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1 day, 13 hours ago
Only 1 in 4 F-35s is fully mission capable, GAO finds
The F-35’s readiness rates continued to decline through fiscal 2025, with the fleet’s full mission capable rate falling to 25%, according to a GAO report.
The mission capable rate, which measures the percentage of time aircraft can perform at least one of their tasked missions, dropped from 67% in fiscal 2021 to 44% in fiscal 2025, GAO found.
The full mission capable rate, the share of time aircraft can perform all assigned missions, slid from 38% to 25% over the same period.
Air Force officials attributed part of the fiscal 2025 drop to new jets that couldn’t perform their missions because of software delays, along with scarce parts and corrosion problems, according to the report.
“The F-35 is DOD’s most costly weapon system, but it hasn’t met performance goals and costs to sustain the aircraft continue to increase,” GAO wrote in a summary accompanying the report.
The F-35 Joint Program Office’s answer to the decline in readiness is what the office officially calls the Global Support Solution Reset. The strategy, launched in June 2025, aims for an 80% mission capable rate and a 65% full mission capable rate by 2030.
Getting there won’t come cheap: JPO estimates it will take $13.7 billion more than previously planned through fiscal 2031, money the services must request in their annual budgets.
The GSS Reset addresses concerns GAO has flagged for years, including spare parts shortages, maintenance problems and heavy contractor reliance, among other long-running issues.
Only about $2.2 billion of that total is for the GSS Reset, according to the report. The other roughly $11.5 billion covers the gap between what the services had budgeted and what F-35 sustainment actually requires.
JPO officials told GAO that readiness will likely worsen before it improves, and program documentation suggests improvements may not materialize until late 2026 or later.
GAO identified several risks that could keep the GSS Reset from succeeding.
“JPO will be reliant on the private sector to deliver more than $7 billion in additional parts and other material. But capacity constraints persist for key parts,” the report states.
A 2025 study by Lockheed Martin, which builds the F-35 and leads its sustainment alongside engine maker Pratt & Whitney, found 48 parts that the supplier base can’t produce enough of, including canopies, which GAO has previously identified as a top driver of grounded jets.
Costs keep climbing, too, threatening the services’ ability to pay for the Reset. By the mid-2030s, GAO projects the services will face a roughly $1.2 billion annual gap between what their F-35s cost to sustain and what they say they can afford.
Those estimates may understate the problem. GAO noted the fiscal 2027 projections were developed before Operation Epic Fury and may not capture the costs associated with additional flight hours.
From 2020 through 2023, the program office paid Lockheed more than $114 million of roughly $269 million in available incentive fees meant to improve full mission capable rates and parts supply, even as both metrics generally stagnated or worsened.
Lockheed’s incentive fees were tied to readiness thresholds. In 19 of 39 performance periods, the JPO and Lockheed adjusted the recorded full mission capable rate upward, citing factors outside the company’s control, such as service-caused delays, which qualified the contractor for higher payments. Had fees been paid on the raw rates alone, GAO estimated Lockheed would have earned roughly half as much.
Pratt & Whitney, the program’s other prime contractor, has met its engine sustainment targets since 2022 after fixing problems GAO flagged in earlier reviews, the report noted.
“Lockheed Martin continues to partner with the Joint Program Office and our industry partners to ensure we are delivering efficient and effective sustainment for the warfighter,” a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said in a statement to Defense News. “We have recently invested more than $2 billion in advanced funding to accelerate spare parts to increase readiness rates across the F-35 fleet.”
The F-35 Joint Program Office concurs with the report’s findings and fully supports its three recommendations, a spokesperson told Defense News.
“Through our Global Support Solution Reset initiative, the JPO remains focused on achieving our 2030 readiness goals and ensuring strict fiscal accountability for every sustainment dollar spent,” the spokesperson said.
GAO also found the F-35 JPO could not produce consistent records of its incentive fee payments. It calculated fees using a formula that differed from the contract without documenting the change, and over the course of GAO’s review, provided three different versions of its incentive fee spreadsheet.
JPO officials told GAO they abandoned the contracted formula because it overstated Lockheed’s performance, and the corrected formula they used paid the company an estimated $3.7 million less than the flawed one would have.
GAO found the incentive problems extend to the current contract, covering 2025 through 2028, which includes no incentives tied to full mission capable rates at all, instead rewarding parts supply metrics with targets GAO found fall below the program’s own goals.
“Until JPO ensures the future use of incentives better achieves desired performance, it risks rewarding contractor performance that does not help meet program goals,” GAO stated.
GAO wants the Pentagon to do three things: build risk mitigation plans for efforts like the GSS Reset, covering technical data access, industry capacity, affordability and alignment with service goals; rethink how it structures contract incentives, possibly including penalties for poor performance; and build a reliable system for tracking what it pays in incentive fees and why.
GAO has now made 46 recommendations on F-35 sustainment since 2014. As of March 2026, the Pentagon had implemented 14.
The Pentagon did not provide formal comments on the report but said in draft comments that it agreed with the recommendations, according to GAO.
Despite the program’s readiness troubles, the F-35 remains the backbone of America’s fighter fleet. The Pentagon operates more than 800 of the jets and plans to buy about 1,700 more by the mid-2040s, with lifetime U.S. sustainment costs estimated at $1.6 trillion as of 2024.
1 day, 15 hours ago
‘Sounds like a mutiny’: Secret recording exposes claims of toxic leadership after a Marine’s suicide
A War Horse investigation points to systemic failures before and after the death of Cpl. Drew Mobley, whose suicide was the unit's third in two years.
Editor’s note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter.
This report contains discussion of suicide. Troops, veterans and family members experiencing suicidal thoughts can call the 24-hour Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 and dial 1, text 838255 or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net.
“Who knows what was going on in Cpl. Mobley’s personal life?”
The question hung in the air.
“Who knows if he had a girlfriend, fiancée? Who knows if they were having relationship issues? Who knows if his parents were having relationship issues?”
First Sgt. Christopher Rushton fired off the list of“who knows”questions as members of the Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting unit at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia sat in stony silence.
“Who knows if his sister was having relationship issues? Who knows if his favorite dog died? Who knows if his favorite teacher just got in a car wreck and died?”
“Who the fuck knows that?” demanded Rushton, a drill instructor for more than a decade. “Do any of y’all? So how are you going to sit here and try to tell me, or tell the CO, that this environment caused [the death of] Cpl. Mobley?”
On April 7, 2025, one of their own—Cpl. Drew Mobley—had taken his own life.
During an internal investigation after Mobley’s death, a number of his fellow Marines complained about the command climate, accusing leadership of ignoring Mobley’s declining mental health and tormenting him after an injury sidelined him from regular duty.
Now, three days after Mobley’s memorial service, the rest of his unit—known as ARFF— was getting grilled. Rushton and Col. Scott Warman had gathered the Marines, collected their phones, and were taking turns berating them. The closed-door meeting lasted more than two hours.
Secret audio recordings, later shared with The War Horse, reveal what happened inside.
A War Horse investigation into the events surrounding Cpl. Mobley’s death points to systemic failures before and after his suicide and an alarming disregard for protocols spelled out in 98 pages of Marine Corps Suicide Prevention System Procedures. After inquiries from The War Horse, the Corps said it is investigating.
In the secret recording, Rushton is heard reading aloud and mocking individual Marines’ written concerns with command leaders: “Oh, master sergeant yelled at me. I’m sad. Boo-the-fuck-hoo. You really think ISIS cares?”
At one point later, he tells them: “Call CNN. Call Fox News. See how that works out for you.”
And he insisted Mobley’s fellow Marines had no idea why he took his own life.
“He made a very personal decision,” Rushton sternly told the Marines, “to turn a temporary problem into a permanent solution. Very deliberate in what he did.”
“You can’t sit here and tell me that ARFF was the reason that he did what he did,” Rushton told them. “Do any of you have a suicide note from him?”
Again, silence.
“No, you don’t,” Rushton finally said. “You don’t know what was going through his head.”
‘Not Going the Way We Thought’
For years, the military has been struggling to come to grips with an alarming number of suicides among service members. Suicide rates have climbed in the military since 2011, but, in a glimmer of hope, declined in 2024, according to the most recent Defense Department report. Still, there were 471 suicides—more than one a day—in the U.S. military in 2024. And the Marine Corps has among the military’s highest rates. Studies and the Marines’ prevention protocols warn that exposure to suicide can lead to a higher risk for similar behavior.
In a social media post in February, Sgt. Maj. Carlos A. Ruiz, the Corps’ highest-ranking enlisted member, encouraged Marines to speak up if they are struggling with their mental health.
“This tribe demands that when you need help, you ask for help,” he said. “We bend together, and we don’t break together.”
Despite its ‘suck-it-up’ image, veterans interviewed for this story say the Corps has made strides in looking out for troubled Marines in recent years. But what happened at Quantico last April provides a rare and unvarnished look into a culture that critics say can persist on the inside when unit-level commanders think nobody else is listening.
Over four months, The War Horse spoke to six Marines who worked in ARFF with Mobley. In interviews, they described working long hours for an understaffed unit, missing time with their families, and toxic leaders who dismissed their mental health concerns. The Marines who spoke with The War Horse also noted that Mobley’s death was the third suicide in the Marine Corps Air Facility, which includes ARFF, in less than two years.
The Marines who spoke out had hoped their feedback would hold ARFF’s leadership accountable for their perceived role in Mobley’s death, which Michael Snell, a former ARFF unit member, calls “horribly preventable.”
“The maltreatment had been going on forever and was getting ignored, and by literally everyone in the command,” Snell said in an interview with The War Horse. “And we basically all got told that we’re committing acts of mutiny.”
“We kind of all knew the moment they said, ‘Everybody put your phones outside’—we were like, ‘Oh, this is not going the way we thought it was going to go,’” said Malakai Standifer, another former ARFF Marine.
The War Horse reached out multiple times over a two-month period to four members of ARFF leadership—Warman, Rushton, Master Sgt. Jerry Chapman III, and Gunnery Sgt. Brian Tabares. Rushton and Warman directed inquiries to the Quantico communication office. The others did not respond.
After The War Horse submitted more than a dozen questions, detailing the allegations and sharing a number of Rushton’s and Warman’s comments from the closed-door meeting, Capt. Michael Kennedy, a Marine spokesman responded: “This incident is currently under investigation and no details regarding the investigation can be provided at this time.”
Rob Bracknell, a retired Marine officer and judge advocate, reviewed the recordings of the meeting at the request of The War Horse. He was not involved in the investigation.
“Berating Marines weeks after the third suicide in two years—that just sounds like the worst possible way to handle this,” Bracknell said. “Your first instinct should be, pull those guys into your arms and go, ‘Hey, let’s take care of you.’”
‘Be a Marine and Protect Earth’
When Drew Mobley ended his life at 22, he was working at what was supposed to be his dream job.
He’d known it since he was just a third grader. At Wallace Elementary in North Carolina, an hour’s drive west of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, he wrote an essay on what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“I am going to be a Marine and protect [E]arth,” he wrote. “No one is stopping me until I die or end the war.”
His essay won a contest for the Duplin County School District.
More than a decade later, Mobley was at Quantico on a Sunday afternoon. He updated his life insurance policy in the ARFF rec room. He played basketball for a bit with a few of his fellow Marines. He went to a sporting goods store, where he purchased a gun, and another store to purchase hollow-point bullets.
Then, he drove his Hyundai Sonata to the parking lot of the C.F. Phelps Wildlife Management Area. Around 6:30 p.m., he messaged some of his friends on Discord, a social app he liked to use, telling them he’d be offline for a while. His internet search history shows he was on his phone until after midnight.
Then, sometime in the early morning hours, he shot himself.
A few Marines who were sent to check on him discovered his body after friends tracked his location on Snapchat.
His mother later pieced together the last hours of Drew’s life from his phone log, receipts, and accounts from other Marines. In the months leading up to his death, Mobley was struggling, fellow Marines say, but they didn’t know how bad it was. He started isolating himself. His hair appeared unwashed. He arrived late to his shifts. He stopped wearing cologne.
“The boy loved cologne,” said his mother, April Mobley. “And always wore it.”
They checked in regularly on the phone, but he never told her how much he was suffering.
“My son was not a complainer,” she said. “He didn’t share his feelings.”
She remembers him telling her, after two other Marines’ suicides, that he didn’t understand why they would take their own lives. On their last phone call, he told her he was worried about his friend Cole McEachern, another ARFF Marine who was struggling.
Drew Mobley felt like he’d lost his purpose on base, Standifer said. At first, he’d enjoyed his job, April Mobley said. He made friends and had earned a nickname, Horse, because he’d “kinda just roam and graze and do [his] own thing,” said Snell.
It was random, but stuck. When Mobley left work, the other Marines would joke that they were “letting Horse out of the stable.” Later, Snell got a tattoo of a horse and the date of Mobley’s death on his shoulder.
In Sept. 2023, a year and a half out of boot camp, Mobley broke his leg and tore his ACL while playing football during physical training. In Feb. 2024, he had surgery to repair his ACL, but his leg didn’t heal as expected. He was eventually placed on limited duty.
It kept him from the airfield, where Marines trained for and responded to aircraft emergencies. Quantico is also home to Marine One, the president’s helicopter.
He was assigned to dispatch duty, and around Christmastime 2024 he was sent up to the “tower.” The shifts were punishing—12 hours, sometimes longer—and indeed, Mobley felt punished, he told his mom. Typically, dispatch shifts rotated among unit members, maybe up to six shifts a month, Standifer said. Mobley had been left on them full-time for three months.
Standifer said he witnessed Chapman, the master sergeant who was named 2024’s USMC Executive Fire Officer of the Year, berating and belittling Mobley on a regular basis.
He’d get flak for attending medical appointments that took him away from work, Snell said. Toward the end, the abuse got worse, he said.
“Basically, he was in Master Sgt. Chapman’s office, like, every day, just getting torn down, berated, basically getting told that he was garbage because he couldn’t work normally, like everybody else could,” Snell said.
McEachern, another former ARFF member, was also on dispatch duty because of an injury, alternating 12-hour shifts with Mobley. “They treated our injuries like we chose to get them and treated dispatch as a punishment,” he said.
“You’re a guy all alone, separated from your friends and family,” Standifer said. “Then you get injured. You can no longer do the job you’re passionate about. The people above you are now reminding you every single day that … you’re a piece of shit, and you know they don’t want you there.”
“Why didn’t they just kick him out?” April Mobley asked. “Why keep doing that to him every day?”
‘Felt I Had Let Him Down’
Months before Mobley’s death, ARFF unit members filled out what’s known as a Defense Organizational Climate Survey. Congress mandated the annual surveys across the military to service members to provide what is supposed to be confidential feedback about their command. The War Horse submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on March 31 for ARFF’s surveys but is still waiting for a response.
In the survey, Mobley explained that he felt he was being treated unfairly and said his shifts were isolating, according to a friend and fellow Marine who read over his submission. Mobley wanted “to ensure it would be taken seriously by the command,” the friend told The War Horse. He asked not to be identified because he is still serving in the Marines and feared retribution for speaking to a reporter.
Marines who spoke to The War Horse said many of their concerns about leadership were glossed over.
“We all felt completely unheard,” said the Marine who advised Mobley. When nothing changed, Mobley, in particular, took it hard. “I felt I had let him down by saying that the command would take everything seriously.”
Within a few months, Mobley was dead.
His death rattled his family.
April Mobley wasn’t one to coddle her kids, she said. “I am the toughest mama that you can find.” But Drew was such a good boy, she said. An easy, likable kid. Always the first person to ask how you were doing, always the last person to complain about his own problems. The chaplain at Quantico told her that Drew would often stop by and ask how he was doing. Nobody else ever did that, the chaplain said. (The chaplain didn’t respond to a LinkedIn message from The War Horse.)
“To see how they just pulled the life out of him, the happiness,” she said, her voice quaking.
At Drew’s memorial, Gunnery Sgt. Brian Tabares approached his mother and told her they knew Drew was struggling, she said.
“They knew,” April Mobley said. But she was too grief-stricken to ask Tabares: Why didn’t anyone do anything to help him?
“I just, I can’t understand that,” she said.
‘Maybe Your Feelings Need to Be Hurt’
Unprofessional. Lacking values. A disgrace to the uniform.
These are among the insults Rushton and Warman hurled at ARFF just weeks after Mobley’s death. When the doors shut, and the meeting started, Warman, a first-generation Marine with two combat deployments, made it clear not everyone was on notice.
Some of you will do “great things,” he told the group. “There’s a great deal of you who have such amazing future potential, not just in the Marine Corps, but in life.”
His focus quickly shifted.
“Some of you are selfish. You’re entitled. And you’re the most disloyal people I’ve ever met.”
After Mobley’s death, several Marines had specifically called out Chapman, the master sergeant.
Chapman had a “tendency to pick certain individuals he deemed not to his liking,” Standifer wrote in a statement he provided to investigators and later shared with The War Horse. “No matter the skills or actual work the individual does, they will always be bottom-tier low-lives to MSgt [Master Sergeant].” Drew was one of these, Standifer wrote.
“Cpl. Mobley was verbally and publicly ridiculed for his inability to work shift due to a major leg injury,” Standifer wrote. This “caused him to get put in dispatch over and over, locked in a hole with only the occasional visits from shift members to keep him sane until he was pushed too far and ended his life.”
Another Marine was “constantly accused of using his mental health appointments to get out of work,” Standifer wrote.
These statements were supposed to be kept confidential, Marines said—they were told they’d only be shared with Warman and other officers involved in the investigation. But now, here they were. Less than three weeks after Mobley’s suicide, Warman and Rushton were sitting in front of the entire unit, reading snippets from those same statements.
Marines had complained about limited time with family. Some hadn’t seen their families in weeks, they said. In response, Rushton reprimanded them for not being team players.
“You don’t want to switch shifts, because, ‘Oh, my wife’s schedule won’t allow it,’” he said. “Nobody gives a fuck about your wife’s schedule. Sorry if it hurts your feelings—maybe your feelings need to be hurt.”
Some Marines complained that leaders discouraged them from attending medical appointments—including mental health appointments—during work hours. Rushton insisted these appointments needed to happen on personal time.
As for those who didn’t agree with him, Rushton said: “They’re being fucking lazy. … That’s you being fucking selfish.”
“How many of you’ve ever deployed to a combat zone?” asked Rushton, who shared he had been three times. “Do you really think ISIS gives a fuck about your feelings?”
Rushton scolded the unit for blaming Mobley’s death on leadership. “Stop blaming the chain of command over your own personal problems.”
One after another, he read aloud and rejected the criticism.
“The work climate at ARFF, and I quote, ‘Will not improve if Master Sgt. Chapman remains in charge. I respectfully and tactfully request a review of Master Sgt. Chapman’s leadership and its effect on the unit.’”
Rushton was having none of it: “Know what that sounds like to me? There’s a naval term that that falls under. … What term am I referring to? Mutiny. It’s a fucking mutiny.”
‘Every Marine Feels Supported’
Capt. Michael P. Kennedy struck a different tone in the Marines’ official response to The War Horse about the unit’s claims and the closed-door meeting.
“The loss of even one Marine to suicide is one too many,” he wrote in an email. “Our prevention and postvention efforts are applied with equal commitment and seriousness across Marine Corps Base Quantico. At Marine Corps Base Quantico, we are dedicated to fostering a community where every Marine feels supported and knows that help is always available.”
But an examination of the Marines’ official suicide prevention procedures calls into question the response before and after Mobley’s death.
The latest version of the document from the Commandant of the Marine Corps—coincidentally issued four days before Rushton and Warman’s meeting with ARFF—lays out procedures, from suicide prevention training requirements to dispelling the stigma of mental health care.
“Command climate is a critical aspect of suicide prevention in the Marine Corps,” it reads.
Leaders should be “involved with every aspect of Marines’ lives in the unit” and they should “facilitate the discussion of life stressors between Marines and leadership without judgment or stigma.” It lays out potential warning signs that might urge a commander to order a mental health evaluation for a subordinate Marine, including “significant changes in performance” and “behavior changes that appear to be unmanageable by the Marine.”
It also offers guidance for how to respond in the aftermath of a suicide. Those left behind might experience guilt, anger, shame, and betrayal after a suicide, it says. It’s common for those left behind to “seek answers and assign blame,” the document says. Leaders can help by “fostering hope” and avoiding framing that causes shame or guilt. Trust in leadership is key, the document instructs. “Ask other Marines how they are and actively listen.”
Leaders should “foster a positive, safe command climate that promotes healthy stress responses.”
After a suicide, other Marines can be “at high risk.” These efforts help survivors cope with grief and prevent future suicides.
Bracknell, the former Marine judge advocate who is now an adjunct professor at William & Mary Law School, said Rushton and Warman’s response to ARFF does not align with these guidelines.
“First Sgt. Rushton’s comments seeking to shift blame off the unit and pointing fingers at their ‘unprofessionalism’ in the wake of a suicide—that’s not the ‘positive, safe command climate’ the Commandant expected when he approved that guidance,” Bracknell said. “Instinctively, their reactions are the opposite of what any professional, caring, thoughtful, engaged leader would do in that instance.”
Retired Marine Col. Don Wogaman, who was not involved in the investigation, appeared visibly troubled after he reviewed—at The War Horse’s request—how command leaders rebuked the Marines for raising concerns after Mobley’s suicide.
The subject is painful for him. Wogaman remembers how a fellow Marine who served in the Gulf War took his own life while Wogaman was responding to his Facebook post. It “tears me up,” he said. He called Rushton and Warman’s response to the ARFF Marines “horrible leadership.”
In the Marines, Bracknell said, leaders often “fail to discern the difference between tough and cruel.” The skills hardened military commanders rely on to lead a unit are not the same ones needed to help them cope after a fellow service member’s suicide, he said.
But at times during the closed-door meeting, Warman softened his tone, sharing lessons on leadership, and living and dying as a team.
At one point, he became contemplative over the suicides: “If anybody’s responsible, it’s me,” he told the Marines. “And I accept responsibility for that, because I’m the commander, and it’s happened under my watch. I own that, and those are the things I have to live with the rest of my life—that I had three, three Marines take their lives under my watch.
“Never once in my 23-year career have I ever seen that. Ever.”
The Third Suicide
Mobley’s death was the third suicide in the Marine Corps Air Facility, or MCAF, in under two years. A senior enlisted Marine in the MCAF command died by suicide in August 2023, and an ARFF Marine took his own life about three months later. While The War Horse was reporting this story, another former ARFF member took his own life in Feb. 2026.
The War Horse was unable to contact family connected to the most recent suicide, but did reach the spouses of the first two Marines who died. In a Facebook message, one of the women said her husband “never had any issues with higher-ups or colleagues” and that command leaders were there for her after his death, “especially MSGT Chapman,” the master sergeant whom Mobley’s unit members criticized.
The other said in a phone interview that her husband had a largely positive experience in MCAF at Quantico. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which stemmed from personal childhood trauma as well as his experiences in Fallujah. MCAF was one of the most supportive units he was in, his wife said.
He took his own life a little over a week after receiving an official PTSD diagnosis, she said.
“He knew that [seeking mental health treatment] would be career-changing,” she said. He reached out to a counselor during his time at MCAF, but the counselor told him she would have to notify his command if he came to her for help, which scared him off.
Military culture dissuades people from seeking help, she said. “It’s kind of like—you should get help, and then just know that your career might be over.”
The Suicide That Didn’t Happen
In the weeks around Mobley’s death, there was almost another suicide.
The story of Sgt. Cole McEachern’s is similar to Mobley’s in many ways. During an aircraft emergency, he sustained a labral tear in his shoulder. Like Mobley, he was put on limited duty and 12-hour dispatch shifts. He and Mobley would alternate shifts, and sometimes spend extra time in the tower to keep each other company.
Unlike Mobley, McEachern wasn’t new to the military and had seen some violent things. On 12-hour dispatch shifts, he had “nothing but time” to think about these memories, he said. When he sought treatment for his nightmares and post-traumatic stress at the Quantico mental health clinic, he was told he had insomnia, and they couldn’t do anything for him, McEachern said.
That’s when he began self-medicating with cocaine.
The drugs fought off the nightmares. He’d stay awake for so long, that when he crashed, his sleep was dreamless.
Some days, McEachern would be driving to the ARFF station from the barracks, and he’d turn around, filled with dread at the thought of another day-long shift spent in solitude. Then, he said he’d think of Mobley—I can’t leave him there alone, he remembers thinking. He’d turn around again and make it to work, where he’d sit in his car, trying to psych himself up to go inside.
Around shift changes, when both he and Mobley were present, he remembers that Chapman would regularly show up to chew them out. They were the “trouble kids” because they were injured, McEachern said.
He talked to his dad Ryan McEachern on the phone nearly every day, and his father said he had noticed a shift in Cole’s demeanor. Cole was always frustrated, his father said, and he’d become more negative, more withdrawn.
“When he would call, he just kind of had this depressed vibe about him,” Ryan McEachern said. He remembers one call where Cole said a member of leadership had told him he was “a piece of shit” and that “they didn’t really want [him] around anybody else” because he was a bad influence. Cole took a lot of pride in his work, Ryan McEachern said, so that hurt.
“There’s just a meanness in people that do that, even in the Marine Corps,” said the father, a Marine Corps veteran himself.
Around Jan. 2025, Cole’s calls home became sparser, and Ryan McEachern could see on the “Find My Friends” app that Cole was keeping erratic hours, sometimes out as late as 4 a.m.
Then on April 1, 2025, Ryan McEachern received a call he’ll never forget.
“I fucked up, I’m a piece of shit, everyone’s going to f-ing hate me,” McEachern remembers his son saying. Cole confessed he’d done drugs the night before. “He spiraled into this, just, whole conversation about how horrible he was.”
“I’m panicking,” Ryan McEachern said. “I was like, ‘Dude, where are you right this second?’”
Cole told him he was on base in his truck.
“I need you to drive to the mental health clinic,” Ryan McEachern told his son.
Cole resisted—the mental health clinic on base hadn’t been helpful in the past, so why would he go back there?
“I said, ‘Do not hang up your phone,’” Ryan McEachern said, his voice shaking as he retold the story. He stayed on the phone as Cole walked into the clinic and approached the front desk. From the phone, Ryan shouted a message to the receptionist. “Before he can say a word, I’m like, ‘Don’t let this guy leave!’”
As the clinic staff started to handle the situation, the gravity of what had almost happened hit hard. “I was like, holy shit,” Ryan McEachern said. “I think my kid was about to kill himself.”
On April 11, Cole McEachern was eventually admitted into a month-long inpatient mental health program, just days after his friend Drew Mobley died. Cole missed the memorial service.
Ryan McEachern said he wished Drew would have made a similar phone call.
“I think about that constantly. That phone call sucked, but I was sure lucky to get it.”
‘Feel Like I Owe Them’
Drew has been gone a year, but for his mother April, the pain is still fresh. Her voice is still raw with anger and sadness. Sometimes, she trails off mid sentence, choked by tears.
Drew, who as a third grader wanted everyone to “pray to God for the Marines that protected us and were willing to die,” is still with her. Once, after she visited Drew’s grave, she got in the car. The clock had changed to military time. “Never done that before,” she said.
April stays in touch with other Marines. She feels responsible for them, she said. She calls them on holidays, invites them to her home for dinners, sends their kids Christmas and birthday presents.
“Every boy that calls me, I feel like I owe it to them,” she said.
“I prayed to God. Like, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to have a purpose in all of this?” she implores. “What is my path?
“I truly feel like at this point, it’s to make all of these boys feel heard. To make them feel like what they went through was wrong and [for] somebody to acknowledge that.”
On the first anniversary of Drew’s death, April took a trip to the Grand Canyon with her family. On the way there, they stopped at a convenience store. April wanted to buy a Coke, Drew’s favorite drink. She didn’t know why, she just felt like she needed to. At the rim of the canyon, as they took in the view, she placed the glass bottle down on a post.
On the post, she spotted a sticker, left behind by another traveler. Its message astonished her: “Drew’s Crew.”
This War Horse investigation was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Video and audio editing by LiPo Ching.
2 days, 17 hours ago
Trump vows to seize Iran’s Kharg Island
Kharg Island, the linchpin of Iran’s oil industry, has once more come under focus amid a fraying ceasefire.
President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to seize Kharg Island — the linchpin of Iran’s oil industry — as he escalated pressure on Tehran amid a fraying ceasefire.
In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote the United States would be hitting Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” adding that “at some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets.”
Kharg Island, located in the Persian Gulf, typically handles roughly 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. It has been central to the economic survival of the Islamic Republic for decades. A 1984 declassified CIA document called its facilities “the most vital in Iran’s oil system, and their continued operation is essential to Iran’s economic well-being.”
But Trump’s saber-rattling was quickly tempered by a note of caution. Speaking to the hosts of “Fox & Friends” shortly after his social media post, the president questioned whether America “has the stomach” for a larger military operation to take the island.
“I’m not sure the country has the appetite for it, as good as it is,” Trump said. “I think they’d like to see us come home.”
The White House told Military Times that all military options remain available to the president, including scenarios involving a significant number of ground forces occupying Kharg Island. On Thursday, however, Trump appeared to rule out that possibility.
“I don’t want to have boots on the ground. But if I wanted to, we could put a small group of soldiers and take over the whole place,” the commander in chief said, punctuating his remarks on Iran with “They’re finished.”
Trump’s political coalition has been riven with tensions since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Foreign policy hawks who insist Iran must be curbed are on one side, and isolationist-leaning, “America-First” voices are on the other. The latter group is vigorously opposed to the use of ground troops, fearing that such a deployment would pave the way for the U.S. getting sucked into a long and costly conflict, similar to those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The proposal to seize the island and establish control over Iran’s oil sector also diverges from the four objectives that bolstered Operation Epic Fury in the first place. The Trump administration’s stated war aims were to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, inflict serious damage on its Navy and Air Force, prevent nuclear development and curtail its support for proxy groups in the region, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
This all comes as hostilities between American and Iranian forces in the Middle East are on the rise, despite a ceasefire signed in April.
U.S. Central Command said that Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy assets conducted strikes Wednesday evening against Iranian military surveillance capabilities, communication systems and air defense sites.
Trump, during his interview with Fox News, claimed the U.S. “dropped $250 million worth of bombs on them last night.”
Tehran — which asserts it has launched a series of retaliatory strikes against American bases in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait — cast the nearly two-month ceasefire as “practically meaningless.”
“The illegal and criminal attacks perpetrated by the United States in recent hours not only constitute a flagrant violation... but also render the ceasefire practically meaningless,” Iran’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “Responsibility for the extremely serious consequences of the criminal act lies with the leaders of the United States.”
2 days, 18 hours ago
Air Force cites DEI ban in cancellation of wreath-laying honoring women vets
An Air Force spokesperson acknowledged that the service “declined participation in compliance with Executive Orders … and DoW guidance.”
A 28th annual wreath-laying ceremony honoring women troops at a memorial outside Arlington National Cemetery was canceled earlier this month after organizers got word that multiple military services would not participate, with one citing Pentagon and White House guidance prohibiting “events related to cultural awareness months” and DEI programs.
The cancellation, first reported by Task and Purpose, was announced Wednesday by leaders of the Bipartisan Women’s Caucus in a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol.
Multiple Democratic lawmakers decried the circumstances, saying it was more evidence of attempts by the administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to minimize the service of female veterans.
“In plain terms, the very women the ceremony was created to honor were pushed out of it,” Rep. Emilia Sykes, D-Ohio, the caucus co-chair and vice chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said. “Honoring veterans should not be controversial. Recognizing the service and sacrifice of women who wore our nation’s uniform should be one of the easiest things for us to come together around. Yet, because of the decisions made by this administration, we are defending the basic act of honoring women veterans.”
A staffer for the Democratic Women’s Caucus told Military Times that the wreath-laying had been canceled June 10 after officials with the Department of the Air Force said they could not attend due to anti-DEI mandates published in January 2025, immediately after President Donald Trump took office.
An Air Force spokeswoman, Ann Stefanek, confirmed to Military Times via email that “The Department of the Air Force declined participation in compliance with Executive Orders … and DoW guidance.”
Officials with the Army and Navy declined to comment. But military sources with knowledge of planning indicated that the services were not coordinated in their response.
Sources claimed the Navy had been unaware of the event and their invitation to attend, while the Army faced scheduling conflicts related to Army birthday events following a rescheduling of the initial wreath-laying date. The Marine Corps did not respond to a query.
The caucus staff member confirmed the event had been rescheduled to June 10 from an earlier May date due to a conflict with votes. They also acknowledged that the Army had citing scheduling issues, but said Army birthday events had never been a problem in the past.
“The executive order and the DoD guidance, it’s for all the branches, so that’s ultimately why this event couldn’t happen,” the staffer said.
At Wednesday’s press conference, multiple speakers cited other recent moves they cast as diminishing the service of military women.
Kayla Williams, an Army veteran and former Department of Veterans Affairs official representing the Vet Voice Foundation, recalled Pentagon-driven directives that resulted in the services pulling down web pages honoring the achievements of women in uniform.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., a former Air Force officer, noted that her grandparents were buried in Arlington National Cemetery, which made the cancellation of the wreath-laying “so painful.”
“I keep coming back to a simple question for President Trump and for Secretary Hegseth and my Republican colleagues,” she said. “Which is, when did saying thank you to women who served their country become a controversial statement?
“Women have answered ... every call this nation has asked of them,” Houlahan continued. “They have flown combat missions, they have commanded troops, they’ve cared for the wounded, they’ve gathered intelligence and they’ve deployed into harm’s way alongside their fellow service members. They didn’t ask for special treatment, they earned our respect. And honoring their service should never be viewed as a political statement.”
2 days, 20 hours ago
Veterans face higher hurdles in military sexual trauma claims, report finds
Veterans filing disability claims for military sexual assault or harassment face barriers to receiving compensation for their service-connected conditions.
Veterans who apply for disability compensation related to sexual assault in the military face higher standards for proving related injuries, resulting in lower approval ratings and increased risk of retraumatization, according to a new National Academies of Sciences report.
In a study examining the Department of Veterans Affairs’ handling of disability claims filed for military sexual assault, a panel of experts found that the agency’s dual standards for related disability claims — which allow evidence such as behavior changes and outside observation for post-traumatic stress disorder claims but require proof of the experience for other disabilities — “results in inconsistent decision-making” during adjudication.
According to the report, disability claims related to sexual assault or chronic harassment were approved at lower rates than combat claims, with an 18.2% approval compared to 27.6% across a five-year period. Approval rates were also significantly lower for men and Black veteran.
Under the VA system, veterans who file a claim for conditions stemming from sexual trauma have separate burdens of proof depending on their disability. Those who file for related post-traumatic stress disorder may provide observational evidence but those seeking compensation for other mental or physical conditions connected to the assault must provide proof of the event.
Given that “elements of the military context pressure service members not to disclose” such assaults, showing evidence remains a “major barrier” to substantiating such claims, the report noted.
In 2024, the VA received 39,711 claims related to military sexual trauma. Nearly two-thirds were approved with the average disability rating of 80%. According to the report, the average monthly compensation rate was roughly $2,500 a month.
Roughly 1 in 3 women and 1 in 50 men report having experienced sexual assault or harassment during their service in the military.
The panel, made up of academics, think tank analysts and VA researchers, recommended that the department consider allowing lay evidence and behavioral observation to support PTSD and non-PTSD related claims.
“Congress should enact legislation directing the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to accept evidence from lay persons or other sources as sufficient proof of service connection of any condition claimed to have incurred or aggravated by experiencing MST, regardless of whether there is an official service record of the MST experience or an associated condition,” said Dr. Harold Kudler, who is a retired VA psychiatrist and panel member now with Duke University, during a briefing Wednesday on the report.
The VA’s process itself for handling sexual assault related claims is problematic, the experts said, because claimants must fill out disability questionnaires and attend compensation and pension exams that often are conducted by people who lack trauma-informed training. The panel said the process — including the possibility of having a claim denied — can be traumatic.
They recommended reducing the number of compensation and pension exams veterans must attend, creating a more supportive exam environment and making sure the examiners were trained in handling trauma-related cases.
They also recommended that the VA develop a specific disability questionnaire for sex-related trauma claims.
“We hope that our recommendations will reduce harms to veterans and improve their experience when making [military sexual trauma]-related claims, modernize and strengthen training, and improve accuracy and fairness in the disability compensation process,” Committee Chairwoman Hortensia Amaro, a community health professor at Florida International University, said in a statement.
The National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine was directed to conduct the study by Congress in 2023.
3 days, 12 hours ago
First look at the Global War on Terrorism Memorial design in Washington
If the design is approved, the foundation is aiming for a 2027 groundbreaking and a project completion date of late 2028.
The foundation overseeing the design of the future Global War on Terrorism Memorial on the National Mall in Washington has unveiled the first renderings of what the site will look like.
Crafted by architect Kengo Kuma in partnership with the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, the memorial’s design is the culmination of eight years of input from 20,000 Americans, including veterans from every branch of service and every conflict since World War II, according to a foundation release.
According to the memorial’s description, visitors will first encounter steel and stone relics recovered from the 9/11 attacks at each of the site’s three entrances, “marking where the journey began,” the release states.
In a primary section coined “the embrace,” a classically inspired amphitheater rises over the path below and features an arch made of reclaimed steel from the era’s combat operations.
The arch, which will also be adorned with native vegetation, is designed to filter light and will be oriented to align with Section 60 in Arlington National Cemetery, the resting place of roughly 1,000 service members killed in the post-9/11 wars.
Below the arch, a predominantly marble “path of honor” includes embedded boot prints “that represent the weight of war and the varied experiences of those who served and their families,” the release says. The path will also connect to adjacent memorials on the National Mall.
Extending from the footprint paths are shallow reflecting pools in which visitors can dip their feet before stepping back onto the stone to leave footprints of their own, an “interactive component [that] offers visitors the chance to walk alongside a loved one once more,” the foundation says.
“This design was shaped by history and held sacred from the beginning — forged by sacrifice and informed by the voices of warriors and their families,” Michael “Rod” Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation and a retired U.S. Army Green Beret, said in the release.
“Throughout history, societies have built sacred places to welcome their warriors home, places where a grateful people can say, ‘We see you. We honor you. You are not forgotten.’” Rodriguez added. “The GWOT generations deserve that same enduring tribute. Today, we take one step closer to welcoming them home.”
In addition to input gathered since 2018, a 23-member advisory council comprising Gold Star family members, veterans and their families worked alongside designers to craft what the foundation has called a “living place ... that will illuminate at night and invite reflection, healing and unity for generations to come.”
As the site’s architect, Kuma’s work on the memorial resonated on a deeply personal level, he said in a recent interview. The artist lost his close friend Yoichi Sugiyama, who worked for Fuji Bank, in the Sept. 11 attack at the World Trade Center.
“This memorial is not an abstract commission for our team, it is a sacred responsibility,” Kuma said in the release. “Our role was not to impose a design, but to listen. The voices of those who served and the families who stood beside them became our source of inspiration. We wanted to create a place of reflection and connection, a living memorial where nature, light and the materials of this war come together as an embrace for a grateful nation.”
Foundation officials are slated to meet over the coming months with various city planning commissions to finalize design approval, according to the foundation’s proposed timeline.
With approval, the foundation is aiming for a 2027 groundbreaking and a project completion date of late 2028.
3 days, 12 hours ago
Pentagon to launch ‘Cyber Mastery Incentive Pay’ program
The initative, dubbed Cyber Mastery Incentive Pay, is slated to begin in early October.
The Pentagon is establishing a multilayered cyber incentive pay program to boost cyber capabilities as part of the DoD’s Project Patriot Pipeline effort.
The Cyber Mastery Incentive Pay, or C-MIP, initiative is meant to modernize how the department encourages the Cyberspace Operations Forces, the military and civilian units responsible for cyberspace operations, according to a June 10 release.
“To incentivize our cyber forces and meet both Department of War and Defense Industrial Base needs, we need to shed legacy incentive models and invest directly in our people serving on the digital front lines. C-MIP does this,” Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata said in the release.
The C-MIP program drops the previous incentive models to a more flexible system that aligns pay with skillset mastery and performance of demanding tasks, the announcement says. The program was developed in 60 days by the CYBERCOM 2.0 unit.
The program will feature two layers: skill incentive pay and special duty pay.
Skill incentive pay, or SIP, is considered the foundational layer that rewards an individual for skill level, whether it’s basic, senior or master.
Special duty assignment pay, or SDAP, is a monthly incentive for members who perform duties CYBERCOM deems “exceptionally demanding” and scale their skills by serving in roles such as trainers or more advanced cyber positions.
“By breaking down the bureaucratic norms of government incentives, this framework enables increased lethality by driving the skills, roles and duties most vital to mission success,” Katie Sutton, assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, who will lead the execution of the program, said in the statement.
The pay incentive program is slated to begin Oct. 1, per the release. The announcement did not specify the pay incentive amount for either program level.
This initiative follows a recent push from some lawmakers to advance the creation of an independent Cyber Force military service.
A report from two D.C. think tanks examined how a proposed Cyber Force could take over the “service-like” responsibilities that CYBERCOM is currently expected to perform.
However, it would take at least one year and $10 billion to stand up the new force.
3 days, 15 hours ago
‘They got very lucky,’ Trump says of downed Apache helicopter’s crew
After a U.S. Army Apache helicopter was downed by an Iranian drone, President Donald Trump said the rescued aviators “got very lucky.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said two U.S. Army aviators “got very lucky” after an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter was downed by Iran over the Strait of Hormuz, emphasizing that American retaliation for the incident is not over.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president declared, “We hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them hard again today.”
Trump initially claimed in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that Iran had shot down the aircraft, before revising his account a day later to say it was struck by an Iranian ordnance that failed to detonate on impact.
“That bomb was lodged in the helicopter, it didn’t explode. It was on fire but it didn’t explode,” Trump explained. “Those two guys, they knew how to fly, but they got very lucky.”
He then quipped: “You won’t believe the rescue, how cool it was.”
The crew members were retrieved by a remotely piloted Navy surface drone, in what Trump and military officials described as the first U.S. operation of its kind.
Still, the episode demonstrated one asymmetrical element of the conflict. U.S. officials said a low-cost Iranian Shahed-136 drone — estimated to cost roughly $20,000 — engaged the American attack helicopter valued at between $35 million and $40 million.
Describing the subsequent rescue, Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command, told Military Times that the unmanned surface vessel retrieved the downed aviators and ferried them to a rendezvous point at sea, where they were then hoisted aboard a helicopter for extraction.
“The surface drone that assisted in [Monday’s] rescue of the Apache crew off the coast of Oman was a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel operated by U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59,” he said. “The task force began fielding these drones in theater in late March.”
The 24-foot Corsair — built by Texas-based Saronic Technologies — can carry payloads of up to 1,000 pounds over a 1,000-nautical-mile range and reach speeds of up to 35 knots, according to the company’s website.
Soon after the U.S. began carrying out retaliatory strikes on Tuesday night, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in a social media post, wrote that “our powerful armed forces will leave no attack or threat unanswered.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps later announced, through a statement carried by Iranian state TV, that it had conducted 21 attacks on U.S. bases across the region, including in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.
But despite the fresh wave of attacks, Trump on Wednesday insisted that a peace agreement can be reached.
“We’ll see what happens with the deal. We were really close to a deal but they keep tapping us along, they keep playing us for suckers,” Trump said. “All they have to do is they have to start signing a paper, it’s fully negotiated.”
Given that negotiations are highly sensitive and secret, it’s unclear how close — or distant — the sides are from an agreement.
A delegation of Qatari officials arrived in Iran on Wednesday in an effort to broker a deal between Washington and Tehran, a source familiar with the discussions told Military Times, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matters publicly.
3 days, 16 hours ago
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are retiring. How will new leaders inherit their lessons learned?
The retirement of the post-9/11 generation raises a question: What, exactly, is worth carrying forward into a new age of warfare?
The military is preparing for future conflicts that may look little like the wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, the generation that spent two decades fighting those wars is steadily leaving the force.
Across the branches, post-9/11 veterans are retiring, transitioning to civilian careers and stepping away from leadership and training positions. Their departures come as military leaders shift attention toward great-power competition, distributed operations and emerging technologies while preparing a force increasingly led by service members whose careers began after major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan ended.
For retired Marine Lt. Col. John Harman, the retirement of that generation raises a question that extends beyond doctrine or force structure: What, exactly, is worth carrying forward?
Some of the lessons forged during two decades of war remain relevant regardless of how future conflicts are fought, Harman said.
“Never take lightly the responsibility of sending others into danger,” he said, after a career that included nine deployments and six combat tours across Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader Middle East.
That lesson emerged during some of the most intense fighting of the post-9/11 era.
During the Battle of Fallujah, young and noncommissioned officers made life-or-death decisions under relentless pressure. The leaders who earned trust were not necessarily the most aggressive or outspoken, Harman said. They were the ones who remained disciplined, calm and committed to the service members under their charge.
“What separated exceptional leaders from average ones wasn’t bravado or chest-thumping rhetoric,” Harman said. “It was steady leadership under pressure.”
Military leaders have spent years adapting strategy and training for future conflict. Whether the next battle involves a near-peer adversary, proxy forces or a crisis no one has yet predicted, Harman said junior leaders will still face uncertainty, the weight of responsibility and the consequences of their decisions.
“Technology will evolve, but leadership fundamentals will not,” Harman said.
The Pentagon’s 2026 National Defense Strategy shifts the department’s focus toward deterring major powers, strengthening homeland defense and preparing for future conflict. Army University Press’s recent Lariat Advance report argues that future warfare will place greater demands on dispersed formations, decentralized decision-making and leaders operating with incomplete information.
Both describe operating environments that differ sharply from the counterinsurgency campaigns that shaped much generation that served after September 2001.
The topic of what gets passed on to future military leaders has surfaced across military education, training and force-development discussions as the services prepare for future conflict. Harman said he has seen that transition firsthand while working with younger Marines and officers after leaving active duty.
Many of the students entering today’s force are highly educated, technologically fluent and comfortable operating in environments shaped by artificial intelligence, unmanned systems and constant connectivity, he said. What they lack is not capability; it is the shared operational experience that defined their predecessors.
In his interactions with students, Harman said he occasionally finds himself sharing lessons that once required little explanation because entire units had lived through them together. Concepts such as trust, accountability and responsibility were reinforced by repeated deployments and combat experience.
For many younger service members, those lessons must now be taught in classrooms, training exercises and professional military education programs, rather than learned during wartime deployments.
“The challenge isn’t that this generation is unprepared,” Harman said. “The challenge is making sure they inherit the lessons that previous generations learned through experience without having to relearn them in combat.”
Leaders who attended SOF Week 2026 agreed.
This year, U.S. Special Operations Command leaders warned that training requirements continue to accumulate, even as demands on the force grow more complex. Leaders argued that future readiness will depend on both emerging technologies and preserving the adaptability, judgment and resilience needed to operate in uncertain environments.
The fundamentals of leadership
The discussion is unfolding as many members who served during the height of Global War on Terror reach retirement eligibility. Service members who entered the military in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are now approaching or surpassing 20 years of service — the benchmark for military retirement.
Many serve in senior enlisted, officer, instructor and training positions responsible for developing the next generation of leaders.
Retired Army Capt. Maxine Reyes, an Afghanistan veteran who served in leadership and command positions during her military career, said one of the most important lessons she carried from Afghanistan had little to do with tactics.
“Having the ability to build genuine relationships often mattered as much as tactical proficiency,” Reyes said. “We must never forget that every mission is ultimately about people.”
Technology, weapons and battlefield conditions will continue to evolve, she said, but the fundamentals of leadership remain remarkably consistent.
“The battlefield of the next conflict may look nothing like Afghanistan,” said Reyes. “But one thing remains constant: success and failure often hinge on human relationships, trust, and leadership.”
Future conflicts may involve artificial intelligence, cyber warfare and technologies that did not exist during much of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Reyes explained. Even so, leaders will still be required to make decisions under pressure, uncertainty and exhaustion.
“When conditions are at their worst, people rarely follow a rank; they follow a leader they trust,” she said.
For Harman, those qualities are directly connected to future conflict.
A fight involving a near-peer adversary could place greater responsibility on junior leaders operating with less oversight, degraded communications and fewer opportunities to seek guidance from higher-ups, he said. In those environments, leadership, judgment and trust become operational requirements.
Reese Rogers, a retired Marine officer who served in Marine reconnaissance and special operations units during deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, says gaining experience itself should be the goal.
“The first time is always the first time,” Rogers said. Training can prepare leaders for many situations, but some lessons are learned only when responsibility becomes real.
“We’ll always worry about how we should perform when it matters most, but you only learn by doing,” he said.
For retired Navy Senior Chief Stephanie Tankersly, who served in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom as a Fleet Marine Force corpsman, one of those lessons is judgment.
“Perfect information is a luxury leaders rarely have,” Tankersly said. “Most consequential decisions are made long before all the answers are available. Authentic leadership is the willingness to act amid uncertainty, guided by judgement, experience and a clear understanding of what is at stake.”
A new era
Military historian Erik Chapman said the retirement of the post-9/11 generation is influencing a broader discussion about what future leaders need to know.
As the military shifts from the wars that defined the last two decades to preparing for future conflict, Chapman said the challenge is not preserving Iraq and Afghanistan as case studies. It is determining which lessons remain relevant regardless of the battlefield.
“Every retirement represents more than a billet to be filled,” Chapman said. “It represents years of accumulated judgment, mentorship, and operational experience walking out the door.”
As military leaders redesign training, doctrine and force priorities for future conflict, Chapman said, “We can’t wait for the next conflict to rediscover what previous generations learned through hard experience.”
He continued, “The next generation doesn’t need to fight the last war, but they do need to understand the hard-earned lessons that war produced.”
Ensign Christopher Miller, a recent Naval Academy graduate, is part of the generation that will inherit those lessons and apply them to conflicts that may bear little resemblance to those fought after 2001.
“My generation may never fight the same wars our mentors fought,” Miller said.
The responsibilities that come with leadership, however, remain unchanged.
“We’ll face the same responsibility of making difficult decisions under pressure,” Miller said. “The technology will be different. The burden of leadership won’t be.”
4 days, 13 hours ago
US launches new strikes on Iran after helicopter downed
The U.S. launched strikes against Iran on Tuesday after Trump said Tehran had shot down a U.S. Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz.
The United States on Tuesday launched strikes against Iran after President Donald Trump said Tehran had shot down a U.S. Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz, deepening doubts about prospects for peace between the two countries.
“The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” U.S. Central Command said on X.
Trump earlier said the two U.S. pilots involved in the incident were uninjured but that the United States would respond to the attack.
The Apache was brought down by a one-way Iranian attack drone, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi did not directly address the incident, but said foreign forces in the region risked being involved in accidents or crossfire.
“To reduce risk, best solution is for them to leave,” he said on social media.
Iran’s state media later cited a military source as saying that no offensive air military operations have been conducted in the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours.
The source was also quoted as saying that there would be a decisive response in the event of renewed “hostility by the enemy” in response to the helicopter incident.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal during a phone call on Tuesday that the incident “wasn’t a big deal” and stressed that “the pilot is fine.”
However, the episode could well add further strain to efforts to broker a peace deal to end the wider Middle East war and reopen Hormuz, a vital conduit for petroleum and other commodities.
Trump has repeatedly said Iran and the United States are close to an agreement, though there have been few signs of progress since a tenuous ceasefire took effect in early April.
A U.S. Navy surface drone found and rescued the two crew, the U.S. military said, after the U.S. Army attack helicopter went down in waters near Oman’s coast while on patrol at around 3 a.m. on Tuesday.
U.S. Central Command gave no reason for the crash. It said the soldiers were rescued after two hours and said they were in stable condition — a more cautious assessment than Trump’s description.
4 days, 15 hours ago
Marine Corps looks to equip armored vehicles with 360-degree cameras
The goal is to allow crews to operate their vehicles – and enjoy full situational awareness – even while buttoned up with the hatches closed.
The U.S. Marine Corps is looking for 360-degree camera systems to fit on the LAV-25 and other armored vehicles.
The goal is to allow crews to operate their vehicles – and enjoy full situational awareness – even while buttoned up with the hatches closed.
The service is looking for fully integrated, turnkey systems that provide “complete situational awareness” and enable crews to operate the vehicle from within the hull with all hatches and doors closed on land, according to the Request For Information published by the Program Manager Light Armored Vehicles. The deadline is June 18.
PM LAV envisions a system with a minimum of four cameras and a maximum of 10 that merge into a single video stream to provide a combined 360-degree view.
The system should include infrared or thermal imaging for low-light conditions, a zoom feature, high-resolution video, such as 1080p or 4K, and accurate capture of colors “for maneuvering, local security, and identification of personnel, obstructions, and obstacles.”
While the RFI specifically describes the project as a “survivability upgrade [that] is intended to significantly enhance LAV platform,” it also mentions amphibious platforms like the Amphibious Combat Vehicle, as well as the Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle. The ARV will replace the LAV-25, which was first deployed in the early 1980s.
The Marine Corps seems particularly concerned with allowing crews to close their hatches when their vehicles are in the water.
As the U.S. Navy’s Naval Safety Center noted with the Amphibious Assault Vehicle, “water will make its way into the vehicle, especially when operating with the top hatches opened. Reduce extra strain on the systems and prevent unnecessary water intake by ensuring everything that can be water-tight is.”
The RFI asks contractors to “describe how their 360SA systems support operations in maritime and littoral environments, including during swimming operations, ship-to-shore maneuvering, and low-visibility coastal conditions.”
This includes full situational awareness even while fully or partially submerged, and “optimized sensor layout for low-profile hulls and swimming posture.”
The camera system should also allow “detection and classification of surface vessels, navigation lights, and day shapes for collision avoidance.”
Crews must be able to use the cameras to “assess sea state, wave patterns, and visibility conditions that may affect swimming.” And, it should feature “real-time tracking and ranging of contacts in fog, surf, and low-light conditions.”
Companies are asked to provide evidence of prior deployment or testing in maritime or amphibious environments. The cost should be no greater than $160,000 per vehicle, including all cameras, displays, software and other components.
4 days, 17 hours ago
Marines to have their own barracks bedrooms at Japan base
Marines stationed at Camp Hansen, Japan, will have new barracks with individual bedrooms.
The days of brotherly body odor and tossing and turning to the sound of a bunkmate’s late-night calls with his “one and only” may soon be over for junior enlisted service members stationed at Camp Hansen, Japan, as the installation prepares to move service members into new barracks with individual bedrooms.
Last week, U.S. Marine Corps and local leaders attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the three new six-story barracks buildings designed to house over 1,000 Marines and sailors near the shores of Kin Bay, according to a spokesperson from the service.
In July, the first new residents will begin moving in. Each service member will have an individual room connected to a shared bathroom, kitchenette and in-unit washer and dryer.
The buildings also have amenities, including a dedicated parking garage, bike racks, common areas and a 50-yard turf field outside. They also have a dedicated space for washing and drying military gear.
“This state-of-the-art facility will be replacing six other facilities on Camp Hansen,” said Maj. Gen. Brian N. Wolford, the commanding general of Marine Corps Installations Pacific, adding that the effort “is the first domino that is starting the rest of the construction on Camp Hansen.”
The Camp Hansen project’s ribbon-cutting comes as the Defense Department is seeking billions of dollars for new barracks construction and renovation across the services, with the Pentagon arguing that years of deferred maintenance have left many service members living in aging facilities.
According to photos released by the Marine Corps, the individual rooms include a raised bed with storage underneath, basic furniture and large, light-filled windows. In the shared kitchenette, at an angle, the stacked washer and dryer face a white refrigerator and chrome countertop set against a tiled, white backsplash.
The new construction, which began in 2022, is part of Camp Hansen’s consolidation plan and broader Okinawa base realignment efforts, replacing older facilities with new housing and infrastructure to improve service members’ quality of life.
“This gives Marines a place to come back to and be present, a place of their own,” said Joseph Scala, Camp Hansen’s director. “We are building what we need to have for the future.”
4 days, 18 hours ago
‘Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War’ is the ultimate OODA Loop wargame
Flashpoint Campaigns is an OODA Loop-anchored computer wargame that depicts a hypothetical Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany in 1989.
Fifty years ago, a U.S. Air Force colonel named John Boyd offered a profound insight into why battles are won or lost.
His famous Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — or OODA — Loop described the mental cycle by which combatants, from fighter pilots to generals, assess and react to a constantly changing situation.
Those with a faster OODA Loop could exploit opportunities while their befuddled opponents struggled to understand what was going on.
Germany crushed France in 1940 largely because of a sluggish French command system that was always one OODA step behind the swift panzer divisions. More recently, OODA might explain why tactically rigid Russian tank columns were decimated by outnumbered but agile Ukrainian troops in 2022.
Had the Soviets invaded Western Europe during the Cold War, NATO would have relied on OODA — plus airpower and more advanced weapons technology — to stop the Soviet steamroller.
To the troops watching waves of Soviet tanks roll into the Fulda Gap or the North German Plain, OODA would have been just a buzzword. But NATO needed every advantage it could get to compensate for superior Soviet numbers and firepower.
Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War, published by Matrix Games, is a computer wargame that depicts a hypothetical Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany in 1989.
But it is more than just another World War III wargame. Flashpoint Campaigns is the OODA Loop gamified. In fact, the game comes in two versions: the regular game for armchair generals, and a professional edition for real soldiers.
Flashpoint Campaigns is a 2-D map game, with NATO platoons and Warsaw Pact companies waging battalion- to division-sized battles. Set in the twilight of the Cold War, much of the hardware — such as Abrams and T-72 tanks, and Bradley and BMP infantry fighting vehicles — are still around today.
Players issue orders to their troops, such as movement, direct fire, calling in artillery and airstrikes, combat engineering operations and resupply. For example, a tank platoon can be ordered to head to a crossroads via a series of designated waypoints along the route.
Units can be given standard operating procedures, or SOPs, such as determining at what range to open fire, when to change firing position and when to retreat. Enemy units are usually invisible until spotted. With Late Cold War weapons so devastating, combat is deadly and proper concealment and reconnaissance a must.
After a player finishes issuing commands, they can hit the start button. A game clock then appears and a certain number of minutes elapse, during which units try to fulfill orders.
It all sounds like a straightforward process — until OODA intervenes.
Unlike many wargames, players in Flashpoint Campaigns can’t give orders to their troops at will. Instead, only at certain intervals does the game clock pause and allow commanders to issue fresh orders. This reflects the time it takes for the command system to collect information, analyze it, reach a decision and pass a new order to subordinates.
Like an object in motion in Newtonian physics, units will try to execute their last set of orders until new instructions arrive. That tank platoon heading down the road toward a village will keep going toward that village until told otherwise, even if the tactical situation has changed.
This is where NATO’s OODA advantage kicks in. The NATO player might have to wait, say, for 14 minutes of game time to elapse before issuing fresh orders. For the Soviets, the delay might be 23 minutes, or about 50% longer.
This means that NATO will have more opportunities to give new orders than the Soviets do. In turn, this means NATO troops can more quickly react to new threats such as enemy forces on their flank, or exploit discovery of a gap in the enemy’s lines.
It also means that NATO can be more flexible in its planning, rather than having to anticipate the tactical situation far in advance.
“We all know what happens when plans make contact with the enemy,” Robert Crandall, president of On Target Simulations, which designed Flashpoint Campaigns, told Military Times. “NATO spent considerable efforts to train for what happens after that contact and to respond faster than their counterparts. This could let them operate inside the Warsaw Pact command loop and outmaneuver them.”
But even NATO has OODA problems in the game. The presence of electronic warfare, in which the Soviets invested heavily, lengthens the interval before a player can give orders. Units engaged in combat will require 50% more time to react to new orders.
And commanders who send too many orders to their troops will receive an unpleasant surprise: too much radio traffic reveals the location as a headquarters, marking it for an artillery or airstrike.
Indeed, some U.S. Army experts today worry American command posts are so chatty that they will be targeted in wartime.
As battles progress in Flashpoints Campaigns, and units takes losses and headquarters are disrupted, command delays will inevitably lengthen for both sides.
Clausewitz’s “friction of war” will become an impediment, though a bit less so for NATO. Commanders on both sides will have to grit their teeth and accept that they can’t control their troops as they would like to.
Would NATO’s tighter OODA Loop have been enough to defeat the Soviets?
“One of the nicest compliments the game received came from a former Warsaw Pact officer who said he played the game using strict Warsaw Pact doctrine and won,” Crandall recalled.
“If the Warsaw Pact player has figured things out correctly, his initial plan will not have needed much, if any, adjustment and just rolls along at maximum speed. His opponent will be wrong-footed and at the mercy of the OODA Loop to react in time. With the fast-moving, hyper-lethal forces of 1989, good luck with that.”
In some ways, Flashpoint Campaigns is a memorial to another era.
The year 1989 was the twilight of 20th Century mechanized warfare. With the threat of drones paralyzing battlefield maneuver in the Ukraine War, discussing OODA’s influence on tactics seem almost quaint.
And yet, there is a reason why there is a global arms race today to develop smarter AI, quicker kill chains between sensors and weapons, and tightly networked forces that can act faster than the enemy.
Every year, the OODA Loop seems to tighten, with less margin to fall behind. As OODA reminds us, time is too precious a commodity to squander.
4 days, 22 hours ago
US soldiers rescued by drone after Apache helicopter goes down near the coast of Oman
U.S. Naval Forces Central Command's Task Force 59 and the Army's 82nd Airborne Division led the rescue, with Air Force assets assisting, as well.
Editor’s note: This is a developing story.
Two U.S. Army soldiers were brought to safety by a drone on Monday after their AH-64 Apache helicopter went down near the coast of Oman, in what may mark the services’ first unmanned vessel rescue.
“The surface drone that assisted in last night’s rescue of the Apache crew off the coast of Oman was a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel operated by U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59,” Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesperson, said in a statement Tuesday.
”The Task Force began fielding these drones in theater in late March,” he said.
The crew was rescued by American forces within two hours, at 7:33 p.m. Eastern Time, according to a separate release. Both service members are in stable condition.
The helicopter was “patrolling regional waters,” according to the command, and the cause of the incident is under investigation.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that Iran downed the helicopter while it flew over the Strait of Hormuz.
“The United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack,” Trump said in an afternoon post on Truth Social.
U.S. Navy assets from Naval Forces Central Command, including Task Force 59, and the 82nd Airborne Division led the rescue, with assistance from the Air Force.
Task Force 59 is the Navy’s Bahrain-based unit, responsible for integrating artificial intelligence and unmanned systems into maritime operations in the U.S.’s Fifth Fleet Area of Operations, which includes the Strait of Hormuz.
The Corsair is a 24-foot vessel that is capable of carrying more than 1,000 pounds over 1,000 nautical miles, according to Saronic, its manufacturer.
5 days, 11 hours ago
Chokepoint busters: Marines seek toolkit to help aviators clear way for amphibs
The Marine Corps wants to learn how airpower might ensure passage through "critical chokepoints" while under threat in a new age of warfare.
The Marine Corps is searching for airpower methods that can be used to blast a path for amphibious groups to steam through chokepoints at sea.
A new Request for Information submitted by Naval Air Systems Command on behalf of the Corps asks for analytical tools that can help the Future Attack/Strike, or FASt, initiative fulfill the chokepoint-busting mission.
The effort comes as the service is beginning to retire aging platforms, such as the AV-8B, AH-1Z and the F/A-18. FASt aims to replace them with next-generation systems like long-range missiles, MQ-58 Valkyrie combat drones, electronic warfare and other non-kinetic effects, according to the 2026 Marine Aviation Plan.
The Marine Corps is looking for an answer on how it could integrate these new capabilities into the its amphibious assault mission, which inevitably will involve operating in dangerous littoral waters and chokepoints.
The U.S. is already grappling with that problem in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian missiles, drones and swarms of fast-attack boats would jeopardize operations, such as seizing Kharg Island.
The Marine Corps wants tools that are good at “modeling complex operational scenarios, identifying vulnerabilities and capability gaps, and assessing the potential impact of new technologies, tactics, techniques, and procedures,” according to the RFI, which was published by Naval Air Systems Command on behalf of the Marine Corps. The deadline to respond is July 23.
More specifically, the Corps’ goal is to assess how airpower and long-range fires can “secure key maritime terrain” and ensure “passage through critical chokepoints while under threat.”
This includes intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance over sea and land, escorting transport aircraft, offensive air support for troops ashore, safe passage for military and commercial shipping and “kinetic and non-kinetic strikes against difficult-to-locate, mobile, and hardened ground-based threats, such as anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) batteries and air defense systems.”
Analytical tools should also address gaps in the defense of Amphibious Ready Groups and Marine Expeditionary Units. This includes attacks by drone swarms, manned fast-attack boats and unmanned surface vessels and underwater craft.
Significantly, the Marine Corps is dealing with the possibility that it will have to project “power from land- or sea-based assets into a contested area where manned aviation is denied or severely restricted due to sophisticated Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS),” according to the RFI.
This means tools must be able to analyze and model “long-range, autonomous, and semi-autonomous kinetic and non-kinetic weapon systems.”
It should also look at “capabilities that enable the joint kill web, from target detection and identification to battle damage assessment.”
And, these tools should asses the logistics and command-and-control infrastructure “required to sustain such operations over extended periods.”
The Marine Corps says it is willing to work with “major [defense] primes, small businesses, and non-traditional vendors in the future to ensure diverse solution ideas.”
It is looking to complete the work by the end of fiscal 2027.
5 days, 11 hours ago
Former sailor charged with attempting to finance ISIS attack on US troops
Seaman Bareen Dzayee attempted to pay an ISIS member to murder U.S. service members overseas with drones and RPGs.
A federal court filed charges Thursday against an ex-sailor and two other individualsfor attempting to finance an ISIS attack against American troops overseas.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday arrested former U.S. Navy Seaman Bareen Dzayee, 25, along with Bisaam Ghafoor, 21, and Elias Shamsaldeen, 21, for allegedly providing over $2,000 to an individual they believed to be an ISIS member.
The trio reportedly believed their money would sanction the purchase of rocket-propelled grenades and drones that would be used to murder U.S. service members.
“Over years, the individuals communicated about several plans to support ISIS, including through the provision of personnel, services and money,” a criminal complaint read. “Through chats, voice calls and multiple messaging platforms, these conspirators pledged allegiance or ‘Bayat’ to ISIS and its leader.”
Dzayee enlisted in the Navy in 2021 and served aboard the USS John McCain from March 25, 2022, to July 19, 2024, when he separated from the service.
Between March 2025 and January 2026, the FBI identified all three suspects as ISIS sympathizers after alarming social media posts.
The posts pledged allegiance to the terrorist organization, promoted violence and discussed weapons and explosives in support of ISIS operations.
A confidential FBI source the suspects believed to be an active ISIS member reached out to Ghafoor and Shamsaldeen in May 2025 and joined a social media group chat in which Shamsaldeen specifically stated his desire to injure U.S. service members, travel overseas to fight for ISIS and “take action” to make his fantasies of violence come true.
Ghafoor, Dzayee and Shamsaldee paid money between March and May of this year to the confidential FBI source. At one point, Ghafoor said it would be “sick” if the contact — who was the FBI agent — wrote Ghafoor’s name on one of the drones.
During the process of sending money to the FBI source, Ghafoor acknowledged that doing so would be treason but stated that he wanted to continue with the transaction, according to the Justice Department.
He also reportedly told the confidential source that he had fantasized about killing a female soldier by beheading and wanted to kill 300,000 Americans.
“For years, the Department of Justice has been encouraging Americans that if they see suspicious activity, they should report it to law enforcement,” U.S. Attorney Ryan A. Kriegshauser for the District of Kansas said in a DoJ release. “That’s because long gone are the days where terrorist threats and attacks are incidents that only take place far away on foreign soil.”
5 days, 16 hours ago
Pentagon bows to criticism, admitting ‘mistake’ over new religious list
The Pentagon revised its abridged list of officially recognized faith affiliations after Utah lawmakers balked at the omission of Mormonism.
The Department of Defense — which is poised to slash its number of officially recognized faith affiliations from more than 200 to just 31 — updated its classifications following criticism from Republican lawmakers over its omission of The Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints from the Christian category.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a close ally of President Donald Trump, says he raised the issue directly with the president, arguing that the government should not be involved in adjudicating doctrinal disputes among faith traditions.
Two more Republicans from Utah — Sen. John Curtis and Rep. Mike Kennedy — also urged Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to amend the list for the same reason.
The Pentagon subsequently announced on Monday that it had removed “unnecessary labeling, and the mistake has been fixed.”
The new “Religious Affiliation Codes” no longer features the subheading gathering together Christian denominations, thus sidestepping the contentious issue of whether to include or exclude Mormonism.
Instead, it provides a long list of uncategorized options, including the previous Christian denominations; the Church of Latter-day Saints; other major religions like Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism; and classifications of Agnostic, “no religion,” and “other religions.”
According to a May 20 memorandum signed by Under Secretary of Defense Anthony Tata, the list will provide chaplains with “clear, readily available information” to better anticipate the religious needs of service members and to deliver religious support consistent with their faith and practices.
Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, described the original shift as “long overdue,” saying that the consolidation is intended to improve administrative efficiency rather than elevate certain religions over others.
“This decrease in religious affiliation codes is not designed to make any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, nor is it intended to provide a list of ‘officially approved’ religions,” Parnell said in a statement on Friday. “Rather, it is designed to allow chaplains to quickly look at the religious composition of their units and determine how they structure resources to best provide for warfighters of all faith groups.”
Troops will not be restricted, however, in what information they choose to include on their dog tags.
When previewing the new policy in March, Hegseth said that the rank insignia worn by military chaplains on their uniforms is set to be replaced with religious insignia. He emphasized chaplains are “first and foremost called and ordained by God,” and, while they will retain rank as an officer to those they serve, their rank will not be visible.
The changes are expected to take effect by mid-July.
5 days, 17 hours ago
US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet strikes, disables oil tanker in Gulf of Oman
An F/A-18 Super Hornet assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln fired a precision munition into the vessel's engineering and steering spaces.
The U.S. military on Monday disabled an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman that U.S. Central Command said “violated the ongoing blockade against Iran by attempting to sail to an Iranian port.”
The Palau-flagged M/T Marivex, which was reportedly traveling without cargo, was transiting international waters in the Gulf of Oman when its crew failed to respond to directions from U.S. forces in the region.
A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln responded by firing a precision munition into the Marivex‘s engineering and steering spaces.
“Marivex is no longer sailing to Iran,” a release from U.S. Central Command stated.
To date, U.S. forces carrying out the naval blockade — launched April 13 — in waters around Iran have disabled seven non-compliant ships, according to the command release.
Well over 100 vessels have complied and been redirected, while 42 ships transiting the area with humanitarian aid have been permitted to pass.
5 days, 19 hours ago
House panel quashes attempt to stop integration of US, Israel defense tech sectors
"Only the United States Congress would dream up at this moment, ‘Let’s actually do more for Israel,’ not less," argued Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.
A House panel advanced a measure to increase cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli defense technology sectors after one lawmaker’s Friday attempt to halt the proposal fell flat.
The United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, part of the House’s version of the fiscal 2027 defense policy bill, would codify and increase military technical cooperation between the U.S. defense industry and Israel’s, as well as create a technical liaison position within the Pentagon to support the effort.
The House Armed Services Committee approved the measure as part of its National Defense Authorization Act after a marathon debate on hundreds of amendments.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introduced an amendment to strike down the proposal, but it found very little support from his colleagues.
“We need to tell [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu that America calls the shots, not the prime minister of any other country,” Khanna said during his introduction of the amendment. “[Americans] want less cooperation and blank checks to Israel, not more. Only the United States Congress would dream up at this moment, ‘Let’s actually do more for Israel,’ not less.”
Eight committee members, including fellow Democrats, spoke against Khanna’s effort to quash the measure. The amendment was ultimately defeated.
The proposal “actually improves oversight and accountability for these programs by designating a single official responsible,” said committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala. “Claims that this provision somehow cedes authority to a foreign government are ridiculous.”
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking Democrat on the committee, conceded that he understood some of the concerns Khanna outlined in his amendment, particularly regarding Netanyahu’s leadership in Israel and his multi-front war.
“We have endless wars, now, in Gaza, in the West Bank [...], in Lebanon,” Smith said. “No effort to negotiate, no effort to find partners for peace amongst the Palestinians or the Lebanese, even where there are opportunities to do so.”
But the measure puts existing programs under streamlined supervision, Smith argued. He and other committee members touted the benefits of Israeli technology for U.S. weapons systems.
The cooperation initiative “comes at a very bad time because of everything I’ve just said about Israel, but let’s not forget” what it actually does, Smith said.
Michael Hanna, director of the U.S. program at International Crisis Group, told Military Times the addition of the U.S.-Israel cooperation initiative “tells us something important about the broader climate.”
Further integrating U.S.-Israeli military cooperation differs from the memorandum of understanding, or MOU, process that has dictated military aid to Israel historically, he said.
“It’s hard to imagine there will be another MOU after [the next] one,” Hanna said. The current MOU expires in 2028, and while Hanna said a shorter agreement could follow, it’s clear that the U.S.-Israel relationship is changing.
“The Israelis understand that and are trying to get ahead of that” by moving from an aid model to one of co-production and procurement, he said.
One committee member spoke in support of Khanna’s amendment. Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., argued the cooperation initiative “entrenched” the U.S. and Israeli militaries “with no strings attached.”
“A clear majority of Americans already oppose sending more military aid to Israel,” Jacobs said. “They will not support this, and neither should we.”
A majority of Americans now hold negative views of Netanyahu and Israel, according to polling from the Pew Research Center. By August of last year, 60% of Americans disapproved of sending the country additional military aid, per a Quinnipiac poll.
The House’s version of the NDAA is expected to go to the floor for a vote in mid-July. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., pledged to introduce another effort at that time to strike the section about U.S.-Israeli cooperation.
6 days, 21 hours ago
US troops, families adjust to new normal of Iran war
“To maintain this constant state of ‘Level 10’ alert vigilance, to be ready to go at the drop of a hat, is a very stressful ... operational mission."
Fourteen weeks after President Donald Trump ordered an attack on Iran, the U.S. military is adjusting to an unusual state of conflict that is not full-scale war, but also far from peace.
On ships and bases in the Middle East, U.S. troops — some recovering from injuries — operate amid exchanges of fire with Iran every few days as the Navy blockades Iran’s ports.
At home, the Pentagon is scrambling to bolster production of depleted munitions as families of service members cope with the stress of extended deployments.
Counterattacks from Iran continue against U.S. allies in the region, such as Bahrain and Kuwait, which Iran targeted in a ballistic missile attack on Friday.
Trump declared his ceasefire with Iran in April, but the war has settled into a stalemate, with Iran keeping the Strait of Hormuz largely closed to shipping and Trump threatening a return to full-scale bombings of Iran if peace negotiations fail.
The threat requires U.S. troops to maintain an acute state of readiness.
That means everything from stocking bases with missiles and interceptors to scouring intelligence from drones and satellites to updating lists of targets inside Iran should large-scale fighting resume.
“To maintain this constant state of ‘Level 10’ alert vigilance, to be ready to go at the drop of a hat, is a very stressful and difficult operational mission,” said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Joseph Votel, the former commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command, described the current conflict phase as “a very, very dangerous period for us.”
He said keeping troops ready during the ceasefire is no small challenge.
“It puts on a lot of pressure on leaders to make sure that people are still at their edge,” Votel said.
Asked for comment, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the U.S. military stands ready to support deployed troops “in every way imaginable.”
“The Department of War is proud of our incredible troops. Their courage, readiness, grit, and unmatched professionalism are why they are the greatest fighting force in human history,” Parnell said.
TOLL ON TROOPS AND FAMILIES
For U.S. troops recovering from injuries, the military’s shift to an extended wartime footing requires a profound adjustment.
U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. 1st Class Cory Hicks, 37, is among the wounded recovering from an Iranian drone attack at the start of the war that left him without a pulse for minutes.
Punctured by shrapnel that severed an artery and fractured his jaw, Hicks is also wrestling with the impact of a traumatic brain injury from the blast that could challenge him for life.
“It sounded like a small prop plane coming in quick,” Hicks told Reuters. “And then it just smashed into the building and blew up. And I remember a big bright ball of flames and lots of pressure and heat, and I was out.”
Hicks is not the only one adapting to a new normal. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, where he is being treated, is coping with a new surge in combat care cases years after the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Hicks said.
Around 400 U.S. troops have been wounded during the conflict, many of them with a traumatic brain injury like Hicks. Over 90% have returned to duty, the U.S. military says. Thirteen service members have been killed in the conflict.
Families of U.S. service members also confront stress amid confusion about what is happening during the ceasefire.
Iranian state media publishes claims regularly about attacking U.S. ships and aircraft. On Friday, Iran said it fired warning shots at U.S. warships in the Gulf of Oman, an event the U.S. military denies happened.
“It’s just really scary not to know details of what exactly is going on,” said Yadira Dessaint, mother of a sergeant in the Army Reserve from California’s San Fernando Valley.
Dessaint asked not to identify her son for fear of retaliation by the U.S. military. She has protested for an end to the war, which has damaged Trump’s popularity.
Just one in four respondents in a May Reuters/Ipsos poll said the U.S. military action in Iran has been worth it.
Dessaint said her son has seen multiple attacks on his position by Iranian drones, their debris falling around him after being intercepted by air defenses.
“I tend to send a text every day: ‘Good morning, son. I love you,’” Dessaint said. “Every so often, I get ‘I love you mom’ or ‘I miss you’ or something.”
PERSISTENT THREAT
As the United States and Iran negotiate a potential deal to open the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil transited before the war, it looks increasingly likely that any agreement would extend the ceasefire while delaying some of the thorniest issues, such as Tehran’s nuclear program.
That suggests the tense standoff and the demands on the U.S. military will continue.
The signs of strain on military operations are visible in the huge expenditure of munitions for the war. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said it could take years to fully replenish U.S. inventories of missiles and interceptors.
Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., said it is not just inventories that are eroding.
“Wars are expensive. They grind on the equipment and the people, as well as the missiles that are shot,” Karako said.
Back in Maryland, Hicks stays in touch with fellow U.S. soldiers in the Middle East, some frustrated by deployments that are being extended as the conflict drags on.
“They’re doing a lot better now than they were. The threat is not as bad,” he said, referring to the reduced scale of fighting.
But Hicks carries the memory of six fellow soldiers who died in the Kuwait attack that injured him, including Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39.
“I was talking to Sgt. Amor when the drone hit. She was maybe 10 feet away from me,” he said. “It’s something that I’m going to have to deal with the rest of my life.”
1 week, 1 day ago
Joint Chiefs head makes first official visit to post-Maduro Venezuela
The visit comes five months after the high-risk U.S. military operation to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made his first official trip to Venezuela this week, five months after the high-risk U.S. military operation that removed the country’s strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro, from power.
Caine held bilateral discussions with senior leaders of the interim government and with U.S. embassy personnel. During those meetings, he underscored the importance of Venezuelan stability, broader security across the Western Hemisphere and the military’s commitment to implementing Trump’s “three-phase plan,” Joe Holstead, a spokesman for Caine, said in a statement.
The plan focuses on avoiding chaos, bolstering an economic recovery and — eventually — facilitating a transition to democracy.
A key pillar of the effort has been restoring Venezuela’s oil industry, which Trump previously characterized as a “total bust.”
All of that changed with Operation Absolute Resolve. The sprawling military raid — which involved more than 150 aircraft — culminated in Delta Force commandos descending on a heavily fortified compound and capturing Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The pair were later flown to New York, where they each face criminal charges.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, continues to maintain a robust presence in the region, with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group sailing into the Caribbean in May.
Since September, the Pentagon has carried out at least 62 strikes in the waters off South America, killing nearly 200 people whom the Trump administration says were involved in drug trafficking, according to data compiled by Military Times. Many legal experts dispute the legality of those operations.
1 week, 1 day ago
Lawmakers move to require chaperones for ‘sensitive’ appointments in military health system
Under the provision, a trained third party would have to be present for exams conducted by obstetrician-gynecologists at military treatment facilities.
Members of the House Armed Services Committee voted unanimously Thursday to include the mandate in their markup of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.
Under the provision, a trained third party would have to be present for exams conducted by obstetrician-gynecologists at military treatment facilities.
The amendment was sponsored by Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, whose district includes Tripler Army Medical Center, one of the facilities where Army gynecologist Maj. Blaine McGraw, is accused of sexually abusing and secretly recording female patients.
McGraw, 48, faces eight charges and 273 specifications involving 96 victims across a period of seven years at Tripler and the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center in Fort Hood, Texas.
During his Article 32 hearing on May 26, witnesses for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division said McGraw admitted recording patients, claiming he did it for the purpose of notetaking but also told investigators he had “voyeuristic tendencies” as a teenager that were exacerbated by a traumatic deployment to Syria, according to the Killeen Daily Herald.
Tokuda’s amendment would require military health facilities to train chaperones and ensure they be used for any exam, treatment or procedure that involves the ”genitalia, rectum or female breasts” or for forensic health exams.
Patients have always had access to a chaperone in the military health system, but doctors are now required to offer one under the policy.
The proposed requirement would not have had any impact on a separate sexual assault case involving Army physician Maj. Michael Stockin, who was sentenced in 2025 to nearly 14 years in prison for sexually abusing patients at Madigan Army Medical Center in Washington.
Stockin, an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist, pleaded guilty to 41 violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, including abusive sexual contact and indecent viewing with male patients during medical exams.
At the time of Stockin’s investigation, it was considered one of the largest cases involving sexual assault in the U.S. military.
The committee’s markup of the defense policy bill must pass the House and be negotiated in conference process with the Senate before it becomes law.
1 week, 1 day ago
House panel votes to reinstate non-Confederate base names and adopt ‘Department of War’
The House advanced a measure to return the names of nine U.S. military bases to those recommended by a congressional commission in 2023.
A House panel voted Thursday to return the names of nine southern U.S. military bases to those recommended in 2023 by a congressional commission assigned to study the Defense Department’s Confederate honorifics.
After a spirited 30-minute debate late Thursday evening, members of the House Armed Services Committee approved an amendment offered by Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., to change the names in a narrow 29-27 vote.
Strickland said while the current names honor military personnel in their own right — for example, Fort Lee in Virginia is now named for Fitz Lee, a Buffalo soldier who earned the Medal of Honor — the administration’s changes sidestepped the law and were hurtful to many military personnel and veterans for reviving Confederate legacies.
“They used the same stunt the commission considered and rejected, finding new service members that share the same last name as the Confederate traitors,” Strickland said.
Republican Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who voted for the amendment, said his Virginia ancestor fought for the Union and would be “rolling in his grave” knowing U.S. military bases were named for Confederate leaders.
“I thought we did it right in 2020 — we debated it, it was a strong debate here. It passed in the House, a Democrat majority, and it passed in the Senate, Republican majority,“ Bacon said. ”The president vetoed it, and we overrode the veto. We did it right, and what happens is the secretary comes in here, puts his thumb in our eye … it should bother all of us.”
Lawmakers opposed to the change said the longstanding names have widespread and international recognition and mean much to the troops who have served on the bases, even as they may not know much about the installation’s namesakes.
“To judge historical figures by the morality of our time is taking certain things out of context … I just heard we can’t honor our forefathers who enslaved other people. Are we going to rename this city? Where does it end?” asked Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas.
“I think Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and President Trump have struck a reasonable balance. Our history should be taught, not erased, the good and bad,” agreed Rep. John McGuire, R-Va.
Under Strickland’s amendment, the Naming Commission’s recommendations would be reinstated: Fort A.P. Hill would become Fort Walker; Fort Bragg would become Fort Liberty; Fort Benning would become Fort Moore; Fort Hood would become Fort Cavazos; Fort Lee would become Fort Gregg-Adams; Fort Polk would become Fort Johnson; Fort Rucker would be Fort Novosel; and Fort Pickett would be Fort Barfoot.
Fort Gordon also would become Fort Shughart-Gordon. The installation, once named for Confederate Maj. General John Brown Gordon, was changed last year to honor Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, a Medal of Honor recipient for his heroism in the Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia.
Strickland said she worked with Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., to add the name Sgt. First Class Randall Shughart, who also earned the Medal of Honor in that battle.
Rep. Carlos Giménez, R-Fla., joined with Bacon and committee Democrats to overturn the names.
Codifying the ‘Department of War’
The panel also voted to change the name of the Defense Department to the Department of War. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, introduced the amendment, saying that the change sends an “unmistakable signal” that “America is willing to fight and win to secure its interests.”
“This name reflects the determination and resolve of our brave men and women of the U.S. military who aggressively fight to secure our national interests,” Jackson said. “Our military does much more than defend the homeland.”
The War Department was established by legislation signed by President George Washington in 1789, and it remained so until 1947, when President Harry Truman sought to consolidate the services under a single Cabinet-level command structure.
Truman recommended that Congress pass legislation creating a Department of National Defense, which became the Defense Department.
Trump issued an executive order Sept. 5, 2025, to restore the name Department of War, a secondary title to the Defense Department. The department has been using the moniker but requires legislation to permanently change the name.
Smith said the name change would have very little impact on adversaries.
“Practically speaking, it makes no frickin’ difference whatsoever. We have a lot of important work to do … and we are arguing over a name. It’s incredibly expensive to change that name,” Smith said.
Earlier in the day, the panel also voted unanimously by voice vote to ban hate symbols like swastikas, nooses and other graphics across the department, to include tattoos, uniforms, patches, personal equipment and government property.
The amendment requires the secretary to establish standards for identifying and addressing prohibited symbols and procedural review for removal.
The proposal is related to a policy change last year by the Coast Guard, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, that classified the Nazi insignia as “potentially divisive” rather than a hate symbol.
Coast Guard officials said the policy change was misunderstood, and it was designed to clarify — not downgrade — its stand on extremist symbols.
“This is not an updated policy but a new policy to combat any misinformation and double down that the U.S. Coast Guard forbids these symbols,” officials wrote in a statement.
1 week, 1 day ago
Pentagon must divulge cost of Iran war under House proposal
A measure advanced Friday would require the DoD to report on the total financial cost of operations in Iran, including damaged or destroyed U.S. property.
The Defense Department would be required to report on the total cost of U.S. operations in Iran, including the costs of damaged property, expended munitions and unplanned deployments and mobilizations, under a proposal advanced by the House Armed Services Committee on Friday.
The measure, which has bipartisan support, was added as an amendment to the House version of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, a massive defense funding and policy bill. After more than 14 hours of debate, the committee sent the bill to the full House, where it’s expected to go to the floor for a vote in July.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., introduced the amendment. Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran, previously grilled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the cost of the war. During an April 29 hearing, Moulton guessed the cost could reach $100 billion, or about $600 per U.S. taxpayer, he said.
“For the American taxpayers out there, I’m just wondering if they have an extra 600 bucks lying around to pay for your war,” Moulton said. “That’s a question we ought to ask.”
The measure requires the defense secretary to provide the House and Senate armed services committees with an unclassified assessment of the total cost of the operations by April 1, 2027. The U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran began Feb. 28.
In addition to the costs of damaged or destroyed equipment and property, expended munitions and deployments, the report would include the cost of an ongoing U.S. Navy blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, the proposal says.
Pentagon officials estimated May 12 that the total cost of the Iran war had reached $29 billion, up from $25 billion on April 29. Jules Hurst III, the Defense Department’s acting comptroller, relayed the figures to lawmakers during back-to-back budget hearings on Capitol Hill.
Hurst emphasized that the projections did not include expenditures for repairing damaged military installations in the region.
A Congressional Research Service report released May 13 tallied 42 U.S. aircraft lost or damaged during the war, with drones accounting for 25 of the 42 losses.
The Pentagon has not publicly disclosed the scale of munitions expended before a ceasefire between Washington and Tehran took effect April 7, citing operational security. A May 27 analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, however, found that more than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles had been launched during the U.S. strikes on Iran and 290 THAAD interceptors were used.
In addition to providing the cost assessment to the armed services committees, the measure mandates the Defense Department make it publicly available on its website.
1 week, 1 day ago
Military pay raises, changes to housing allowance included in House-passed $1.15 trillion defense budget
After controversial amendment votes, a House committee advanced a bill early Friday morning that would authorize the largest defense budget in history.
The House Armed Services Committee advanced a defense policy bill Friday that would authorize the largest defense budget in history — $1.15 trillion — and gives military service members a 5% to 7% pay raise, depending on their rank.
In a marathon markup session that lasted from Thursday morning until 12:00 a.m. Friday, committee members debated and passed nearly 600 amendments and the bill language of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.
The committee approved the proposed legislation in a 44-12 vote. It now proceeds to the House floor, where it is expected to be considered in mid-July.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said the proposal would revitalize the defense industrial base, invest in jobs and military personnel and “reverse the damage caused by decades of underinvestment in the U.S. military.”
Ranking member Rep Adam Smith, D-Wash., called it a “good solid bill” that supports the troops by investing in pay and benefits, continuing defense acquisition reform initiatives and supporting allies.
But, Smith said, the sheer size of the cost should cause pause.
“[The base amount] is a 30% increase over what the committee did last year — that is a lot of money at a time when we have a $40 trillion debt,” Smith said.
Target pay raises, boost to BAH
The proposal includes a significant boost in troop pay beginning Jan. 1, 2027, especially for junior enlisted personnel. Under the proposed legislation, service members E-5 and below would receive a 7% pay raise, while those E-6 to O-3 would get a 6% pay raise. Members O-4 and above would see their paychecks rise by 5%.
The pay plan is higher than the 3.8% increase service members received in fiscal 2026 but less than half the 14.5% increase they received in 2025.
The proposal also increases the size of the active duty force by 40,100, including: 15,000 for the Army; 12,000 for the Navy; 8,900 for the Air Force; 1,400 for the Marine Corps; and 2,800 for the Space Force.
With the increases, the active duty force will total 1,342,900 members.
Regarding benefits, the bill would remove a service member’s Basic Housing Allowance from calculations for consideration for the Basic Needs Allowance, a benefit available to low income military families whose income levels could qualify them for food stamps.
The provision, which would base a service member’s income and qualifications for the allowance on base pay and allowances while omitting the significant stipend provided to cover housing, was included in the House version of the fiscal 2026 defense policy bill but dropped from the final legislation.
According to a 2023 department survey, roughly a quarter of military families were considered “food insecure,” meaning they had difficulties buying enough food for themselves and their families.
Health and child care changes
The House proposal contains several other provisions to improve the well-being of service members and their families.
It would allow active duty personnel and reserve members on active duty to take bereavement leave in the loss of a pregnancy or stillbirth.
It would place limits on the Defense Department’s plans to restructure military health facilities, and it would require the Government Accountability Office to conduct an audit of Tricare’s pharmacy benefits.
The bill would require the department to implement an initiative to improve procedures for processing complaints against Tricare, the Defense Department’s health program, by developing a system for filing complaints not handled sufficiently by the standard complaint process.
And it proposes to allow military health beneficiaries to access physical therapy without a referral. It would expand child care options for military families by including au pairs as eligible in-child care providers under the DoD’s Child Care in Your Home Fee Assistance Pilot Program.
Controversial amendment votes
The bill was advanced to the House with two amendments that are sure to spark debate among members and in negotiations with the Senate, including an amendment offered by Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, and an amendment from Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., who proposed changing the names of military bases once named for Confederate generals back to the names recommended by a congressional naming commission in 2022.
Jackson’s amendment passed by a 29-27 vote while Strickland’s also was approved by the same number.
Regarding department oversight, lawmakers agreed that the Pentagon should submit reports to the committee on the removal of flag or general officers, including the reason, concern or inaction by the officer that prompted the relief. The provision stems from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s dismissal of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George in April, along with his interference in promotion lists that has resulted in the removal of more than 19 senior officers.
The bill also also requires an independent assessment into a decision last month to cancel the deployment of an Army Armored Brigade Combat Team to Poland and a report from U.S. European Command on an effort to remove 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany.
The House $1.15 trillion authorization aligns with the Trump administration’s Defense Department base budget request. The administration also seeks an additional $350 billion for defense in a request known as reconciliation that requires separate legislation outside Congress’s normal appropriations process.
The Senate has not revealed its version of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act. The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to mark up their version in meetings next week that are closed to the public.
During the lengthy debate Thursday, House lawmakers offered dozens of amendments on issues that included a proposal to reduce the amount authorized in the bill by $150 billion, an effort to shield the independent Stars and Stripes newspaper from department interference by protecting the paper’s publisher, motions to increase oversight of the secretary’s management of the Pentagon’s independent press and a prohibition of the sale of political merchandise on military installations.
All were defeated.
The bill now moves to the House for consideration. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., told reporters Wednesday that he expects a vote to occur after the Independence Day break in July, according to a report from Politico.
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