is to secure the border, she said.

The military purpose doctrine “only applies if the law enforcement aspect is incidental,” Gotein said. “Does this [area] have a military purpose that has nothing to do with enforcing customs and security at the border?”

Rebecca Santana contributed from Washington.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine has been sworn in as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after a flurry of paperwork was finished to allow him to fill the job nearly two months after President Donald Trump fired his predecessor.

A formal White House ceremony is expected to take place this week.

Caine, a decorated F-16 fighter pilot and well-respected officer, took over on Saturday after Trump signed the necessary documents. He will serve the remainder of the four-year term of Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, who was fired by Trump as part of a broader purge of military officers believed to endorse diversity and equity programs.

Brown, a history-making fighter pilot and just the second Black chairman, had served 16 months in the job when he was fired Feb. 21. Caine’s term as chairman will run through Sept. 30, 2027.

Senate confirms Trump’s pick for chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff

Because he has never served as a combatant commander or a service chief, Caine did not meet the basic prerequisites for the job set out in a 1986 law. As a result, Trump had to sign a waiver allowing him to serve as chairman. Under the law, the requirements can be waived by the president if there is a determination that “such action is necessary in the national interest.”

Caine — whose call sign is “Raizin” — is the first officer to be called back from retirement and returned to active duty to take the chairman’s job.

He had an unusual path to the chairman’s post, including his start in the military.

Caine was commissioned as an officer in 1990 through the ROTC program at the Virginia Military Institute, but after pilot training, he got a waiver to move from active duty to the Air National Guard so that he could fly fighter jets. At the time, there weren’t as many open slots for pilots in the active duty service.

In 2001, while serving as a pilot with the 121st Fighter Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, he was in the second rotation of fighter jets that were patrolling the skies over Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11. Two months later, he deployed to Kuwait as an F-16 mission commander.

Caine got his master’s degree in 2005 from American Military University, in Charles Town, West Virginia. Much of his early military time was as a pilot and instructor, and he has 2,800 hours, including more than 100 in combat.

During his career, Caine moved in and out of full-time active duty jobs. He served in leadership roles in multiple special operations commands, in some of the Pentagon’s most classified programs and at the CIA. He also worked on staff and as a fellow at the White House.

His most recent job before he retired last year was as the associate director for military affairs at the CIA. He retired as a three-star lieutenant general.

The Senate confirmed Caine after 2 a.m. Friday, by a bipartisan vote of 60-25, with 15 Democrats and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine voting in support of his nomination.

Caine was in the Pentagon on Friday, but it was unclear when he would be sworn in because there appeared to be a delay in Trump signing the needed paperwork. Trump was at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, in Bethesda, Maryland, on Friday for his annual physical and then went directly to Joint Base Andrews to fly to Florida.

He signed the paperwork late that night. Caine was sworn in Saturday and was at the Pentagon over the weekend to start work. But as of Monday, the Joint Chiefs website still didn’t have him listed.

At his confirmation hearing early this month, Caine said he would be candid in his advice to Trump and vowed to be apolitical.

Asked how he would react if ordered to direct the military to do something potentially illegal, such as being used against civilians in domestic law enforcement, he told senators that it is “the duty and the job that I have” to push back.

Trump’s relationship with Caine dates to his first administration. They met during a trip to Iraq, as Trump recounted in a 2019 speech. He has said Caine is “a real general, not a television general.”

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

A pilot program allowing Defense Department civilians to buy discounted groceries at military commissaries in 16 locations has been extended through the end of the year, commissary officials said.

Civilian employees, including appropriated fund employees and nonappropriated fund employees, can shop at the 16 stateside stores participating in the program as long as they have DOD identification.

About 11% of the more than 61,000 DOD civilians eligible to shop at these stores have used the benefit in the four months of the pilot program, which was originally scheduled to end April 4. Sales across the 16 pilot stores have increased by 5.4% in those four months, and officials expect that trend to continue, said Keith Desbois, a spokesman for the Defense Commissary Agency.

Allowing DOD civilians to shop in the commissaries is expected to provide additional customer savings through increased sales volume, lower prices and more promotions from suppliers, commissary officials said.

The stores with the highest usage of the pilot program are Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia, where nearly half of the 1,327 eligible civilians have used the pilot program; Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas, where 36% of the 928 eligible civilians have used it; and Altus Air Force Base, Oklahoma, where one-third of the 995 eligible civilians have taken part.

The 16 stores are located in seven states:

• Alaska: Eielson Air Force Base
• California: Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake and Fort Irwin
• Georgia: Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany and Robins Air Force Base
• Maryland: Naval Air Station Patuxent River
• Oklahoma: Altus Air Force Base
• Texas: Laughlin Air Force Base
• Virginia: Naval Support Facility Dahlgren; Joint Base Langley-Eustis (Fort Eustis and Langley Air Force Base commissaries); Fort Gregg-Adams; Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story (Little Creek commissary); Naval Station Norfolk; Naval Air Station Oceana; and Norfolk Naval Shipyard (Portsmouth)

The pilot program excludes family members of DOD civilian employees and former and retired DOD civilians. It also doesn’t include the purchase of tobacco or alcohol products and doesn’t provide online shopping privileges.

For 157 years, military commissaries have offered discounted groceries on installations. Current authorized customers include active, reserve or retired service members; veterans with service-connected disabilities; Purple Heart and Medal of Honor recipients; and authorized family members, among other eligible patrons.