A U.S. Marine is poised to become the top legal officer of the Navy for the first time in over a century, the Defense Department announced Tuesday.

Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Bligh, who currently serves as the staff judge advocate to the commandant of the Marine Corps, was nominated for appointment as the judge advocate general, or JAG, of the Navy.

Bligh would become only the second Marine to hold the title of judge advocate general for the Navy, following in the footsteps of Col. William Butler Remey, who became the first uniformed chief legal officer of the Navy in 1878.

After Remey, only sailors have filled the position.

Bligh would replace Rear Adm. Lia Reynolds, who is currently serving as the acting JAG of the Navy, according to the service. Vice Adm. Christopher French, the previous Navy JAG, requested to retire in December 2024, having only served in the position for three months.

Lawmakers warn Hegseth against political firings of generals

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed the JAGs for the Army and Air Force in February — saying they weren’t “well-suited” to provide recommendations when lawful orders were given — and said he was requesting nominations for the JAGs for the Army, Navy and Air Force. There was already an ongoing effort to seek a replacement for French, according to The Associated Press.

Bligh was commissioned through the Platoon Leaders Course program in 1988 and afterward served as a platoon commander and company commander at the 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, according to his service biography.

He went on to complete Naval Justice School and served as a civil law officer, trial counsel and officer-in-charge of legal assistance at Camp Lejeune.

From there, he became the director of the Joint Law Center at Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina, during which he deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom with Task Force Tarawa.

Bligh also served as the assistant JAG of the Navy for military law.

Amid President Donald Trump’s plans to revert the designations of seven Army installations previously named for Confederate fighters to their old names, albeit new namesakes, comes the Army’s announcement that Fort Lee in Virginia will become the first base to be named after a Buffalo Soldier.

Fort Lee — initially named after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee — was briefly changed to Fort Gregg-Adams under President Joe Biden’s administration in its efforts to remove any connection to the Confederacy from current military bases.

Following the recommendations of a special committee, Fort Lee was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams to honor Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams. Both joined the Army prior to its desegregation, with Gregg rising to become the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics for the Army while Adams commanded the 6888th Central Postal Directory during the Second World War.

It was the first Army base in U.S. history to be named for Black Americans.

However, under Trump, the fort will yet again be the home of another milestone. It will be renamed for Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Buffalo soldier who received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Spanish-American War.

Buffalo Soldiers

While African Americans have fought in U.S. wars since the American Revolution, peacetime Black U.S. Regular Army units were not created until 1866.

Following the Civil War, Congress created six Regular Army regiments of African American soldiers: 9th and 10th cavalry regiments and 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st infantry regiments. Three years later in 1869, the four infantry regiments were consolidated into two units and redesignated as the 24th and 25th infantry regiments.

According to historian Jerry Morelock, “The nickname Buffalo Soldiers originated during the regiments’ initial service in the Frontier Army in campaigns against Native American tribes. Likely, the title was first bestowed upon 10th Cavalry troopers as a term of respect by Cheyenne warriors in early 1867. Eventually, however, the name Buffalo Soldiers was extended to denote all troops in the four African-American cavalry and infantry regiments.”

Pvt. Fitz Lee

Born the same year Congress created standing Black units, Lee, a Virginia native, enlisted in M Troop, 10th Cavalry in 1889. After nearly a decade with the Army, Lee, serving as a private, found himself bound for Cuba after the U.S. declared war on Spain on April 25, 1898.

Lee and 50 other troopers, according to the National Park Service, were assigned to head behind enemy lines to re-enforce and resupply Cuban fighters seeking liberation from Spanish rule in the Caribbean.

On June 30, 1898, Cuban freedom fighters and American soldiers disembarked the steamship Florida, attempting an amphibious landing at Tayabacoa, Cuba. Almost immediately, the landing party found themselves engaged in enemy fire.

Ambushed, the landing group soon retreated, leaving behind at least 16 wounded to become prisoners of war.

After several rescue attempts failed, Lee, Cpl. George H. Wanton, Pvt. Dennis Bell, Sgt. William H. Thompkins and Lt. George P. Ahern stepped forward and volunteered.

Wading ashore, the five soldiers managed to surprise the Spanish, successfully freeing their wounded comrades.

Her Medal of Honor was once revoked. Now her base is being renamed.

All but Ahern were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions in Tayabacoa, with Lee receiving his while hospitalized at Fort Bliss, Texas. His time in Cuba had left him with severely limited vision, swollen limbs and abdominal pain that caused him to be bedridden for three months, according to NPS.

On July 5, 1899, a few days after receiving the Medal of Honor, Lee was medically discharged from the Army.

Lee and his comrades would be the last Black soldiers to receive the Medal of Honor outright until the Vietnam War. Two Black soldiers were posthumously awarded the nation’s highest medal for valor in 1991 and 2015, respectively, and a review in the 1990s led to the posthumous awarding of the medal to seven Black veterans in 1997.

Following his discharge, Lee moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, living with other retired Buffalo Soldiers who looked after the disabled veteran.

“In constant pain and totally blind,” writes NPS, “Fitz Lee died at the home of a friend in Kansas on Sept. 14, 1899.”

Lee was buried with full military honors at Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery.

A U.S. intelligence report suggests that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after U.S. strikes and was not “completely and fully obliterated” as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment.

The report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday contradicts statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. has held out hope of restarting negotiations with Iran to convince it to give up its nuclear program entirely, but some experts fear that the U.S. strikes — and the potential of Iran retaining some of its capabilities — could push Tehran toward developing a functioning weapon.

The assessment also suggests that at least some of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, necessary for creating a nuclear weapon, was moved out of multiple sites before the U.S. strikes and survived, and it found that Iran’s centrifuges, which are required to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, are largely intact, according to the people.

At the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant, where U.S. B-2 stealth bombers dropped several 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, the entrance collapsed and infrastructure was damaged, but the underground infrastructure was not destroyed, the assessment found. The people said that intelligence officials had warned of such an outcome in previous assessments ahead of the strike on Fordo.

The White House pushes back

The White House rejected the DIA assessment, calling it “flat-out wrong,” and Trump defended his characterization of the strike’s impact.

“It was obliteration, and you’ll see that,” Trump told reporters while attending the NATO summit in the Netherlands. He said the intelligence was “very inconclusive” and described media outlets as “scum” for reporting on it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also at the NATO summit, said there would be an investigation into how the intelligence assessment leaked and dismissed it as “preliminary” and “low confidence.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “these leakers are professional stabbers.”

The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the DIA assessment. ODNI coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA, which is the intelligence arm of the Defense Department, responsible for producing intelligence on foreign militaries and the capabilities of adversaries.

The Israeli government also has not released any official assessments of the U.S. strikes.

Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said he has read damage assessment reports from U.S. intelligence and other nations, reiterated Tuesday night that the strikes had deprived Iran of the ability to develop a weapon and called it outrageous that the U.S. assessment was shared with reporters.

“It’s treasonous so it ought to be investigated,” Witkoff said on Fox News Channel.

Trump has said in comments and posts on social media in recent days, including Tuesday, that the strike left the sites in Iran “totally destroyed” and that Iran will never rebuild its nuclear facilities.

Netanyahu said in a televised statement on Tuesday that, “For dozens of years I promised you that Iran would not have nuclear weapons and indeed ... we brought to ruin Iran’s nuclear program.” He said the U.S. joining Israel was “historic” and thanked Trump.

The intelligence assessment was first reported by CNN on Tuesday.

Outside experts had suspected Iran had likely already hidden the core components of its nuclear program as it stared down the possibility that American bunker-buster bombs could be used on its nuclear sites.

Bulldozers and trucks visible in satellite imagery taken just days before the strikes have fueled speculation among experts that Iran may have transferred its half-ton stockpile of enriched uranium to an unknown location. And the incomplete destruction of the nuclear sites could still leave the country with the capacity to spin up weapons-grade uranium and develop a bomb.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, but it has enriched significant quantities of uranium beyond the levels required for any civilian use.

The U.S. and others assessed prior to the U.S. strikes that Iran’s theocratic leadership had not yet ordered the country to pursue an operational nuclear weapon, but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so.

Vice President JD Vance said in a Monday interview on Fox News Channel that even if Iran is still in control of its stockpile of 408.6 kilograms (900.8 pounds) of enriched uranium, which is just short of weapons-grade, the U.S. has cut off Iran’s ability to convert it to a nuclear weapon.

“If they have 60% enriched uranium, but they don’t have the ability to enrich it to 90%, and, further, they don’t have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon, that is mission success. That is the obliteration of their nuclear program, which is why the president, I think, rightly is using that term,” Vance said.

Approximately 42 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium is theoretically enough to produce one atomic bomb if enriched further to 90%, according to the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

What experts say

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi informed U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on June 13 — the day Israel launched its military campaign against Iran — that Tehran would “adopt special measures to protect our nuclear equipment and materials.”

American satellite imagery and analysis firm Maxar Technologies said its satellites photographed trucks and bulldozers at the Fordo site beginning on June 19, three days before the Americans struck.

Subsequent imagery “revealed that the tunnel entrances into the underground complex had been sealed off with dirt prior to the U.S. airstrikes,” said Stephen Wood, senior director at Maxar. “We believe that some of the trucks seen on 19 June were carrying dirt to be used as part of that operation.”

Some experts say those trucks could also have been used to move out Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.

“It is plausible that Iran moved the material enriched to 60% out of Fordo and loaded it on a truck,” said Eric Brewer, a former U.S. intelligence analyst and now deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Iran could also have moved other equipment, including centrifuges, he said, noting that while enriched uranium, which is stored in fortified canisters, is relatively easy to transport, delicate centrifuges are more challenging to move without inflicting damage.

Apart from its enriched uranium stockpile, over the past four years Iran has produced the centrifuges key to enrichment without oversight from the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Iran also announced on June 12 that it has built and will activate a third nuclear enrichment facility. IAEA chief Grossi said the facility was located in Isfahan, a place where Iran has several other nuclear sites.

After being bombarded by both the Israelis and the Americans, it is unclear if, or how quickly, Isfahan’s facilities, including tunnels, could become operational.

But given all of the equipment and material likely still under Iran’s control, this offers Tehran “a pretty solid foundation for a reconstituted covert program and for getting a bomb,” Brewer said.

Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan policy center, said that “if Iran had already diverted its centrifuges,” it can “build a covert enrichment facility with a small footprint and inject the 60% gas into those centrifuges and quickly enrich to weapons grade levels.”

But Brewer also underlined that if Iran launched a covert nuclear program, it would do so at a disadvantage, having lost to Israeli and American strikes vital equipment and personnel that are crucial for turning the enriched uranium into a functional nuclear weapon.

Liechtenstein reported from Vienna and McNeil reported from Brussels. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, David Klepper, Ellen Knickmeyer and Aamer Madhani in Washington and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The U.S. Navy’s newest America-class amphibious assault ship arrived at its new homeport in Sasebo, Japan, on Monday as part of a regularly scheduled rotation of forces aimed at bolstering security in the Indo-Pacific region, the Navy announced.

The Tripoli forward deployed from Naval Base San Diego, California, on May 19, and will operate as part of U.S. 7th Fleet. It will replace the first-in-class amphibious assault ship America, which originally docked in Sasebo on Dec. 6, 2019, as the latter makes its way back to Naval Base San Diego.

“The Tripoli is ready to defend U.S. interests abroad and strengthen our long-standing partnership with Japan,” said Capt. Eddie Park, commanding officer of the Tripoli. “I am extremely proud to lead this hard-working and motivated team of Sailors and Marines overseas to support security, stability and prosperity in this vital region.”

Navy amphibious assault ships — unlike aircraft carriers, which operate as mobile airbases and deploy fighter jets and bombers over long distances — are designed to fortify expeditionary operations ashore, assisting in the deployment of ground forces and their equipment.

Marine Corps eyes future stability of Indo-Pacific with Balikatan 2025

The U.S. has continued to express a vested interest in providing security to the Indo-Pacific region, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth casting the area as the “priority theater” for U.S. military operations.

China’s military continues to ramp up its naval presence in the South and East China Seas, deploying a large number of naval and coast guard vessels to the region in May, according to multiple reports.

The Tripoli, commissioned July 15, 2020, was named after the U.S. Marine Corps’ victory against Tripoli at the Battle of Derna during the First Barbary War in 1805. It is the Navy’s second America-class amphibious assault ship.

Tripoli’s maiden voyage began in May 2022, when it deployed to the Western Pacific and operated a record number of F-35B Lightning II joint strike fighter jets in order to exercise the Marine Corps’ “lightning carrier” concept for the first time ever on an amphibious assault ship. The “lightning carrier” test — which featured 20 F-35B Lightning II jets — gauged the smaller ship’s ability to accomplish missions reminiscent of its larger aircraft carrier counterparts.

NORFOLK, Va. — The United States’ most advanced aircraft carrier left its base in Virginia on Tuesday for a regularly scheduled deployment that could position it near Israel after the U.S. inserted itself in Israel’s war to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

The U.S. was already planning to deploy the carrier Gerald R. Ford when American warplanes bombed three Iranian sites early Sunday to support Israel’s goals. Iran retaliated with a limited missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said a ceasefire between Iran and Israel was still “in effect” on Tuesday, although he expressed deep frustration that both sides had violated the truce he brokered on Monday.

The fluid and potentially dangerous situation was on the minds of many families who cheered on the Ford as it slowly steamed away from its pier in Norfolk, with tugboats hugging the carrier’s hull and sailors lining the sprawling deck in their white dress uniforms.

“I’m nervous,” said Lindsey Young, whose 32-year-old husband, Michael Young, is an aviation maintenance officer. “Especially with everything going on in the world. And three kids, by myself, too.”

Young held the couple’s 10-month old baby, while her 8-year-old and 10-year-old stood nearby clasping small American flags. When her husband was away on his last deployment, Young said she had a severe allergic reaction, her car tire popped and the dog got hit by a car.

“He was safe — everything at home went wrong,” Young said with a laugh before adding that this deployment feels different “with Iran and everything going on right now.”

The Ford will sail for the European theater of command, which includes waters off Israel’s Mediterranean coast. The presence of the aircraft carrier and its accompanying warships gives Trump the option of a third carrier group in the Middle East if needed.

Rear Adm. Paul Lanzilotta, who commands the carrier strike group, told reporters they’re initially going to the European theater of operations but said, “we’re mobile and maneuverable.”

“Within one day, we can move this whole strike group 700-plus miles,” he said.

The Ford was previously sent to the Eastern Mediterranean to be within striking distance of Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in 2023. The carrier stayed in the Eastern Mediterranean while its accompanying warships sailed into the Red Sea, where they repeatedly intercepted ballistic missiles fired at Israel and attack drones fired at the ships from Houthi-controlled Yemen.

From November 2023 until January 2025, the Iranian-backed Houthis waged persistent missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in the region in what the group’s leadership described as an effort to end Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

U.S. Navy sailors saw incoming Houthi-launched missiles seconds before they were destroyed by their ship’s defensive systems. Pentagon officials talked last year about how to care for the sailors when they returned home, including counseling and treatment for possible post-traumatic stress.

The Houthi rebels had paused attacks on U.S. vessels in the Red Sea in May under a deal with the U.S., but recently said they would resume such attacks if the Trump administration joined Israel’s military campaign against Iran.

Lanzilotta said they’re “100% prepared” for any such attacks, while the Navy has been constantly updating its training with new information.

“I’m not going to get into the details of our tactics, techniques and the procedures,” he said. “But we absolutely did evolve our training for all of the threats that you might see.”

The Ford is the first in the Navy’s new class of advanced aircraft carriers, which are designed to carry a wider variety of planes and operate with several hundred fewer sailors. Nearly 4,500 sailors departed Tuesday in a strike group that includes guided-missile destroyers and several squadrons of fighter jets.

“I am not worried about our sailors — they’re extremely resilient,” the admiral said, adding that recent world events have bolstered personnel with a sense of even more purpose while reinforcing “why what we do is so important.”

Young, the Navy spouse and mother of three, said she knows her husband “is making a difference too. I know he’s his kids’ hero too.”

President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted both Israel and Iran for what he said were violations of ceasefire terms that had been agreed upon hours earlier.

Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump claimed “[Iran] violated [the ceasefire] but Israel violated it, too. ... I’m not happy with Israel.”

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f--- they’re doing,” the president added.

The Iran-Israel ceasefire, scheduled to go into effect Tuesday morning, followed 12 days of hostilities between the two long-time enemies that ignited concerns of a larger, regional war.

Israel accused Iran on Tuesday of violating terms of the ceasefire with a missile launch into Israeli airspace, an attack Iran’s state media denied. Iran then accused Israel of three waves of attacks.

Officials from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the Israeli strikes, which reportedly targeted an Iranian radar, were scaled back after an appeal from the White House.

“Following President Trump’s conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel refrained from additional attacks,” Netanyahu’s office said.

Trump said Tuesday that despite the exchange of salvos, the ceasefire is in effect.

“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran.”

President Trump first announced terms for the ceasefire Monday following Tehran’s limited retaliatory missile strike on the U.S. Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

Iran reportedly warned the U.S. about the strike, which came in response to the U.S. bombing of the regime’s nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan — as part of Operation Midnight Hammer. The Iranian strikes resulted in no casualties, according to reports.

President Trump took to Truth Social to call Iran’s attack on Al-Udeid a “very weak response” and said “they’ve gotten it all out of their system.”

Al-Udeid is home to the Air Force’s Combined Air Operations Center and the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing.

Trump’s comments Tuesday morning came as he prepared to board Marine One and depart for the June 24-25 NATO Summit at The Hague.

BEERSHEBA, Israel (AP) — Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Iran had “completely violated” the ceasefire between Israel and Iran by launching missiles after the ceasefire came into effect. Katz said he instructed the Israeli military to resume targeting Iranian paramilitary and government targets.

Israel said it had identified missiles launched from Iran into its airspace less than three hours after the ceasefire went into effect, after both Israel and Iran accepted President Donald Trump’s plan to end the 12-day war roiling the Middle East.

Explosions boomed and sirens sounded across northern Israel midmorning on Tuesday, after both Israel and Iran on Tuesday had initially accepted a ceasefire plan.

According to Israel’s emergency services, there were no injuries in the missiles launched towards Israel after the ceasefire started.

Overnight, just before the ceasefire started, Israel launched more than 100 munitions targeting dozens of sites in Tehran, including missile launchers.

The ceasefire agreement came after Tehran launched a retaliatory limited missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar on Monday and after it launched an onslaught of missiles targeting Israel that killed at least four people early Tuesday morning. Israel launched a blitz of airstrikes targeting sites across Iran before dawn.

Though Israel said it had intercepted the midmorning barrage of missiles, it showed how dangerous the situation remained.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Marine Corps veteran Adrian Clouatre doesn’t know how to tell his children where their mother went after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained her last month.

When his nearly 2-year-old son Noah asks for his mother before bed, Clouatre just tells him, “Mama will be back soon.” When his 3-month-old, breastfeeding daughter Lyn is hungry, he gives her a bottle of baby formula instead. He’s worried how his newborn will bond with her mother absent skin-to-skin contact.

His wife, Paola, is one of tens of thousands of people in custody and facing deportation as the Trump administration pushes for immigration officers to arrest 3,000 people a day.

Even as Marine Corps recruiters promote enlistment as protection for families lacking legal status, directives for strict immigrant enforcement have cast away practices of deference previously afforded to military families, immigration law experts say. The federal agency tasked with helping military family members gain legal status now refers them for deportation, government memos show.

ICE agents to assist base security at three Marine Corps installations

To visit his wife, Adrian Clouatre has to make an eight-hour round trip from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a rural ICE detention center in Monroe. Clouatre, who qualifies as a service-disabled veteran, goes every chance he can get.

Paola Clouatre, a 25-year-old Mexican national whose mother brought her into the country seeking asylum more than a decade ago, met Adrian Clouatre, 26, at a southern California nightclub during the final months of his five years of military service in 2022. Within a year, they had tattooed each other’s names on their arms.

After they married in 2024, Paola Clouatre sought a green card to legally live and work in the U.S. Adrian Clouatre said he is “not a very political person” but believes his wife deserved to live legally in the U.S.

“I’m all for ‘get the criminals out of the country,’ right?” he said. ”But the people that are here working hard, especially the ones married to Americans — I mean, that’s always been a way to secure a green card.”

Detained at a green card meeting

The process to apply for Paola Clouatre’s green card went smoothly at first, but eventually she learned ICE had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing.

Clouatre and her mother had been estranged for years — Clouatre cycled out of homeless shelters as a teenager — and up until a couple of months ago, Clouatre had “no idea” about her mother’s missed hearing or the deportation order, her husband said.

Adrian Clouatre recalled that a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffer asked about the deportation order during a May 27 appointment as part of her green card application. After Paola Clouatre explained that she was trying to reopen her case, the staffer asked her and her husband to wait in the lobby for paperwork regarding a follow-up appointment, which her husband said he believed was a “ploy.”

Soon, officers arrived and handcuffed Paola Clouatre, who handed her wedding ring to her husband for safekeeping.

Adrian Clouatre, eyes welling with tears, said he and his wife had tried to “do the right thing” and that he felt ICE officers should have more discretion over arrests, though he understood they were trying to do their jobs.

“It’s just a hell of a way to treat a veteran,” said Carey Holliday, a former immigration judge who is now representing the couple. “You take their wives and send them back to Mexico?”

The Clouatres filed a motion for a California-based immigration judge to reopen the case on Paola’s deportation order and are waiting to hear back, Holliday said.

Less discretion for military families

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement that Paola Clouatre “is in the country illegally” and that the administration is “not going to ignore the rule of law.”

“Ignoring an Immigration Judge’s order to leave the U.S. is a bad idea,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a June 9 post on X which appeared to refer to Clouatre’s case. The agency added that the government “has a long memory and no tolerance for defiance when it comes to making America safe again.”

Adrian Clouatre said the agency’s X post does not accurately reflect his wife’s situation because she entered the country as a minor with her mother, seeking asylum.

“She was not aware of the removal order, so she was not knowingly defying it,” he said. “If she had been arrested, she would have been deported long ago, and we would never have met.”

Prior to the Trump administration’s push to drive up deportations, USCIS provided much more discretion for veterans seeking legal status for a family member, said Holliday and Margaret Stock, a military immigration law expert.

In a Feb. 28 memo, the agency said it “will no longer exempt” from deportation people in groups that had received more grace in the past. This includes the families of military personnel or veterans, Stock said. As of June 12, the agency said it has referred upward of 26,000 cases to ICE for deportation.

USCIS still offers a program allowing family members of military personnel who illegally entered the U.S. to remain in the country as they apply for a green card. But there no longer appears to be room for leeway, such as giving a veteran’s spouse like Paola Clouatre the opportunity to halt her active deportation order without facing arrest, Stock said.

But numerous Marine Corps recruiters have continued to post ads on social media, geared toward Latinos, promoting enlistment as a way to gain “protection from deportation” for family members.

“I think it’s bad for them to be advertising that people are going to get immigration benefits when it appears that the administration is no longer offering these immigration benefits,” Stock said. “It sends the wrong message to the recruits.”

Marine Corps spokesperson Master Sgt. Tyler Hlavac told The Associated Press that recruiters have now been informed they are “not the proper authority” to “imply that the Marine Corps can secure immigration relief for applicants or their families.”

Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Editor’s note: This is a developing story. It has been updated with additional reporting by The Associated Press.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran launched a limited missile attack Monday on a U.S. military base in Qatar, retaliating for the American bombing of its nuclear sites but indicating it was prepared to step back from escalating tensions in the volatile region.

The U.S. was warned by Iran in advance, and there were no casualties, said President Donald Trump, who dismissed the attack as a “very weak response.”

“Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their ‘system,’ and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Qatar condemned the attack on Al Udeid Air Base as “a flagrant violation” of its sovereignty, airspace and international law. Qatar said it intercepted all but one missile, though it was not clear if that missile caused any damage.

Iran said the volley matched the number of bombs dropped by the United States on Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend. Iran also said it targeted the base because it was outside of populated areas.

Those comments, made immediately after the attack, suggested Iran wanted to de-escalate with the United States, something Trump himself said after the strikes early Sunday on Iran.

US troops, bases in Middle East could be targets in conflict with Iran

Qatar Maj. Gen. Shayeq Al Hajri said 19 missiles were fired at the base that is home to the Combined Air Operations Center, which provides command and control of air power across the region, as well as the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, the largest such wing in the world. Trump said 14 missiles were fired, 13 were knocked down and one was “set free” because it posed no threat.

Trump said Iran might be able to “proceed to Peace and Harmony” and said he would encourage Israel to do the same.

However, Israel’s war on Iran continued, with the Israeli military expanding its campaign Monday to target sites symbolic for the country’s theocracy.

Iran announced the attack on state television as martial music played. A caption on screen called it “a mighty and successful response” to ”America’s aggression.”

Just before the explosions, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on the social platform X: “We neither initiated the war nor seeking it. But we will not leave invasion to the great Iran without answer.”

Earlier reports that a missile was launched at a base housing American forces in Iraq were a false alarm, a senior U.S. military official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said debris from a malfunctioning Iranian missile targeting Israel had triggered an alert of an impending attack on the Ain al-Assad base.

Israel expands war to include symbolic targets

On the 11th day of the conflict, Israel and Iran traded airstrikes that have become a reality for civilians in both countries since Israel started the war to target Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

Iran struck Israel with a barrage of missiles and drones while Israel said it attacked “regime targets and government repression bodies in the heart of Tehran.”

But Israeli officials insisted they did not seek the overthrow of Iran’s government, their archenemy since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The latest strikes unfolded only hours after Trump himself mentioned the possibility of regime change a day after inserting America into the war with its stealth-bomber strike on three Iranian nuclear sites.

“If the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???” he asked on his Truth Social website.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later described Trump as “simply raising a question.”

The U.S. strikes over the weekend prompted fears of a wider regional conflict. Iran said the U.S. had crossed “a very big red line” with its risky gambit to strike with missiles and 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs.

Israel aims to wind down the war in the coming days, but that will depend on the Iranians, an Israeli official said on condition of anonymity to discuss high-level internal deliberations.

Israel’s preferred outcome is for Iran to agree to a ceasefire and reenter negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program, the official said. But Israel is prepared for the possibility of an extended low-intensity war of attrition or period of “quiet for quiet,” in which it would closely monitor Iran’s activities and strike if it identifies new threats.

Tehran strikes open new chapter of war

The Israeli military warned Iranians it would continue to attack military sites around Tehran as its focus shifted to include symbolic targets. The military issued the warning on the social platform X, though Iranians are struggling to access the outside world due to an internet shutdown.

In Tehran, Israel hit the headquarters of the military force that suppressed recent protests and blew open a gate at Evin prison, which is notorious for holding political activists. Iranian state television shared black-and-white surveillance footage of the strike at the facility known for holding dual nationals and Westerners often used by Iran as bargaining chips in negotiations with the West.

Evin also has specialized units for political prisoners run by the paramilitary, all-volunteer Revolutionary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The facility is the target of both U.S. and European Union sanctions.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in Iran or significant damage.

Iranian state television aired footage it said was shot inside Evin, with prisoners under control. However, the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran said many families of detainees “have expressed deep concern about the safety and condition of their loved ones” in the prison.

According to an Israeli official familiar with the government’s strategy, Israel is targeting these sites to put pressure on the Iranian administration but is not actively seeking to topple it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal government deliberations.

The Israeli military also confirmed it struck roads around Iran’s Fordo enrichment facility to obstruct access to the site. The underground site was one of those hit in Sunday’s attack by the United States. The Israeli military did not elaborate.

In Vienna, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said he expected there to be heavy damage at the Fordo facility following Sunday’s U.S. airstrike there with sophisticated bunker-buster bombs.

Several Iranian officials, including Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi, have claimed Iran removed nuclear material from targeted sites ahead of time.

Iran presses on attacking Israel

Iran described its Monday attack on Israel as a new wave of its “Operation True Promise 3,” saying it was targeting the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv, according to Iranian state television.

Explosions were also heard in Jerusalem, possibly from air defense systems in action, and Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency rescue service said there had been no reports of injuries.

In Israel, at least 24 people have been killed and more than 1,000 wounded in the war. Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 950 people and wounded 3,450 others, according to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists.

The group, which has provided detailed casualty figures from Iranian unrest such as the protests surrounding the death of Masha Amini in 2022, said of those killed, it identified 380 civilians and 253 security force personnel.

Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Abby Sewell in Beirut, Elise Morton in London, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Ella Joyner in Brussels and Stephanie Liechtenstein in Vienna contributed to this report.

Fred Smith, FedEx Corp. founder and Marine Corps veteran who revolutionized the express delivery industry, has died, the company said. He was 80.

A 1966 graduate of Yale University, Smith joined the Marines after college and was commissioned a second lieutenant.

He left the military as a captain in 1969 after two tours in Vietnam, where he was twice wounded and earned the Silver Star for combat valor.

When he left the military, Smith didn’t leave behind that idea of service and teamwork.

While growing FedEx from a small aircraft maintenance company to one of the world’s largest transportation firms, he was also involved in numerous philanthropic efforts, many with military ties.

Smith served as co-chairman of both the U.S. World War II Memorial project and the campaign for the National Museum of the Marine Corps, helping raise money and public support for both locations. Smith had six family members serve in World War II, making that project one “where I just felt like I couldn’t say no.”

In 2022 Smith donated $65 million to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation to endow a new scholarship fund for the children of Navy service members pursuing studies in STEM.

“I just love the mission of that,” he told Military Times. “Providing education for the children of Marines and Navy personnel who served with Marines, that just put an exclamation point on my appreciation for what the Marine Corps taught me.

“I never went to graduate school at all, but I joke that I got an extra degree from U-S-m-C, and I just kinda garble up the M to confuse folks. But as I’ve gotten older and look back, I realize how defining my time in the Marine Corps was to my whole life, and it makes me want to give back.”

FedEx, which is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, started operating in 1973 before blossoming into a company that became something of an economic bellwether with so many other companies relying on it.

Smith told The Associated Press in a 2023 interview that everything he did running FedEx came from his experience in the Marines, not what he learned at Yale.

Though one of Memphis’ best-known and most prominent figures, Smith generally avoided the public spotlight, devoting his energies to work and family.

Former President George W. Bush released a statement in which he praised Smith as “one of the finest Americans of our generation” and FedEx as an ”innovative company that helped supercharge our economy."

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee called Smith Memphis’ “most important citizen.”

“FedEx is the engine of our economy,” he said, “and Fred Smith was its visionary founder. But more than that, he was a dedicated citizen who cared deeply about our city.”

Asked what it means to contribute to the public good, Smith once told the Associated Press, “America is the most generous country in the world. ... I think if you’ve done well in this country, it’s pretty churlish for you not to at least be willing to give a pretty good portion of that back to the public interest.”

For his military service, career and philanthropic work, Smith was named the 2024 Military Times’ Veteran of the Year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Lance Cpl. Abigail Rodriguezpabon was driving northbound in May on Richmond Highway in Northern Virginia for an appointment at Fort Belvoir when traffic congestion brought cars to a slow crawl.

Looking ahead, Rodriguezpabon spotted several cars that had gone off the road and into ditches or onto the shoulder of the median. Debris was strewn across the pavement.

“I got out [of my car] and I just took off running toward the cars,” she said in a Marine Corps release.

As she ran, the Marine checked on each person inside or near a vehicle that looked like it had been part of the accident, ensuring they were OK and determining whether to call 911.

“I get to the fourth car … and they got the worst of it,” Rodriguezpabon recalled in the release.

What she did next earned her the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal in a ceremony on June 20 at Marine Corps Base Quantico, where she is stationed as a pay clerk with the Installation Personnel Administration Center.

The driver had split his forehead, and the wound stretched to the top of his scalp. A soldier was applying pressure to stop the bleeding.

Rodriguezpabon moved to the passenger side to help and saw an empty child seat in the car. She asked where the child was, fearing the worst.

“I was preparing mentally to see a kid somewhere in a ditch,” she said. “Luckily, they said they didn’t bring their child with them.”

The passenger wasn’t as responsive as the driver, seemingly unconscious and suffering from both leg trauma and a large welt on his head.

Rodriguezpabon took off her belt and used it to apply a makeshift tourniquet on the passenger’s leg, and then she conducted a sternum rub to help him regain consciousness.

The passenger regained consciousness. She reassured him that help was on the way.

She stayed with the injured motorists until all the casualties were loaded onto emergency vehicles for transport to a nearby hospital.

Rodriguezpabon said she acted on instinct and that her early training in the Marines allowed her to act quickly.

“You don’t have to be whatever military occupational specialty to save a life or even make a difference — anyone can make a difference,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on taking Route 1; I wasn’t planning on saving another person’s life … I am really glad I got that training, because I just applied it.”

It was an unprecedented attack years in the making, with some last-minute misdirection meant to give the operation a powerful element of surprise.

U.S. pilots dropped 30,000-pound bombs early Sunday on two key underground uranium enrichment plants in Iran, delivering what American military leaders believe is a knockout blow to a nuclear program that Israel views as an existential threat and has been pummeling for more than a week.

American sailors bolstered the surprise mission by firing dozens of cruise missiles from a submarine toward at least one other site.

Dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, U.S. officials say the plan was characterized by a “precision strike” that “devastated the Iranian nuclear program,” even as they acknowledged an assessment was ongoing.

For its part, Iran denied that any significant damage had been done, and the Islamic Republic pledged to retaliate.

Taking off from the U.S. heartland, B-2 stealth bombers delivered a total of 420,000 pounds of explosives, aided by an armada of refueling tankers and fighter jets — some of which launched their own weapons.

U.S. officials said Iran neither detected the inbound fusillade, nor mustered a shot at the stealthy American jets.

The operation relied on a series of deceptive tactics and decoys to maintain secrecy, U.S. officials said hours after the attack, which was preceded by nine days of Israeli attacks that debilitated Iran’s military leadership and air defenses.

A DECOY PLAN

Even before the planes took off, elements of misdirection were already in play. After setting parts of the plan in motion, Trump publicly announced Thursday that he’d make a decision within two weeks on whether to strike Iran — ostensibly to allow additional time for negotiations, but in actuality masking the impending attack.

One group of B-2 stealth bombers traveled west from Missouri on Saturday as decoys, drawing the attention of amateur plane spotters, government officials and some media as they headed toward a U.S. air base in the Pacific.

At the same time, seven other B-2s carrying two “bunker buster” bombs apiece flew eastward, keeping communications to a minimum so as not to draw any attention.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at Sunday’s briefing that it was all “part of a plan to maintain tactical surprise” and that only “an extremely small number of planners and key leaders” knew about it in Washington and Florida, where U.S. Central Command is based.

After 18 hours of furtive flying that required aerial refueling, the armed B-2 Spirit bombers, each with two crew members, arrived on time and without detection in the Eastern Mediterranean, from where they launched their attack runs. Before crossing into Iran, the B-2s were escorted by stealthy U.S. fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft.

A graphic released by the Pentagon showed the flight route as passing over Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. It was unclear whether those countries were notified of the U.S. overflight in advance.

Most U.S. lawmakers were also kept in the dark, with some Republicans saying they were provided a brief heads-up by the White House before the strike.

“Our B-2s went in and out and back without the world knowing at all,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters Sunday.

MULTIFACETED ATTACK

About an hour before the B-2s entered Iran, Caine said that a U.S. submarine in the region launched more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles against key targets, including a site in Isfahan where uranium is prepared for enrichment.

As the U.S. bombers approached their targets, they watched out for Iranian fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles, but encountered none.

At 6:40 p.m. in Washington and 2:10 a.m. in Tehran, the first B-2 bomber dropped its pair of GBU-57 massive ordnance penetrators on the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant.

It was the first time these so-called “bunker busters” had ever been used in combat. Each 30,000-pound bomb is designed to burrow into the ground before detonating a massive warhead.

The Fordo site received the bulk of the bombardment, though a couple of the enormous bombs were also dropped on a uranium enrichment site at Natanz.

The U.S. bombs fell for about half an hour, with cruise missiles fired from submarines being the last American weapons to hit their targets, which included a third nuclear site at Isfahan, Caine said.

Both Iran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog said there were no immediate signs of radioactive contamination around the sites.

BY THE NUMBERS

The mission included:

• 75 precision-guided weapons: these included 14 GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs deployed by the seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and more than two-dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a U.S. submarine.
• 125 aircraft, including the B-2 bombers, fighter jets and refueling planes.
• Hegseth said Sunday that “our boys in those bombers are on their way home right now,” but a U.S. official said one woman was among those piloting the B-2 bombers. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the mission publicly.

BIT OF HISTORY

Caine said the use of the bunker-buster bombs made the mission historic, as did other elements.

“This was the largest B-2 operational strike in U.S. history, and the second longest B-2 mission ever flown, exceeded only by those in the days following 9/11,” he told reporters Sunday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday insisted that U.S. officials are not seeking regime change in Iran following American military airstrikes against nuclear facilities there.

But he warned that any response for those actions “will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed” this weekend.

“All of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect,” Hegseth told reporters during an early morning press conference hours after the military assault.

“We believe we achieved destruction of capabilities there. … It would be a very bad idea for Iran or its proxies to attempt to attack American forces [in response].”

The airstrikes — dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer — began early morning Saturday, with American B-2 stealth bombers launched from the U.S. homeland for a highly classified mission.

Once in air, part of the group flew west toward a destination reported to be Guam, while seven others diverted east.

US strikes on Iran draw support from GOP leaders, concerns from Dems

Shortly after the aircraft joined escort fighters over the airspace of Iran — their actual destination — American submarines launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Iranian sites. Within hours, the bombers had dropped 14 massive ordnance penetrators, 30,000-pound bunker busting bombs that had never before been used in combat, and the missiles had reached their targets.

In total, the operation targeted at three of Iran’s main nuclear sites involved 125 American aircraft, 75 precision weapons and a bevy of other military assets still in motion.

With it, the United States has taken the enormous bet that setting back Iran’s nuclear program is worth the risk of another widespread conflict in the Middle East, especially if the retaliation from Iran’s military causes major damage.

Central Command has been preparing for a potential attack from Iran after the unprecedented direct strike, which could more deeply involve the U.S. in a war that began little more than a week ago.

“Our forces remain on high alert and are fully postured to respond to any Iranian retaliation or proxy attacks, which would be an incredibly poor choice,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, who spoke alongside Hegseth.

The Pentagon’s battle damage assessments are still early, but initial returns are that “all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” Caine said of the nuclear infrastructure targeted.

Leading up to Saturday, Trump had vacillated on whether to join the war in Iran. Israel’s own airstrikes had successfully targeted Iranian leadership, but they didn’t carry the needed firepower for more lasting damage.

The United States military had the only weapons thought capable of destroying Iran’s best defended nuclear sites, in particular the Fordo complex dug into a mountain and reinforced with heavy concrete.

But by late last week, after days of deliberation, the White House had said the president may take up to two weeks to decide whether to directly join the airstrikes.

Those questions ended with Saturday’s operation.

“There’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight, not even close,” Trump said in late-night remarks Saturday from the White House.

By involving its own military in that fight, though, the U.S. opens itself up to a new level of risk.

America has 40,000 forces in the region, up from its usual number of 30,000 while responding to the ongoing crisis, according to the Pentagon. Many of its major bases, including Central Command’s regional headquarters, are located on the Persian Gulf, within range of Iran’s massive store of ballistic and cruise missiles.

Caine on Sunday declined to give specifics on what force protection measures were being put in place to enhance security for U.S. personnel in the region or across the globe.

“We’re being proactive and not reactive, and being very thoughtful about ensuring that we do all that we can to protect our forces out there,” he said.

More than any other foreign policy issue thus far, the question of whether to directly attack Iran has split Trump’s coalition.

More traditional defense hawks in Congress — such as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Roger Wicker, R-Miss., — supported the strikes and have called for a robust defense of Israel.

But many members of the Republican Party’s newer MAGA wing were vocally critical, warning that U.S. involvement risked another protracted war in the Middle East without clear goals.

On Sunday, Hegseth said the operation’s intent was to set back Iran’s nuclear program and purposefully avoided certain targets.

“The scope of this was intentionally limited,” Hegseth said, while denying that the mission was “open ended.”

Trump’s own director of national intelligence testified earlier this year that Iran’s nuclear program isn’t yet being weaponized, though Trump later dismissed the assessment.

“I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen,” Trump said of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.

The strikes Saturday follow a rapid military buildup in the Middle East, with America rushing warships, fighter jets and other support equipment to the region ahead of the attack. The surge continues a pattern that’s repeated itself in the year and a half since Israel’s war began in Gaza, following a raid by the terrorist group Hamas.

The Pentagon rushed military equipment into the theater to contain a wider regional war, twice defending Israel from what were then unprecedented airstrikes from Iran in April and October last year.

With the attack Saturday, the U.S. has now decided to take part in such a war, accepting the risk of entanglement when Iran likely strikes back.

Still, Hegseth argued that the nature of the operation, with U.S. bombers flying from the homeland and hitting Iranian sites undetected, would itself send a signal of how the U.S. would respond to further attacks.

“We believe that will have a clear psychological impact on how they view the future,” he said of Tehran’s government.

In inserting itself into Israel’s war against Iran, the U.S. unleashed its massive “bunker-buster” bombs on Iran’s Fordo fuel enrichment plant.

Those bombs were widely seen as the best chance of damaging or destroying Fordo, built deep into a mountain and untouched during Israel’s weeklong offensive.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the operation before an official briefing, confirmed their use in Sunday’s attack.

The U.S. is the only military capable of dropping the weapons, and the movement of B-2 stealth bombers toward Asia on Saturday had signaled possible activity by the U.S. Israeli leaders had made no secret of their hopes that President Donald Trump would join their week-old war against Iran, though they had also suggested they had backup plans for destroying the site.

It remained unclear early Sunday how much damage had been inflicted upon Fordo. The mission could have wide-ranging ramifications, including jeopardizing any chance of Iran engaging in Trump’s desired talks on its nuclear program and dragging the U.S. into another Mideast war.

Here’s a closer look.

What is the bunker-buster bomb?

“Bunker buster” is a broad term used to describe bombs that are designed to penetrate deep below the surface before exploding.

In this case, it refers to the latest GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb in the American arsenal. The roughly 30,000 pound precision-guided bomb is designed to attack deeply buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels, according to the U.S. Air Force.

It’s believed to be able to penetrate about 200 feet (61 meters) below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast. It was not immediately known how many were used in the Sunday morning strike.

The bomb carries a conventional warhead, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo, raising the possibility that nuclear material could be released into the area if the GBU-57 A/B were used to hit the facility.

However, Israeli strikes at another Iranian nuclear site, Natanz, on a centrifuge site have caused contamination only at the site itself, not the surrounding area, the IAEA has said. U.S. warplanes also hit Natanz.

How tough a target is Fordo?

Fordo is Iran’s second nuclear enrichment facility after Natanz, its main facility, which already has been targeted by Israeli airstrikes. The IAEA says it believes those strikes have had “direct impacts” on the facility’s underground centrifuge halls.

Fordo is smaller than Natanz, and is built into the side of a mountain near the city of Qom, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) southwest of Tehran. Construction is believed to have started around 2006 and it became operational in 2009 — the same year Tehran publicly acknowledged its existence.

In addition to being an estimated 80 meters (260 feet) under rock and soil, the site is reportedly protected by Iranian and Russian surface-to-air missile systems. Those air defenses, however, likely have already been struck in the Israeli campaign, which claims to have knocked out most of Iran’s air defenses.

Still, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the goal of attacking Iran was to eliminate its missile and nuclear program, which he described as an existential threat to Israel, and officials have said Fordo was part of that plan.

“This entire operation ... really has to be completed with the elimination of Fordo,” Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., told Fox News.

About the B-2

In theory, the GBU-57 A/B could be dropped by any bomber capable of carrying the weight, but at the moment the U.S. has only configured and programed its B-2 Spirit stealth bomber to deliver the bomb, according to the Air Force.

The B-2 is only flown by the Air Force, and is produced by Northrop Grumman.

According to the manufacturer, the B-2 can carry a payload of 40,000 pounds (18,000 kilograms) but the U.S. Air Force has said it has successfully tested the B-2 loaded with two GBU-57 A/B bunker busters — a total weight of some 60,000 pounds (27,200 kilograms).

The strategic long-range heavy bomber has a range of about 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers) without refueling and 11,500 miles (18,500 kilometers) with one refueling, and can reach any point in the world within hours, according to Northrop Grumman.

Trump was noncommittal

Whether the U.S. would get involved had been unclear in recent days.

At the G7 meeting in Canada, Trump was asked what it would take for Washington to become involved militarily and he said: “I don’t want to talk about that.”

Then on Thursday, Trump said he would decide within “two weeks” whether to get involved to give another chance to the possibility of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. In the end, it took just two days to decide.

TEL AVIV, Israel — President Donald Trump said Saturday that the U.S. military struck three sites in Iran, directly joining Israel’s effort to decapitate the country’s nuclear program in a risky gambit to weaken a longtime foe amid Tehran’s threat of reprisals that could spark a wider regional conflict.

There was no immediate acknowledgment from the Iranian government of any strikes being carried out. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported early Sunday that attacks targeted the country’s Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites. The agency did not elaborate.

The decision to directly involve the U.S. in the war comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran that aimed to systematically eradicate the country’s air defenses and offensive missile capabilities, while damaging its nuclear enrichment facilities. But U.S. and Israeli officials have said that American stealth bombers and the 30,000-pound (13,500-kilogram) bunker buster bomb they alone can carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear program buried deep underground.

“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” Trump said in a post on social media. ”All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home.”

Trump added in a later post that he would address the nation at 10 p.m. Eastern time, writing “This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!”

Trump said B-2 stealth bombers were used but did not specify what types of bombs were dropped. The White House and Pentagon did not immediately elaborate on the operation.

The strikes are a perilous decision, as Iran has pledged to retaliate if the U.S. joined the Israeli assault, and for Trump personally. He won the White House on the promise of keeping America out of costly foreign conflicts and scoffed at the value of American interventionism.

Trump told reporters Friday that he was not interested in sending ground forces into Iran, saying it’s “the last thing you want to do.” He had previously indicated that he would make a final choice over the course of two weeks.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the United States on Wednesday that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic will “result in irreparable damage for them.” And Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei declared “any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region.”

Trump has vowed that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, and he had initially hoped that the threat of force would bring the country’s leaders to give up its nuclear program peacefully.

The Israeli military said Saturday it was preparing for the possibility of a lengthy war, while Iran’s foreign minister warned before the U.S. attack that American military involvement “would be very, very dangerous for everyone.”

The prospect of a wider war loomed. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said they would resume attacks on U.S. vessels in the Red Sea if the Trump administration joined Israel’s military campaign. The Houthis paused such attacks in May under a deal with the U.S.

The U.S. ambassador to Israel announced that the U.S. had begun “assisted departure flights,” the first from Israel since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump planned to make his decision on the strikes within two weeks. Instead, he struck just two days later.

Trump appears to have made the calculation — at the prodding of Israeli officials and many Republican lawmakers — that Israel’s operation had softened the ground and presented a perhaps unparalleled opportunity to set back Iran’s nuclear program, perhaps permanently.

The Israelis say their offensive has already crippled Iran’s air defenses, allowing them to already significantly degrade multiple Iranian nuclear sites.

But to destroy the Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, Israel appealed to Trump for the bunker-busting American bomb known as the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets and then explode. The bomb is currently delivered only by the B-2 stealth bomber, which is only found in the American arsenal.

If deployed in the attack, it would be the first combat use of the weapon.

The bomb carries a conventional warhead and is believed to be able to penetrate about 200 feet (61 meters) below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo, raising the possibility that nuclear material could be released into the area if the GBU-57 A/B were used to hit the facility.

Previous Israeli strikes at another Iranian nuclear site, Natanz, on a centrifuge site have caused contamination only at the site itself, not the surrounding area, the IAEA has said.

Trump’s decision for direct U.S. military intervention comes after his administration made an unsuccessful two-month push — including with high-level, direct negotiations with the Iranians — aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear program.

For months, Trump said he was dedicated to a diplomatic push to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. And he twice — in April and again in late May — persuaded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on military action against Iran and give diplomacy more time.

The U.S. in recent days has been shifting military aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East to protect Israel and U.S. bases from Iranian attacks.

All the while, Trump has gone from publicly expressing hope that the moment could be a “second chance” for Iran to make a deal to delivering explicit threats on Khamenei and making calls for Tehran’s unconditional surrender.

“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump said in a social media posting. “He is an easy target, but is safe there - We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”

The military showdown with Iran comes seven years after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Obama-administration brokered agreement in 2018, calling it the “worst deal ever.”

The 2015 deal, signed by Iran, U.S. and other world powers, created a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Trump decried the Obama-era deal for giving Iran too much in return for too little, because the agreement did not cover Iran’s non-nuclear malign behavior.

Trump has bristled at criticism from some of his MAGA faithful, including conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, who have suggested that further U.S. involvement would be a betrayal to supporters who were drawn to his promise to end U.S. involvement in expensive and endless wars.

Madhani reported from Washington. Rising reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Mehmet Guzel in Istanbul; Josef Federman in Jerusalem; Samy Magdy in Cairo; Matthew Lee and Josh Boak in Washington, D.C.; and Farnoush Amiri and Jon Gambrell in Dubai contributed to this report.

Every unit has one. The soldier who raises his hand when the sergeant says, “Any questions?” The one who forgets to shave, shows up late and gets the whole squad smoked on a Saturday morning. We call this person the blue falcon. And in Bikini Bottom, that individual is Patrick Star.

To civilians, Patrick is just SpongeBob’s best friend — the goofy sidekick with no job, no ambition and a brain full of cotton candy. But to anyone who’s ever worn a uniform, he’s something far more familiar: the smiling saboteur, the well-meaning liability, the person you can’t leave unsupervised for five minutes without catching a misconduct charge by association.

Patrick isn’t evil. He’s worse. He’s friendly, enthusiastic and entirely unaware of the consequences of his actions, which is exactly why he keeps getting his friends in trouble.

Patrick checks every blue falcon box. He’s got poor situational awareness, questionable hygiene and an uncanny ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the worst possible moment. He once ate a chocolate bar and then spent an entire episode trying to frame someone else for the crime, despite having chocolate all over his face. In “I Had an Accident,” he breaks SpongeBob’s fragile psychological recovery by dressing up in a gorilla suit. And in “Big Pink Loser,” his desire to imitate SpongeBob leads to widespread chaos at the Krusty Krab, culminating in a disastrous attempt at food service that would get any E-3 locked out of the DFAC permanently.

He’s the guy who borrows your gear and brings it back broken. The guy who volunteers both of you for a 24-hour CQ shift because he “thought it would be fun.” And worst of all? He’s somehow your best friend.

In the armed forces, there’s a phrase: “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.”

But with Patrick, the line gets blurry. He’s not trying to ruin lives — he just does. His sheer lack of awareness is so profound that it becomes a superpower. You can’t get mad at him because he’s too stupid to understand what he did. But that doesn’t change that he just canceled your liberty.

In “The Secret Box,” he torments SpongeBob for an entire episode over the contents of a mysterious lockbox, only to reveal at the end that it contains nothing but a piece of string. It’s a perfect metaphor for what it’s like working with a blue falcon. You spend hours trying to track down the problem, only to find out there was no plan, no purpose — just pure, chaotic dumbassery.

The thing that makes blue falcons dangerous isn’t just what they do — it’s who they do it to. Patrick rarely ruins his own life. He ruins SpongeBob’s. He’s the walking embodiment of “You get smoked for what your buddy did.” SpongeBob ends up missing work, losing his job or facing some kind of underwater existential crisis, and Patrick just stands there blinking.

In a military context, Patrick would be the guy you share a barracks room with. The one who gets drunk, floods the latrine and passes out on your bunk, then wonders why you’re getting counseled by the first sergeant. He’d be the private who mistakes “police call” for “clean up your own trash,” then tells the command sergeant major that “nobody explained the standard.”

And somehow, despite all this, you still hang out with him. Blue falcons are never true villains. They’re just the idiots who make you look like one.

SpongeBob’s relationship with Patrick is one of the most psychologically accurate portrayals of enlisted friendship ever animated. He knows Patrick is a liability. He knows bringing him anywhere is a risk. And yet he keeps doing it. Why? Because in every squad, there’s that one guy everyone protects.

Patrick has that status. He’s the guy no one wants to throw under the bus — even though the bus is clearly headed straight for you. SpongeBob covers for him, defends him, even praises him. In “Rock-A-Bye Bivalve,” they raise a baby scallop together, and Patrick completely checks out of parenting — but SpongeBob never throws him out. He just sighs and handles it.

That’s how it is in the military. You don’t abandon your blue falcon. You adapt to him. And then you pray to every deity that he doesn’t show up drunk to the safety brief.

Patrick is different from your average burnout because he genuinely believes he’s helping. He’s the guy who thinks starting a fire in the motor pool is “innovation.” The guy who forgets to wear gloves on an ammo detail but explains it’s because he “wanted to feel more connected to the mission.”

That’s why he sticks around. He’s not mean. He’s not malicious. He’s just monumentally unfit for independent action — and too friendly to exile. You don’t promote him. You don’t trust him with keys. But you don’t leave him behind, either.

Deep down, every veteran has a soft spot for their own personal Patrick. Because, for all the chaos he causes, he’s still your guy. Your idiot. Your walking Article 15 with a heart of gold.

You just keep him far away from the sign-in roster and pray he doesn’t discover grenades.

SAN FRANCISCO — California’s challenge of the Trump administration’s military deployment in Los Angeles returned to a federal courtroom in San Francisco on Friday for a brief hearing after an appeals court handed President Donald Trump a key procedural win.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer put off issuing any additional rulings and instead asked for briefings from both sides by noon Monday on whether the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, is being violated in Los Angeles.

Newsom said in his complaint that “violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is imminent, if not already underway” but Breyer last week postponed considering that allegation.

The hearing comes a day after the 9th Circuit appellate panel allowed the president to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed in response to protests over immigration raids.

The history of presidents activating US troops on American soil

The appellate decision halted a temporary restraining order from Breyer, who found Trump acted illegally when he activated the soldiers over opposition from California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Breyer also asked the lawyers on Friday to address whether he or the appellate court retains primary jurisdiction to grant an injunction under the Posse Comitatus Act.

California has sought a preliminary injunction returning control to Newsom of the troops in Los Angeles, where protests have calmed down in recent days.

Trump, a Republican, argued that the troops have been necessary to restore order. Newsom, a Democrat, said their presence on the streets of a U.S. city inflamed tensions, usurped local authority and wasted resources.

The demonstrations have appeared to be winding down, although dozens of protesters showed up Thursday at Dodger Stadium, where a group of federal agents with their faces covered, traveling in SUVs and cargo vans, had gathered at a parking lot. The Los Angeles Dodgers organization asked them to leave, and they did.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass lifted a curfew in downtown Los Angeles that was first imposed in response to vandalism and clashes with police after crowds gathered in opposition to agents taking migrants into detention.

Trump federalized members of the California National Guard under an authority known as Title 10.

Title 10 allows the president to call the National Guard into federal service when the country “is invaded,” when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government,” or when the president is otherwise unable “to execute the laws of the United States.”

Breyer found that Trump had overstepped his legal authority, which he said allows presidents to control state National Guard troops only during times of “rebellion or danger of a rebellion.”

“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’” wrote Breyer, a Watergate prosecutor who was appointed by President Bill Clinton and is the brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

The Trump administration argued that courts can’t second-guess the president’s decisions. The appellate panel ruled otherwise, saying presidents don’t have unfettered power to seize control of a state’s guard, but said that by citing violent acts by protesters in this case, the Trump administration had presented enough evidence to show it had a defensible rationale for federalizing the troops.

For now, the California National Guard will stay in federal hands as the lawsuit proceeds. It’s the first deployment by a president of a state National Guard without the governor’s permission since troops were sent to protect Civil Rights Movement marchers in 1965.

Trump celebrated the appellate ruling in a social media post, calling it a “BIG WIN” and hinting at more potential deployments.

“All over the United States, if our Cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them should State and Local Police be unable, for whatever reason, to get the job done,” Trump wrote.

Newsom, for his part, has also warned that California won’t be the last state to see troops in the streets if Trump gets his way. “The President is not a king and is not above the law. We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump’s authoritarian use of U.S. military soldiers against citizens,” Newsom said.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance was traveling to Los Angeles on Friday to meet with U.S. Marines who also have been deployed to protect federal buildings, his office announced.

The U.S. Navy’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier will deploy next week to Europe, as a growing conflict between Iran and Israel wages on.

The carrier Gerald R. Ford is expected to depart Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, next week and travel to the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations — a component of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa that encompasses the Mediterranean Sea and surrounding areas — according to a defense official.

The carrier is embarking as part of a regularly scheduled deployment, and the move is not in response to rising tensions in the Middle East, according to the official.

US troops, bases in Middle East could be targets in conflict with Iran

The Ford will deploy with its strike group, which includes Carrier Air Wing 8 and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers Mitscher, Mahan and Bainbridge, the official said.

The destroyer Winston S. Churchill will also deploy as part of the strike group, according to a Navy release. The destroyer Forrest Sherman deployed from Naval Station Norfolk last month, according to the same release.

The carrier Nimitz recently left the South China Sea and headed toward the Middle East to replace the Carl Vinson Strike Group for a regularly scheduled deployment, though the carrier skipped a port call in Vietnam to expedite the voyage in light of the burgeoning conflict between Israel and Iran.

Israel launched airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, destroying sites, and killing nuclear scientists and senior military leaders, on June 13.

Iran has since retaliated with missile strikes, hitting an Israeli hospital Thursday, while the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that U.S. intervention would result in “irreparable damage” to the U.S.

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he will decide within two weeks whether the U.S. military will strike Iran, a choice that reportedly hinges on Tehran’s willingness to engage in negotiations over its nuclear program.

Iran’s main nuclear facility, Fordo, is buried deep within the mountains 60 miles southwest of Tehran and can likely only be reached by bunker-buster bombs that the United States is in sole possession of.

The Defense Department terminated the contract with HomeSafe Alliance, the company hired to manage military moves, citing its inability to perform the work, officials announced Wednesday.

HomeSafe had been awarded the Global Household Goods Contract, worth potentially up to $17.9 billion over nine years, to implement a new process for moving service members’ and their families household goods.

The contract was terminated due to HomeSafe’s “demonstrated inability to fulfill their obligations and deliver high quality moves to service members,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in an announcement Wednesday.

Although HomeSafe will be ceasing operations, company officials said they will complete all moves currently in progress for service members and their families. Meanwhile, industry representatives said moving companies are “working feverishly” to cover as many military household goods shipments as possible under the legacy system.

The contract, awarded in 2021, was aimed at fixing long-standing problems with missed pickup and delivery dates, broken and lost items and claims. However, amid the contract’s rocky rollout this year, families reported delays in getting their household goods picked up and delivered.

In a statement to Military Times, HomeSafe said it disagrees with U.S. Transportation Command’s decision to terminate the contract.

“HomeSafe is confident it performed to the fullest extent possible considering the limitations placed on it,” company officials said in a release. Officials said they were disappointed they didn’t have the opportunity to engage with the task force “prior to the contract being terminated without warning.”

In May, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered several changes to the system, including creating a PCS task force and increasing the reimbursement rate for troops and families who decide to move all or part of their household goods themselves to 130% of what the government would have paid under the GHC contract.

“We know it’s not working and it’s only getting worse. We’ve heard your concerns about contractor performance quality and accountability. We hear you loud and clear. That’s why we’re taking decisive action immediately,” Hegseth said in a video posted on X in May.

In a memo released Wednesday, Hegseth appointed Army Maj. Gen. Lance G. Curtis to lead the PCS task force. The task force “is currently reviewing the entire PCS process to rapidly identify additional actions to better the moving experience now,” according to the announcement. The group is tasked with submitting recommendations for longer-term solutions no later than Sept. 5.

As the peak military moving season is now in full swing, defense officials have also implemented changes to address the issue of finding enough movers to handle the volume of moves. That includes reverting all moves to be handled under the legacy system.

Service members moving themselves may also be reimbursed 100% of the government rate under the legacy system.

TRANSCOM, which had been gradually ramping up the volume of moves with HomeSafe since April 2024, had expected to move all domestic shipments under the new contract by this year’s peak moving season, but it scrapped that plan earlier this year as problems began to mount with HomeSafe’s ability to provide enough capacity to pack, load, truck and unload service members’ belongings.

This move was a ‘living nightmare’ — and it’s just one example from a brutal PCS season for troops, families

Movers for America, an organization of large and small independent contractors and businesses that move military families, said it “[commends] the Defense Department for its decisive leadership to address the failed Global Household Goods Contract.”

The GHC’s attempt to reform the moving process “resulted in the worsening of Permanent Change of Station moves, with a rigid structure that ignored the economic and logistical realities of military moves,” stated the organization, which has opposed the GHC.

The International Association of Movers also supports DOD’s decision to act quickly on the GHC, “in an attempt to stabilize peak season moves for our service members,” said Dan Bradley, vice president of government and military relations for the organization. Movers are facing an uphill battle this late into peak season to recover from the instability and unknowns of this year, Bradley said, “but our members are working feverishly to cover as many shipments as they can under the current constraints.”

A number of moving companies have declined to participate in the new GHC system, citing lower rates than they’ve been traditionally paid.

“From the program’s start, HomeSafe has also faced staunch opposition from certain legacy movers,” company officials stated.

Following a decade-long recovery and identification mission led by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency — and more than 80 years since he was killed in the hellish Guadalcanal campaign — U.S. Marine Corps Pvt. Charmning Rowe returned home this month.

“Today we close the chapter on a story that began in 1942 and bring home a hero,” said Sgt. Matthew Wedding, the Marine charged with escorting Rowe’s remains. “This mission embodies our commitment to never forget and to fulfill our promise to bring every Marine home.”

A native of Orlovista, Florida, Rowe enlisted in the Marine Corps on Jan. 20, 1942, just six weeks after the United States’ entry into World War II. Following recruit training at Parris Island, South Carolina, Rowe was assigned to Company A, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Division.

The American campaign to wrest the island of Guadalcanal from the Japanese began on Aug. 7, 1942. The first land campaign of the Pacific, Guadalcanal was to play an outsized roll in turning the Japanese tide in the war.

It was, as historian John D. Lukacs writes, “America’s first steps toward the ultimate, unconditional victory over Japan almost exactly three years later.”

Between July 1942 and February 1943, the U.S. won the naval battle, the air battle and the land battle — initially with nothing more than sheer tenacity and courage, but then by grinding down the enemy with increasingly superior lines of supply.

At just 21 years old when he arrived on Guadalcanal on Sept. 18, 1942, Rowe was among those many green recruits facing down a ruthless enemy. He would be killed only six days later.

During a patrol southwest of the vital Henderson Field, Rowe engaged in a firefight with Japanese forces near Mount Austen. Rowe and three other Marines — Pvt. Randolph R. Edwards, Pfc. Erwin S. King, and Pfc. Morris E. Canady — were killed by enemy gunfire and buried in hasty battlefield graves dug by his fellow Marines.

The graves were known as Hill X and Hill Y. Six other fallen Marines would shortly be buried alongside the men.

However, according to the Marine Forces Reserve, “despite post-war efforts by the American Graves Registration Service in the late 1940s, none of the 10 Marines buried at Hills X and Y were recovered. In 1949, Rowe was officially declared ‘non-recoverable.’”

In 2012, the case was reopened by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency following new intelligence that revealed postwar recovery teams may have searched the wrong locations due to mislabeled records, the Marine Forces Reserve wrote.

A 1942 aerial map that had gone previously unnoticed and unused in a Hawaiian museum archive held the key to locating Rowe and his fellow Devil Dogs.

In 2016, excavation efforts resumed, leading to the discovering of human remains and military artifacts.

On June 5, the remains of Rowe were, at long last, repatriated to his family in Orlando.

“This mission highlights the institution’s commitment to never leaving a Marine behind,” said 1st Sgt. Juan Duque, inspector-instructor, 4th Marine Logistics Group.

A company working with the Marine Corps recently completed its first autonomous test flight of a helicopter as part of a Marine logistics program.

Near Earth Autonomy completed the test flight using a Leonardo AW139 helicopter under the Marine Corps Aerial Logistics Connector program, according to Defence Blog.

The May flight was the first time the company used its onboard autonomy stack to control the flight, company officials told Defence Blog.

“This flight showcases Near Earth Autonomy’s leadership in developing trusted autonomy for real-world operations,” said Dr. Sanjiv Singh, CEO of Near Earth Autonomy. “By directly controlling the AW139’s flight modes with our autonomy system, we’ve shown that scalable autonomous logistics using existing platforms is not just possible, it’s happening now.”

The ALC program is working to deliver an autonomous aerial logistics system that “enhances military readiness and operational flexibility.”

Future tests are planned to expand on autonomy features with automated route planning, obstacle avoidance and logistics system integration.

The test used the Honeywell-owned AW139 as a testbed outfitted with avionics that interfaced directly with the autonomy package. Leonardo, the original manufacturer of the aircraft, provided engineering support for systems integration.

“This successful demonstration is a major step in creating brand new possibilities for not only the USMC, but potentially other helicopter operators as well,” said Bob Buddecke, President of Electronic Solutions at Honeywell Aerospace Technologies.

“Together with Near Earth Autonomy and Leonardo, we’re showing how existing aircraft can be adapted with trusted avionics to support the next generation of defense logistics,” he added. “Uncrewed aircraft will be vital in keeping service men and women safe in contested environments, and we are one step closer to realizing that vision.”

Near Earth Autonomy also received a $790,000 Navy contract to deliver miniaturized autonomy service for the Marine Corps’ Tactical Resupply Unmanned Aircraft System program in April.

The drone allows for rapid resupply and routine distribution with high speed and precision, Near Earth Autonomy told the Robot Report.

“The Firefly autonomy system is designed to give the U.S. Marine Corps a critical edge in contested and complex environments,” Singh said. “By enabling autonomous resupply without the need for pre-mapped routes or clear landing zones, we’re reducing risk to personnel and ensuring that essential supplies reach frontline units faster and more reliably than ever before.

“This capability enhances operational agility and strengthens the Marines’ ability to sustain missions in the most challenging conditions.”

The April award is part of a larger $4.6 million contract.

Near Earth’s technology allows aircraft take off, fly and land autonomously with or without GPS.

The company’s Firefly system provides advanced environmental perception and intelligent flight capabilities. Those allow the system to detect hazards such as trees, buildings, rocks and vehicles.

It can identify safe flight paths and landing zones, allowing for mission planning without prior knowledge of the obstacles. And maintain a high cargo capacity and range.

The Naval Sea Systems Command engineering directorate has streamlined a manufacturing process to allow for the 3-D printing of parts for Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

Recent NAVSEA guidance allows waterfront engineers to use additive manufacturing, better known as 3-D printing, to produce vessel parts and components classified as low-risk — meaning parts that are not vital to the safety and function of the ship.

The parts were manufactured for the guided missile destroyer Arleigh Burke — the lead ship of its class — by the Spain-based Forward Deployed Regional Maintenance Center (FDRMC) Detachment Rota in collaboration with Spanish allies.

“We have empowered and equipped our waterfront and forward-deployed engineers and maintainers that directly support our warfighters,” said Rear Adm. Pete Small, NAVSEA chief engineer, in a release. “This project executed with our Spanish allies further proves the significant readiness AM generates for our ships, restoring a critical system while meeting the compressed timeline for the ship’s forward-deployed patrol.”

The destroyer Arleigh Burke had a pair of leaky eductors, or jet pumps, in its vacuum collection holding and transfer (VCHT) system, according to the release.

Both needed to be replaced prior to the vessel returning to patrol duty to stop the system from potentially failing during deployment.

While eductors are traditionally made of cast bronze and take nearly a year to produce, 3-D printing the parts shortened the manufacturing process by 80%.

The total process, including the planning phase, took only two months. The 3-D printing manufacturing itself took only seven days to produce the pumps prior to installation. Speeding up the part replacement allowed the ship to be on time for its upcoming scheduled patrol in the U.S. Sixth Fleet area of operations.

Although 3-D printing has been in use for some time, NAVSEA’s move to expedite the process of parts manufacturing comes at a time when the Navy is suffering from a lagging shipbuilding industry and is being urged to modify manufacturing and repair processes overall.

At a June 10 hearing, Sen. Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Armed Service Committee, described the current state of naval shipbuilding as “in an abysmal condition overall” despite some recent improvements.

In 1917, an Army review board rescinded the Medal of Honor that had been awarded to Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, an Army surgeon and former prisoner of war, more than half a century earlier. Walker refused to send the medal back, wearing it proudly for the remaining two years of her life.

So her family has a sense of how she’d respond to President Donald Trump’s June 10 announcement that nine Army bases renamed in 2023 — including one honoring her — would revert to their original names, initially given to commemorate Confederate Civil War generals.

Of the nine bases given new namesakes two years ago, only Fort Walker commemorated a Union hero from the Civil War.

“I don’t think this would surprise her,” Greg Therriault, a descendant of Walker’s sister Luna, told Military Times. “I think she’d be angry, as I am, but I don’t think she’d be surprised.”

While Walker never had her own children, some of her closest living relatives are committed to preserving her story: that of a bold maverick who lived by her convictions and had little use for social norms and arbitrary limitations.

The only female doctor in her 1855 graduating class at Syracuse Medical College in New York, Walker was determined to serve in the Army as a surgeon after the Civil War began six years later. Initially rebuffed, she refused to go home and volunteered her services to the Army, instead, until finally being granted an official post as a surgeon in 1863.

After months of treating Union soldiers at great risk to herself, Walker was captured by Confederate troops in 1864 and held as a prisoner of war for four months, suffering permanent damage to her eyes and lungs in a prison notorious for its filthy conditions.

When the Civil War ended the following year, President Andrew Johnson, seeking to honor Walker’s unique contribution to the war, settled on awarding her the Medal of Honor.

Walker was in her 80s when she received word that her medal had been revoked during a period of “toxic nationalism,” said Michelle Marra, another Walker relative.

“This feels familiar, of our government giving honor and revoking it,” said Marra, who’s descended from Walker’s sister Vesta. “And so my kind of thought is, good people always rise to the top, regardless of what goes on on a day-to-day basis.”

Long after Walker’s death, her act of resistance was rewarded: President Jimmy Carter formally reinstated her Medal of Honor in 1977. That restoration took place because of a petition championed by other Walker family members.

Marra said she suspected the recent renaming would prompt another petition.

“I just find it sad and wasteful, how much work and thought was put in by the base naming commission,” she said. “But I have hope that eventually, when things in America change, that we will have the opportunity to have a base named for her again.”

Fort Walker, Va., will once again be Fort A.P. Hill, the Army confirmed after Trump’s announcement. But the name will now honor three Civil War Union soldiers, with surnames Anderson, Pinn and Hill, rather than the original namesake — a Confederate general who was killed by Union troops in 1865.

Walker’s legacy survives in other ways. She was honored with a postage stamp in 1982 and inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000. Last year, the U.S. Mint issued a commemorative quarter with her image in an event that family members said had a large and celebratory turnout.

In recent years, Walker’s flouting of the gender norms of her time has attracted fresh interest to her story. She insisted on wearing pants in her work as a surgeon, and at times was mocked and harassed for her choice of conventionally masculine clothing.

Marra, who spent 17 years as an Army spouse and said she’d met other Medal of Honor recipients over the years, said Walker was always proud to be a woman, and even opted at times to wear her long hair down when tending to soldiers.

But, she said, Walker’s gender is a lesser part of her story.

“What the story should be is what she has done for our nation, not her gender,” Marra said. “That said, it really, really hurt, and I was very disappointed earlier this year when I saw web pages dedicated to her in our federal government taken down. Seeing those 404 codes, that was disappointing. And that seems silly to be erasing the digital footprint of someone who has been held in such high regard until now.”

George DeMass, a historian for Walker’s hometown of Oswego, N.Y., where her Medal of Honor remains on display, said he suspected she might enjoy, on some level, the furor over a base bearing her name.

“She lived in controversy all her life, and now, 100 years after her death, she’s in controversy,” he said.

Therriault plans to take a page from Walker’s own playbook and resist the renaming on his own terms.

“They can change signs and they can do what they want, and they will,” he said, “but it’s still Fort Walker to me.”

For over two decades, Peter Griffin has wreaked havoc on Quahog with unapologetic flair. He’s fought giant chickens in public intersections, started multiple cults and once launched his own cable news network that nearly caused a civil war.

To the average Family Guy viewer, he’s a buffoon at best and a walking inspector general complaint at worst. But to those who’ve served in the military, Peter’s real problem isn’t his behavior — it’s his lack of a competent public affairs officer.

Suppose Peter Griffin were in a military unit. He’d be the kind of troop whose name always comes up during the morning briefing.

“Sir, you’re going to see a video later today — we’ve already contacted PAO.”

He’s the kind of guy who makes national headlines before command even hears about it. And yet, somehow, he’d never get kicked out. Why? Because someone on staff — likely an overworked O-3 with a public affairs MOS — would be running damage control 24/7.

Let’s be clear: Peter doesn’t need a moral compass. He needs a communications strategy.

When Peter pretends to be mentally disabled to compete in the Special Olympics (“Peter’s Got Woods”), a good PAO could’ve anticipated media blowback and pushed a story about “inclusive fitness training” — a pilot program gone off the rails, yes, but built on “good intentions.”

When he created a militia to invade a neighboring town, a strong PAO could’ve flagged the risks, coordinated with local officials and rebranded the event as a “historic live-fire reenactment.”

Peter’s greatest liability, meanwhile, is his inability to shut up when a camera is rolling. No one in the Griffin household has been media-trained. Lois operates like a political spouse from the 1990s — always caught in the frame, looking vaguely ashamed. Chris and Meg provide contradictory statements that fuel follow-up questions. Stewie, though arguably the most strategic thinker in the family, insists on using his interviews to threaten public officials.

Only Brian, the anthropomorphic dog, has shown any capability to stay on message, though even he has a checkered past. In “The Thin White Line” (Season 3, Episode 1), Brian joins the police force as a drug-sniffing dog, only to develop a cocaine addiction that spirals into a rehab stint. While he’s often portrayed as the intellectual of the group, his track record with responsibility isn’t exactly spotless, making him more of a liability than an asset in any real-world public affairs office.

In the military, perception is often reality. It doesn’t matter what happened — it matters what people think happened.

Peter’s storyline has never been adequately controlled. A competent PAO would reframe the chaos:

• Peter drunkenly drives a tank through downtown? A “community outreach event gone awry,” with a statement that he was “testing equipment for public engagement readiness”
• Peter fakes a medical emergency to get out of work? “A training simulation revealed critical gaps in first responder coordination”
• Peter starts his own church? Distribute a pre-written statement about “faith-based resilience initiatives”

Peter needs a 39-year-old E-7 with an English degree, a perfectly curated LinkedIn and an Excel sheet of talking points for every imaginable scenario.

The military, to be sure, has managed far worse than Peter Griffin. Public affairs officers have had to explain away TikToks, field-grade DUI charges and even the leak of classified war plans.

The right PAO would take proactive steps in Peter’s case: establish redlines for what he can and can’t say in public, create a crisis comms checklist — “Did he offend a protected class? Was alcohol involved? Were there chickens? — and develop a cadence for how often to leak positive stories to massage the previous week’s disaster.

And if that fails, there’s always the Joint Task Force standby: distract the public with a viral dog adoption post, or yet another video of leadership working out with the troops.

In military culture, PAOs are often overlooked until it’s too late. They’re brought into meetings after decisions are made, not before. They’re viewed as paper-pushers, not battlefield multipliers. But if the last 20 years of warfare — and the last 20 seasons of Family Guy — have taught us anything, it’s this: information dominance is everything.

In today’s media environment, stories spread faster than the facts. Given proper messaging support, Peter could be seen as a devoted father, a misunderstood neighbor and a spirited participant in local affairs — not a walking Article 15.

Until then, the memes will write themselves. And somewhere in Quahog, a fictional public affairs officer is crying into their ASU jacket, wondering why they ever left college for this.

The U.S. is shifting military aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East to protect Israel from Iranian attacks as President Donald Trump warns Tehran to step back from the conflict.

Trump’s social media posts saying his patience with Iran was “wearing thin” have raised the possibility of deepening U.S. involvement, perhaps by using the bunker-busting bomb to strike a key Iranian nuclear site built deep underground in the mountains.

Israel doesn’t have the massive munition it would take to destroy the Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, or the aircraft needed to deliver it. Only the U.S. does.

As America’s national security leaders discuss the next steps, the Pentagon has moved to ensure that its troops and bases in the region are protected.

Here’s a look at the U.S. military presence in the Middle East:

US aircraft moving to the Middle East

In a social media post, Trump warned that “we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.”

U.S. officials insisted as of Tuesday that the American military has not taken any offensive actions against Iran, only defensive strikes to take out incoming Iranian missiles to protect Israel.

Additional U.S. fighter jets and refueling tankers have been deployed to the region, but officials have declined to provide specific numbers. Fighter jets have joined in launching strikes to defend Israel, but officials said Tuesday that no American aircraft were over Iran.

Aurora Intel, a group that reviews open source information in real time in the Middle East, said the U.S. Air Force had put additional refueling aircraft and fighter jets in strategic locations across Europe, including England, Spain, Germany and Greece. The information was obtained from public aviation tracking websites.

On Tuesday, the U.S. relocated a dozen F-16s from a base in Italy to Prince Sultan, in Saudi Arabia, Aurora Intel said.

U.S. fighter jets have been patrolling the skies around the Middle East to protect personnel and installations, and bases in the region are on heightened alert and are taking additional security precautions, the officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not provided any details, but said on Fox News Channel late Monday that the military movements were to “ensure that our people are safe.”

Warships taking out Iranian missiles and ready to protect US bases

American warships also are shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles targeting Israel, with the USS The Sullivans and the USS Arleigh Burke launching strikes over the weekend.

The Sullivans has been joined in the Eastern Mediterranean this week by the USS Thomas Hudner to continue those defense strikes, while the Arleigh Burke has moved away from the area, according to a U.S. official.

The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier is in the Arabian Sea with the four warships in its strike group. They are not participating in the defense of Israel. But they are positioned to provide security for U.S. troops and bases along the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.

The USS Nimitz has been long scheduled to take over for the Carl Vinson and is heading west from the Indo-Pacific region toward the Middle East. The official said it is slated to arrive by the end of the month, and the two carriers would likely overlap at least for a short time before the Vinson heads home to San Diego.

The USS Gerald R. Ford is sailing for the European theater of command in a week as well. While the deployment was already scheduled and was not in response to the conflict, the presence of the aircraft carrier, with its accompanying warships, will give the president the option of a third carrier group in the region if needed.

There also are destroyers in the Red Sea, and others are based in the Western Mediterranean and participating in exercises in the Baltic Sea.

US troops are on heightened alert and families are allowed to leave

The forces in the region have been taking precautionary measures for days, including having military dependents voluntarily leave bases, in anticipation of potential strikes and to protect personnel in case of a large-scale response from Tehran.

Officials said they were not aware of many families actually leaving.

Typically around 30,000 troops are based in the Middle East, and about 40,000 troops are in the region now, according to a U.S. official.

That number surged as high as 43,000 last October in response to heightened tensions between Israel and Iran as well as continuous attacks on commercial and military ships in the Red Sea by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.

The B-2 and the bunker buster

The Air Force’s B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is the only aircraft that can carry the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, known as the bunker buster.

The powerful bomb uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets — and then explode.

There are currently no B-2 bombers in the Middle East region, although there are B-52 bombers based at Diego Garcia, and they can deliver smaller munitions.

If tapped for use, the B-2 bombers would have to make the 30-hour round trip from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, refueling multiple times.