CANNON AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. — Over a New Mexico training range named the Hornet, two Osprey aircraft speed 100 feet off the ground, banking hard over valleys and hills as they close in on a dusty landing zone.

A flight engineer in the back braces a .50-caliber machine gun over the edge of the Osprey's open ramp as desert shrubbery blurs past. The aircraft's joints shift and rattle, and there is little steady to hold on to until the Osprey touches down with a bump, flooding seats with rust-colored dust.

After being grounded for months following a crash last November that killed eight U.S. service members in Japan, the V-22 Osprey is back in the air. But there are still questions as to whether it should be.

The Pentagon bought the V-22 Osprey more than 30 years ago as a lethal hybrid, with the speed of an airplane and the maneuverability of a helicopter. Since then, 64 personnel have been killed and 93 injured in more than 21 major accidents.

Japan’s military briefly grounded its fleet again late last month after an Osprey tilted violently during takeoff and struck the ground. And four recent fatal crashes brought the program the closest it’s come to being shut down by Congress.

To assess its safety, The Associated Press reviewed thousands of pages of accident reports and flight data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, interviewed more than 50 current and former program officials, crew members and experts, and flew both simulator and real training flights.

The AP found that the top three most serious types of incidents rose 46% between 2019 and 2023, while overall safety issues jumped 18% in the same period before the fleet was grounded.

Yet current and former Osprey pilots — even those who have lost friends in accidents or been in crashes themselves — are some of the aircraft’s greatest defenders.

Ospreys have been deployed worldwide — landing in deserts and on ship decks, rescuing U.S. service members from ballistic missiles in Iraq, evacuating civilians in Niger and even standing by ready to protect the president during a surprise trip to Ukraine last year.

“There’s no other platform out there that can do what the V-22 can do,” said former Osprey pilot Brian Luce, who has survived two crashes. “When everything is going well, it is amazing. But when it’s not, it’s unforgiving.”

Unlike other aircraft, the Osprey’s problems have not leveled off as the years passed; instead they spiked — even as the number of hours flown has dropped. Many of those incidents can be directly tied to the aircraft’s design, experts said.

Parts are wearing out faster than planned, and it's so complex that a minor mistake by a pilot can turn deadly.

While some aspects of the Osprey are now getting modified to make it more reliable, it’s unlikely the Osprey’s core design will change. With about 400 aircraft that cost between $75 million and $90 million apiece, a major upgrade to the fleet could cost billions.

One pilot survives two crashes

In 2010, Luce was the co-pilot in an Osprey crash in Afghanistan that killed his aircraft commander, flight engineer, an Army Ranger and a translator.

There was no enemy fire. In the final seconds of flight, as the Osprey converted to land like a helicopter, it dropped at a rate of more than 1,800 feet per minute. The crash investigation was inconclusive but found possible crew errors and said the engines may have lost power from sucking in too much dust.

Two years later, Luce was the aircraft commander overseeing a co-pilot on a Florida training range. Luce’s aircraft was flying low to the ground and about 750 feet behind the lead Osprey — three times the safe minimum distance required.

Despite being football fields apart, when both Ospreys banked, their change in position put one of Luce’s rotor blades inside the 25-foot vertical separation they needed. It crossed into the wake of the lead aircraft — a turbulent and unpredictable wash of air so strong that crews nicknamed it “Superman’s cape.”

In seconds, Luce’s Osprey nearly inverted and began dropping at more than 2,800 feet per minute before crashing and catching fire.

All five crew members survived. As the most seriously injured were airlifted out, Luce called his wife at the time, his voice shaking.

“It happened again,” he said.

She did not have to ask what he meant.

Both the 2010 and 2012 crashes exposed issues with the Osprey that the military still faces today.

After Luce’s 2012 crash, Osprey pilots warned investigators that the program was in trouble, according to investigation interviews obtained by the AP. Pilots couldn’t get enough training hours. Ground maintenance crews couldn’t keep enough aircraft flying due to a shortage of parts.

To meet cost and schedule targets, the Pentagon’s Osprey program office allowed manufacturers Bell Flight and Boeing to turn the Osprey over to the military without fully identifying all the ways the aircraft could run into trouble, a 2001 Government Accountability Office report found.

So even by Luce’s 2012 crash, the military still didn’t know the full size of the Osprey’s wake, crash investigators found.

“The fact that they fell out of the sky just defies logic,” Luce’s commander, Lt. Col. Matt Glover, told crash investigators in documents reviewed by the AP.

“I wish I could say there’s not going to be a next one, but where we are right now, is it ‘if’ or ‘when,’” said a second pilot, who was flying the Osprey in front of Luce’s and whose name is redacted.

The Osprey’s safety record has been challenged in multiple congressional hearings over the years. But each time, it has returned to flight. Some members of Congress have said there is no more margin for error.

“If another Osprey goes down, we’re done. This program’s done,” Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Osprey program officials during a hearing this spring.

The design of the Osprey is a big challenge

In the 1980s, when the $56 billion V-22 program was in its early stages for Bell Flight and Boeing, the Marine Corps controlled the Osprey’s final design because it committed to buying the most. The Marines wanted an aircraft that could carry at least 24 troops, but only take the same small space on a ship deck as the CH-46 helicopter, which the Osprey was replacing.

Experts say design choices have affected the Osprey’s safety since:

• The Osprey’s proprotors, which work as propellers while flying like an airplane and as rotor blades when functioning as a helicopter, are too small in diameter for the aircraft’s weight, which can top out at 60,500 pounds.
• The Osprey’s entire engine, transmission and proprotors rotate to a vertical position when it flies like a helicopter, which compromises the engines.
• That vertical rotation is at the core of what makes the Osprey complex. Crews must watch numerous factors: speed, the angles of the engine and rotor blades, and the up or down position of the aircraft’s nose, related to the Osprey’s weight and center of gravity to keep it from crashing.

The Osprey is twice as heavy as the CH-46, so the rotor blades needed to be longer but couldn’t be because they would have hit the body of the aircraft or the tower on the ship deck. Instead, the Osprey’s engines had to be more powerful to help the shorter blades generate enough lift.

That creates fast, violent airflow through the rotor blades, which can quickly destabilize the Osprey if one engine has more power than the other.

More powerful engines also meant they would weigh more. So engineers designed them to rotate and used their exhaust thrust to help lift the Osprey off the ground.

“It’s an aircraft with a huge amount of performance packed into a very compact space. What that means is that it’s a real hot rod to fly,” said Richard Brown, a rotorcraft specialist at Sophrodyne Aerospace. "But it also has these foibles which are baked into the design.”

Osprey crashes go back decades

Problems with the vertical engine caused the aircraft’s first fatal accident in 1992. Oils that had pooled while the Osprey was flying like an airplane spilled down into the engine as it rotated to a vertical helicopter position, catching fire and killing seven crew members.

In December 2000, repeated transitions to helicopter mode — where the engine and rotor blades rotate upward like an elbow joint — wore down one of the hydraulic lines in an Osprey to the point that it ruptured in flight, killing four Marines. That led to a grounding and system redesign.

Dusty landings present added danger. When the Osprey hovers in helicopter mode, the air and exhaust it creates can kick up a wall of dust and debris that can get sucked back into the engines, clogging and degrading them.

In 2015, a Marine Corps Osprey hovering for 45 seconds in Hawaii disturbed so much sand and dust that the crew had to abort and try again to land, because they could no longer see. On their second attempt, the Osprey’s left engine stalled and the aircraft dropped flat, killing two Marines.

“I heard what sounded like the entire aircrew yelling ‘power, power, power,’” a surviving Marine told investigators, according to redacted interviews obtained by the AP. “The ceiling opened like a sardine can.”

After the accident, the Marine Corps put out new guidelines reducing the amount of time the aircraft could hover in dusty environments.

But two years later, dust was a factor again. Pilots of a Marine Corps Osprey that had been dropping off troops in landing zones in Australia all day were concerned enough about the aircraft’s weight and potential accumulated dust in the engines that they wanted troops to pour out their water jugs to cut weight.

On their final flight, as the Osprey neared the deck of the transport ship Green Bay, it dropped. Airflow generated by the Osprey had reflected off the ship deck and backed up through the rotors.

The pilots applied full throttle, but the engines could not produce enough power to compensate for the loss. The Osprey kept falling, clipped the side of the ship and fell into the ocean, killing three.

“It just felt like there was nothing you could do,” the lead pilot told investigators. “I don’t recall seeing anything with the gauges at this point. I just remember being very frightened.”

The Osprey’s manufacturers, Bell Flight and Boeing, both referred questions about whether design changes could be made to either the rotors or engine orientation to the Pentagon.

In a statement to the AP, Bell said it took the heavier loads into account in its aircraft.

“While the capabilities of the Osprey have evolved over the years, the envelope of the aircraft based on configuration to support the varied missions has actually not adjusted significantly and was anticipated by the original design,” Bell said.

The aging aircraft is wearing down

The Osprey’s design strains critical components inside, especially in helicopter mode — and those parts are wearing out faster than expected.

When the Osprey is flying like a helicopter, everything has to work harder, because the engines and rotors are supporting the full weight of the aircraft. In airplane mode, the rotors only have to overcome the aircraft’s drag, said Brown, the rotorcraft expert.

Air Force crews fly the heaviest Osprey variant because of all the special instruments needed to allow it to fly secret missions, such as conducting rescues or inserting special operations forces in hostile territory.

In helicopter mode, they have to use an option called “interim power” to land safely, said Glover, the former Osprey squadron commander. The option surges more power, but that also can overtax the gears in the Osprey’s transmission, known as the proprotor gearbox.

“Bell-Boeing and the Marines had said: ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to use that thing very often. We don’t recommend it.’ Well, the Air Force, we’ve got to use it because we are heavy,” Glover said. “If you don’t use it, you won’t have the power to land.”

Japan’s defense ministry blamed human error for its most recent accident, where the Osprey tilted and struck the ground, because the pilots did not engage the interim power option as they hovered like a helicopter during takeoff. The ministry announced last week that its Ospreys had been cleared to return to flight.

The strain from helicopter mode shows in the Osprey’s transmission. A total of 609 have had to be replaced in the past 10 years, according to data obtained by the AP.

Wear and tear also puts a large demand on ground maintenance crews, who closely track components in the aircraft’s drive system to monitor strain. After each flight, they examine the Osprey’s engines, transmission and hydraulic lines for signs of stress.

On the hydraulic lines, “if one of those comes loose, it’s a problem,” said Master Sgt. Frank Williams, an Osprey maintenance supervisor at Cannon Air Force Base. “You have to pay attention.”

In response to questions from the AP, the Marine Corps said the Osprey is still one of its safest aircraft. Over the past decade, the rate that it experienced the worst type of accident resulting in either death or loss of aircraft was 2.27 for every 100,000 hours of flight. The Marines said that compares with 5.66 for its other heavy lift helicopter, the CH-53.

Those numbers don’t tell the whole story. The Marines’ three most serious categories of accidents climbed from 2019 to 2023, even as the number of hours they flew dropped significantly — from 50,807 in fiscal 2019 to 37,670 in 2023, according to data obtained by the AP.

The Air Force’s Osprey has a much higher rate of the worst type of accidents per 100,000 flight hours than its other major aircraft, and its incidents also climbed even as flight hours dropped.

The AP also found that the rise in safety problems over the past five years largely involved the Osprey’s engine or drive system.

There were at least 35 instances where crews experienced an engine fire, power loss or stall, 42 issues involving the proprotors and at least 72 instances of the gears inside the transmission or drive system becoming so stressed they flake off metal chips that can quickly endanger a flight.

Pilots have to fly perfectly

The Osprey’s complexity tests its crews.

Pilots control the angle of the engines and proprotors with a small notched wheel they move with their thumbs. It’s sensitive to the touch — too much of a nudge and the engines’ angle changes by several degrees. And they have to watch a computer display to see the angle.

As the engines and rotor blades begin to rotate upward, the flight controls inside the cockpit change, too — from working like the controls inside an airplane to operating like those in a helicopter.

“You have to just mentally switch, while you are on approach, what your hands are doing,” said Osprey pilot Capt. Christian Eells.

The aircraft’s computer is designed to autocorrect for a pilot if their movement of the wheel could result in the Osprey’s internal components being damaged. But that adds to the danger if a pilot can’t quickly force the nacelles, which house the engines, upward to slow down the aircraft, he said.

“It will not prevent you from stalling, sinking rapidly or entering any other unsafe flight,” Luce said. “But if you are going too fast, it will not only prevent you from raising the nacelles to slow down, the flight control computers will bounce the nacelles forward" to reduce strain on the gears — which speeds the Osprey up, Luce said.

If there are other complications in flight or a pilot is distracted or misses the significance of an aircraft warning light, those mistakes can turn dangerous quickly.

Lt. Col. Seth Buckley, the 20th Special Operations Squadron director of operations at the Cannon base, acknowledged that he puts a lot of pressure on his crews to be perfect.

“You have to take that mindset because there are so many things you can do in this aircraft to induce worse problems,” Buckley said.

Reminders of why hang inside the squadron’s heritage room at Cannon, where they have put up a wooden memorial plaque with eight upside-down shot glasses for the friends they lost last November in Japan.

Many of them also wear black metallic memorial bands on their wrists, with the Nov. 29, 2023, crash date and the Osprey’s call sign, “Gundam 22,” etched in.

Osprey faces investigations

The most recent accidents have spurred new lawsuits and congressional investigations.

Family members of the five Marines killed in a 2022 crash in California, caused by an unprecedented dual failure of the Osprey's clutch, are suing Bell and Boeing, and the maker of the engines, Rolls-Royce. Some of the families of the eight Air Force members killed last November in the Japan crash, which was caused in part by weakened metals in a critical transmission gear, also have hired a lawyer.

“Ultimately, the goal is an Osprey that is as airworthy and in as safe a condition as possible,” said attorney Tim Loranger, who is representing the families.

Following the Japan crash, the military grounded the fleet for three months. Congress also was investigating, and there was frustration from some lawmakers that the Osprey returned to flight before those reviews were complete.

In the meantime, it’s been difficult to get a clear picture of how the aircraft’s manufacturers are responding. After investigations into the Japan and Australia crashes were released this year, neither Bell Flight nor Boeing commented, citing pending litigation.

Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, which runs the joint Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy Osprey program, is working on a variety of upgrades that should make the aircraft easier to maintain and looking at how else the program can be improved.

“This is the appropriate time to be looking at systemic improvements to the platform,” former program manager Marine Corps Col. Brian Taylor said in a statement.

But it’s unlikely to change any of the fundamentals of vertical engines or rotor size. Those problems are getting fixed in a new aircraft called the Valor that Bell Flight is selling to the Army.

The Valor looks a lot like the Osprey, but it’s smaller. The Valor’s engines stay in a horizontal position. Its smaller size means the rotor blades are more proportional with the aircraft’s weight, which reduces strain on all the other components.

The Valor “captured many lessons learned from both tiltrotor and helicopter previous experience,” Bell said in a statement.

What comes next for the Osprey?

Air Force leadership is watching the Osprey closely, investing in improvements to the engine to make it easier to maintain and looking at future alternatives. The Navy has taken steps to keep more of its legacy aircraft carrier transport planes around in case it can’t make the Osprey work.

The Marine Corps is committed to flying its hundreds of Ospreys through 2050. But it’s also doing a study to decide whether to “significantly modernize the MV/22 and/or begin the process to move forward” to a next-generation assault aircraft, Lt. Gen. Bradford Gering, Marine deputy commandant of aviation, said in a statement.

Until it has a new option, the Air Force is looking at what can be done to ensure pilots get the time and training needed to master the Osprey, Air Force special operations commander Lt. Gen. Michael Conley said.

“What I don’t want is someone in my seat 10 years from now say, ‘You know back in 2010, 2012, 2024, you knew crews weren’t getting enough flight hours, you knew there were maintenance challenges, and here we are having the same discussion,’” Conley said.

But it’s also about realizing that aspects of how the Osprey flies won’t change, Buckley said.

“What you have to do is reduce your exposure,” Buckley said.

For example, simulators can now model the full “Superman’s cape” phenomenon, and crews can train to it. But there are still unknowns.

“I do think that we’re still — and maybe even to this day — to a degree working through all the ins and outs aerodynamically what is different about this that has never been seen before with any other aircraft,” Buckley said.

But that doesn’t mean ground it, he said.

In Iraq, Buckley flew a mission where the Osprey was the only aircraft that could help save a service member’s life after a vehicle rollover.

“There wasn’t another plane flying in the sky because the weather was so bad,” Buckley said. “We flew up and down the line of the haboob trying to get around it, but the lightning was too bad, so we penetrated.”

“To this day, that guy is with his family,” he said.

Buckley understands the risks in a different way than many of his crews. He was a high school senior when his 25-year-old brother, 1st Lt. Nathaniel D. Buckley, died in an AFSOC MC-130H cargo aircraft crash in 2002.

In his office, Buckley pointed to the American flag that the Air Force presented to his family after his brother’s death.

“I think my job here is to ensure that I’m going to push it to the level that we are making sure we aren’t delivering any more of these,” he said.

Vineys and Kessler reported from Washington. AP reporter Mari Yamaguchi contributed from Tokyo.

Lt. Richard “Max” Bullock took the last flight of his life on June 3, 2022, when his F/A-18E Super Hornet launched from Naval Air Station Lemoore and commenced training near California’s Death Valley National Park.

That afternoon, the 29-year-old executed air-to-ground strafe and slow-speed basic maneuvers when he is believed to have suffered a bout of gravity-induced loss of consciousness, or GLOC, a condition where a pilot goes unconscious due to a lack of blood flow to the brain, according to an internal investigation obtained by Navy Times.

Bullock was “incapacitated” when his jet quickly descended from 7,300 feet and crashed near Trona at 2:07 p.m. local time. His ejection seat was properly installed and the investigation found that Bullock did not attempt to initiate an ejection.

“Due to the relatively low altitude that this maneuver was executed, the pilot did not have enough time to regain consciousness before impacting the ground,” the investigation states.

Now, two-and-a-half years after the young aviator’s death, questions have emerged about why a system that keeps a jet airborne if a pilot loses consciousness was never installed in Navy Super Hornets, and if such a system might have prevented Bullock’s death.

The system is known as Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, or Auto-GCAS, and it’s designed to temporarily take control of a jet for short periods of time if the pilot blacks out or gets distracted, military aviators who reviewed the Bullock investigation told Navy Times.

Inside a fatal Super Hornet crash in Star Wars canyon

But for reasons the Navy has declined to explain, Auto-GCAS has not been installed in the sea service’s Super Hornet fleet.

The Air Force installed Auto-GCAS on its F-16 and F-22 fighter jets, and credits the system with saving the lives of 16 aviators since 2014.

The Marine Corps’ legacy Hornets are also slated to receive Auto-GCAS next year, according to Naval Air Forces, and the software is already installed on all F-35 jets, according to that platform’s Joint Program Office.

Despite repeated queries by Navy Times, the Navy has refused to explain why Auto-GCAS is not in Super Hornets, or whether the service believes a lack of Auto-GCAS played a role in Bullock’s death.

Auto-GCAS “remains an area that the team continually assesses during safety review boards and provides annual updates to the fleet, as safety is our number one priority,” Naval Air Forces spokesperson Cmdr. Beth Teach said in an email to Navy Times.

The Naval Safety Command, which conducts its own investigations into such mishaps, declined to say whether its investigation found a lack of Auto-GCAS to have been a factor in Bullock’s death.

While the Navy remains mum to such questions, some aviators with direct Auto-GCAS experience believe the system would have prevented Bullock’s fatal crash.

Lt. Col. Billie Flynn is a retired pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Flynn also served as a test pilot with Lockheed Martin who flew with the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, and has tested out three different Auto-GCAS systems.

After reviewing the Bullock crash investigation, Flynn unequivocally stated that Bullock would still be alive if Auto-GCAS was installed in his aircraft.

“Auto-GCAS would have saved Lt. Bullock, period,” Flynn told Navy Times.

He isn’t the only member of the aviator community to reach that conclusion. An active duty Air Force aviator familiar with Auto-GCAS who reviewed the investigation and was granted anonymity also told Navy Times that he believes the technology would have saved Bullock’s life.

“What’s the price of a very talented young naval aviator?” Flynn said. “I would submit there is no price for that. You can’t replace Lt. Bullock, and how do you explain to his parents, his family, that you could have implemented this at some point and chose not to, because it wasn’t a value to Navy leadership. I don’t think you can answer that question.”

‘Instantaneous G’

To decrease the likelihood of suffering GLOC, pilots undergo specific centrifuge training to better equip their bodies to tolerate strong G-forces.

But pilots still carry risks with them in the cockpit, and Auto-GCAS helps mitigate that risk, according to Flynn.

“In a Super Hornet, the instantaneous G is so sudden that if you are not perfectly prepared, then your body might not be ready for the G that you’re about to experience, and that historically, has contributed to pilots blacking themselves out,” he said.

Pilots typically regain “useful consciousness” between 45-60 seconds after blacking out, according to Flynn.

Flynn said he thinks the Navy and NAVAIR understand the benefits of Auto-GCAS, but have opted to not spend the money and time installing the system in the Super Hornet fleet because “it’s never been important enough for Navy leaders.”

Inside the harrowing final minutes before a C-2A Greyhound’s fatal 2017 crash into the sea

“Navy leadership, including the leadership at NAVAIR, have all been briefed and are keenly aware of the capabilities that Auto-GCAS brings and the potential to save aircraft and lives,” Flynn said.

Flynn added that GLOC isn’t as common now as it once was in aviators due to advancements in training and ensuring G-suits fit properly, and therefore, leadership isn’t as inclined to believe installing the technology is worth the effort.

Teach, of Naval Air Forces, told Navy Times that no other naval aviators have suffered injury or death due to GLOC-related incidents in the past five years, according to the service’s Risk Management Information mishap reporting system.

‘Max was genuine’

Assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 113 at the time, Bullock was remembered as a young man who “packed more into 29 years than most could ever imagine.”

“When asked how he would want to be celebrated, Lt. TJ Hall, Max’s wingman, said, ‘Fast, loud and awesome!’” Bullock’s obituary states. “While he’ll be celebrated this way, he’ll be remembered as generous beyond belief, a genuine friend, passionate and relentlessly positive, and fearless.”

Bullock’s parents, Bill and Robin Bullock, said their son described himself as a “possibilitarian” who believed anything was possible, and loved his country and fellow service members deeply. They said the family honors his memory by thinking about what he would do when making choices in life now.

“Whenever we would question whether or not we should do something or to go forward with it, one of the kids, or one of the parents says, ‘You know, what would Max do?’ And the automatic answer is, he would go for it. He would try it, he would be the first one to be in line to do something, and reach out to help others,” Robin Bullock told Navy Times.

Bullock conducted a “thorough brief” prior to take off on the day of his death, outlining the training rules for basic fighter maneuvers, air-to-ground strafe and low-level training.

The investigation also found that Bullock was prepared for the mission, and that human factors did not play a role in the mishap.

Pilot error likely caused Navy’s TH-57 helicopter crash in summer 2021

It determined the aircraft safe for flight and that no malfunctions occurred, and that environmental factors such as weather did not contribute to the mishap.

The case did not warrant any disciplinary action within the squadron, and the investigation determined the squadron’s command climate didn’t factor into the mishap.

Specifically, the report said that no one interviewed for the investigation voiced knowledge of procedure violations, rule-breaking or flat-hatting by any members of the squadron — Bullock included.

Flat-hatting is the practice of conducting maneuvers at low altitude or high speed “for thrill purposes,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

“I have directed that the findings of this investigation will be widely shared with all units under my cognizance to underscore the unforgiving and inherently dangerous nature of naval aviation, which requires the finest sense of judgment and control,” a command endorsement of the investigation states.

Bullock’s obituary recalls him as someone who would “start every day with the intent on figuring out how to make the world a better place.”

“Max was genuine. He would strike up a conversation and build a friendship with everyone crossing his path; he would listen with interest and appreciation to any story,” Bullock’s obituary said. “He gave the gift of long-term friendship openly and without reservation.”

A two-star Army general removed from his position as U.S. Northern Command director of operations in 2023 received a verbal counseling for the incident and now works as a special assistant to the director of the Army Staff.

Army Times reported in July 2023 that Maj. Gen. Joseph Lestorti was suspended permanently from his NORTHCOM position due to a “loss of trust and confidence,” as officials said at the time.

Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith confirmed to Army Times on Monday that Lestorti had not faced any criminal charges or written reprimand because of the investigation.

“The investigation into Maj. Gen. Lestorti found that he demonstrated an act of counterproductive leadership,” Smith wrote in an email statement. “Appropriate action was taken, and we consider the matter closed.”

When asked about the “appropriate action,” Smith confirmed that Lestorti was “verbally counseled.”

“In November of 2023, I received a phone call from the Director of Army Staff informing me of a single disputed finding in the investigation report and that the matter was now closed,” Lestorti told Army Times in an email statement.

Lestorti has been selected for a follow-on assignment from his current position and continues to serve.

“I am humbled by the trust and confidence placed in me by Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth and Chief of Staff of the Army Randy George,” Lestorti wrote. “It is my greatest honor to continue to serve and lead our soldiers.”

Both Lestorti and Smith declined to provide details about the incident that led to the two-star’s suspension.

But at the time of the suspension, sources familiar with the investigation told Army Times that the removal was not due to personal misconduct.

“He held people to a high standard, and I think that came to a head,” said one officer in July 2023, who spoke on the condition his name not be used, as he was not cleared to speak to media. “It’s not because of any allegations of personal misconduct of a nefarious nature.”

Retired Col. Joseph Buccino, a former public affairs officer familiar with the Lestorti investigation, told Army Times on Tuesday that the general is “a direct combat leader, not a counterproductive leader.”

Buccino noted how in his experience early reporting on such suspensions, firings or removals can, “inflict immediate and lasting reputational damage.”

“While the investigation process unfolds privately, the public news story impacts the officer’s career, family relationships, and future financial prospects,” Buccino said. “Despite resolutions that often clear the officer’s name, the original allegations — often with little context — cast a shadow over an officer’s career and family for years, appearing in online searches and professional background checks.”

Lestorti commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1992. He was promoted to major general in September 2022.

As a major and then lieutenant colonel, Lestorti served first as the Arabian Peninsula Plans Officer for Special Operations Command headquarters and then as the J5 Strategic Planner and Operations Officer for Joint Special Operations Command.

He completed multiple overseas tours for Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and various operations-centered positions and commands from 2005 to 2023, according to his official biography.

His awards and decorations include the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star Medal, among others, according to his official biography.

The Marine Corps has hit its goal of assigning women to its boot camps the same way it assigns men, recruiting and training officials confirmed to Marine Corps Times.

In fiscal 2024, according to Maj. Hector Infante, a spokesman for Marine Corps Training and Education Command, the service sent 1,471 female recruits to train at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, and 1,484 women to MCRD San Diego, California, a boot camp formerly closed to women.

At Parris Island, women made up 11.3% of all non-prior service recruits last fiscal year, while they made up 10.5% of the total at San Diego, Infante said. In all, 13,003 non-prior service recruits trained at Parris Island last year, and 14,162 trained at San Diego.

In December 2023, Marine Corps Times reported that the Corps was on track to even out the gender balance at its two boot camps by the close of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. In this, the service met a congressional mandate set in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to fully integrate recruit training by gender within five years. The service initially projected it would take until 2026 to reach the target.

As officials with TECOM and Recruit Training Command explained, future years may not see such an even distribution of female recruits at the two boot camp locations.

For the Corps, they said, the target was to assign women to boot camp the same way men were assigned: roughly, by geographic region. With some exceptions, those from the Western Recruiting Region, which largely lies west of the Mississippi River, ship to San Diego; while those in the Eastern Recruiting Region go to Parris Island. The Corps could ship according to this same scheme in the future and see a greater proportion of women at one boot camp than the other.

To achieve its target distribution, the Marine Corps said it needed to increase its population of female drill instructors from 134 to 207, a goal it first publicized in 2021.

As recently as late 2022, service officials were expressing concerns about reaching that goal, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a recruiting slump and left fewer female noncommissioned officers available for assignment as drill instructors.

“It’s a balancing act,” TECOM Chief of Staff Col. Howard Hall told the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services in December of that year, saying the Corps then projected to reach its target of 207 female DIs by 2027.

A TECOM official said the Marines had been able to meet the integrated recruit shipping goal because they’d established the number of female drill instructors they needed at San Diego. But neither TECOM nor Recruiting Command officials, after multiple queries, could provide details on when that staffing goal had been met and when, precisely, the full transition to geographically-based shipping had taken place. Requests for an interview on the topic were declined.

The Marine Corps, the last of the military services to segregate training by gender, has changed rapidly over the last five years under strong congressional pressure. The service allowed women to train at San Diego for the first time in early 2021. It marked another first at the same time by putting a platoon of female recruits inside a male training company.

In June 2023, the service deactivated Parris Island’s 4th Recruit Training Battalion, previously the only unit in the Corps where female recruits could be trained.

While Marine leaders had long defended the Corps’ gender-segregated training model as helping to forge strong relationships and establish same-gender role models, critics said the separate units allowed male recruits and staff to belittle their female counterparts and view their training as lesser.

And though female and male Marine recruits now train in integrated companies at boot camp, platoons are still segregated by gender. Officials have said they continue to view integrated platoons as bad for the Corps and recruit development. The service has also declined to proceed with recommendations to create mixed-gender drill instructor teams, citing manpower limitations in its female NCO population.

“I’m a one-standard kind of individual,” Lt. Gen. Kevin Iiams, then commander of TECOM, said in 2022. “I don’t want to have mixed DI teams for only portions of the recruit population. … It’s got to be everyone.”

Marines conducted a complex at-sea readiness rehearsal for combat with the service’s new amphibious combat vehicle for the first time while their comrades worked on coastal defense training with partners in the Philippines.

Nearly 200 Marines and 400 sailors from I Marine Expeditionary Force and Expeditionary Strike Group 3 conducted the drills off the coast of Camp Pendleton, California, from Oct. 20 to Nov. 1.

Marines worked through four models of rotary and tiltrotor aircraft in both day and night deck landings aboard the amphibious transport dock Somerset, which concluded a seven-month deployment in August with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Marine amphibious combat vehicle variants to arrive soon

The event, dubbed Quarterly Underway Amphibious Readiness Training, or QUART, ensures that the major components and personnel involved in combined Navy-Marine Corps amphibious operations have worked together and certified their levels of proficiency, according to a Marine release.

“QUART is a vital training opportunity where we can train as a Navy-Marine Corps team to enhance our collective readiness and deterrence capabilities,” said Col. Kevin Hunter, commander of Marine Aircraft Group 16 and QUART 25.1.

The units involved included 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment; Marine Aircraft Group 16, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing; and 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 1st Marine Division.

This most recent QUART saw the ACVs embark infantry Marines during both day and night operations.

“This is about being able to deliver combat power ashore,” Navy Capt. Andrew Koy, Somerset commander, said in the release. “This is a rehearsal for the future fight. It’s necessary that we all talk to each other, know what one another is doing, and share a common language.”

The service first put the new ACV, which replaces the decades-old amphibious assault vehicle, to use overseas in May, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

BAE Systems won the contract to produce the new ACV for the Corps in 2018.

The new ACV comes in multiple variants, including a command and control version, a 30mm-cannon-toting version and a recovery variant to haul other ACVs when immobile.

By bringing together the sea, air and land aspects of Marine operations, the QUART exercise puts all those assets under a single colonel’s control, said Col. Jonathan Frerichs, commander of 3rd BN, 1st Marine Regiment.

A main feature of how the Corps is redesigning its structure integrates more heavily with the Navy. At the same time, the restructuring has built units such as the Marine Littoral Regiment, which can be scaled up or down to a fire team or up to an entire regiment.

Putting all those capabilities under the command of a colonel helps provide additional options, firepower and support to a lower-echelon unit that can operate on its own.

Meanwhile, as Marines conducted the QUART off the California coast, 15th MEU Marines were wrapping up training with the Philippine Marines’ 3rd Marine Brigade on the western shores of Palawan, Philippines.

The annual KAMANDAG exercise, which ran from October 15 to 25, included participants from the Royal Thai Marine Corps, Indonesian Marine Corps, the French Armed Forces, Australian Defense Force, British Armed Forces, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force and Republic of Korea Marine Corps, according to a Marine Corps release.

“We’re training to maneuver and mass effects to attrite, block, fix and destroy a force that attempts to land,” said Lt. Col. Nicholas Freeman, commander of Battalion Landing Team 1/5, 15th MEU. “Here, Philippine guides would bring in our forces to rapidly establish an area defense of this landing site. Our engagement area would extend from the beach’s exit routes out to the launch points for enemy landing craft, with a plan for fires integrating both Philippine and U.S. Marine weapons systems.”

That kind of exercise, Freeman said, not only helps the participants find new and effective ways to defend their coastlines but also allows the forces to work together and establish procedures and communications.

“This was part of KAMANDAG, but really it’s part of a larger transformation in the concept and tactics for coastal defense strategy in this region — something that has not been employed or tested at scale for decades in the Indo-Pacific,” said Col. Sean Dynan, commanding officer of the 15th MEU.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine fired several American-supplied longer-range missiles into Russia, officials said Tuesday, marking the first time Kyiv used the weapons that way in 1,000 days of war.

The use of the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, came as Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons, opening the door to a potential nuclear response by Moscow to even a conventional attack by any nation supported by a nuclear power. That could include Ukrainian attacks backed by the U.S.

A Telegram channel affiliated with the Ukrainian military posted a video Tuesday that it says shows U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles being fired from an undisclosed location in Ukraine. The Associated Press could not independently verify the date and location the video was filmed.

US allows Ukraine to fire deeper into Russia ahead of Kursk battle

According to a U.S. official, Ukraine fired about eight of the missiles, and just two were intercepted by the Russians. The official said that the U.S. was still assessing battle damage, but that the missiles struck an ammunition supply location in Karachev, a city of about 18,000 people in Russia's Bryansk region. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence assessments.

The developments marked a worrying escalation in the conflict that has repeatedly ratcheted up international tensions. U.S. officials recently expressed dismay at Russia’s deployment of North Korean troops to help it fight Ukraine, while Moscow seethed when Washington eased restrictions on the ATACMS in recent days.

The 1,000-day mark has magnified scrutiny of how the war is unfolding and how it might end, amid signs that a turning point may be coming with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump entering the White House in about two months’ time. Trump has pledged to swiftly end the war and has criticized the amount the U.S. has spent on supporting Ukraine.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine can sustain the war for a long time, analysts say, though Russia would be able to keep going for longer due to its vaster resources.

Ukraine’s forces are under severe Russian pressure on the battlefield at places on the about 600-mile front line where its army is stretched thin. Ukrainian civilians, meanwhile, have repeatedly been attacked by Russian drones and missiles.

Ukraine claimed Tuesday that it hit a military weapons depot in Russia's Bryansk region overnight, though it didn't specify what weapons it used. The Ukrainian General Staff said multiple explosions and detonations were heard in the targeted area around Karachev.

Asked at a news conference if Ukraine had struck the Bryansk region ammunition depot with ATACMS, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declined to provide any details. However, he said, “Ukraine has long-range capabilities, including domestically produced long-range drones … and now we have ATACMS as well.”

In a statement carried by Russian news agencies, the Russian Defense Ministry said the military shot down five ATACMS missiles and damaged one more. The fragments fell on the territory of an unspecified military facility and sparked a fire, but didn’t cause any damage or casualties, it said.

Neither side's claims could be independently verified.

Karachev is roughly 70 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border. Ukraine in the course of the war has been able to reach much deeper into the vast country — but with drones rather than missiles. For instance, Russian officials have reported intercepting Ukrainian drones over Moscow, which is about 310 miles from the border and most recently Izhevsk, a city about 900 miles from the frontier.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ukrainian officials reported a third Russian strike in as many days on a residential area in Ukraine killed at least 12 people, including a child.

The strike by a Shahed drone in the northern Sumy region late Monday hit a dormitory of an educational facility in the town of Hlukhiv and wounded 11 others, including two children, authorities said, adding that more people could be trapped under the rubble.

On Sunday, a Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions struck a residential area of Sumy in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people and wounding 84 others. On Monday, a Russian missile barrage sparked apartment fires in the southern port of Odesa, killing at least 10 people and wounding 43.

Zelenskyy said that the series of aerial strikes proved that Putin wasn’t interested in ending the war.

“Each new attack by Russia only confirms Putin’s true intentions. He wants the war to continue. Talks about peace are not interesting to him. We must force Russia to a just peace by force,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy told European Union lawmakers in a speech via video link that Russia has deployed about 11,000 North Korean troops along Ukraine’s borders and that the number could swell to 100,000.

He appeared in person at the Ukrainian parliament, where he presented what he called a “resilience plan” to dig in against the relentless Russian onslaught. He said he expects pivotal moments to occur in the war next year.

The plan outlines new approaches to army management, including the creation of a military ombudsman position and a new system of handling military contracts.

There are no plans to lower the mobilization age from the current 25, even though Ukraine is short-handed on the front line, especially in infantry.

Ukraine urgently needs to tackle its manpower difficulties on the front, but it can use the longer-range missiles in the meantime to slow the tempo of Russia’s recent advances, said Jack Watling, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank.

“Ukraine’s partners can do little to change the character of the fighting on the line of contact, but by targeting capabilities that are currently giving Russia a battlefield advantage, time can be bought,” Watling wrote Tuesday.

Next year, Zelenskyy said, Ukraine plans to produce at least 30,000 long-range drones and aims to manufacture 3,000 long-range missiles, reducing its dependence on Western military support.

A fuller version of the plan will be presented next month, he said.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Western countries are debating further help for Ukraine — “more aid, more money we have to make available to them, particularly now that the North Koreans have come on board,” he said in Brussels.

Meanwhile, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola led a special plenary session on Ukraine marking “one thousand days of terror, suffering and unimaginable loss. One thousand days of courage, resilience and unbreakable spirits.”

“Your people are an inspiration to all who value freedom around the world,” she told Zelenskyy.

Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

Sgt. Travis Rogers took note of the excessive manpower, time and safety requirements each time his team had to swap out a key piece of gear on an Apache helicopter during rapid refueling and rearming.

The AH-64 Apache’s Reduced Crashworthy External Fuel System, or RCEFS, on the Hellfire missile launcher occasionally needs replacing during the brief refuel and rearm periods that occur in training or combat.

Akin to a militarized NASCAR pit crew, the ground team for an Apache at a forward arming and refueling point, or FARP, works to quickly load and offload munitions, fuel and any other needed supplies. With the potential of peer adversaries striking aircraft nearly anywhere in the battlespace, the Army and Marine Corps are relying ever more on such FARP missions to extend the range and lethality of their aircraft.

During their much-publicized August rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana, soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division conducted stops at six FARPs during their 500-mile flight from Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Training four seasoned soldiers to remove and replace the RCEFS to do that task in under eight minutes was considered an accomplishment. But Rogers, a former Apache repairman who has since become a warrant officer, saw potential to be an even faster.

“We started going over the possibilities of how we could do that in a safe and quick manner,” Rogers said. “After I mentioned the cart idea, we started looking at how some of the other branches used carts. Then my lieutenant told me, ‘You could probably just take this to EagleWerx.’”

The “cart idea” was, in essence, a kind of wheelbarrow device Rogers and his team had concocted. But it was EagleWerx, an innovation center on Fort Campbell, that could help make the option a reality.

The center provides soldiers with a place where they can bring their ideas, according to Chief Warrant Officer 3 Ricky Hicks, who serves as the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade’s innovation officer. And if the idea is feasible and can fix an issue, soldiers can use the “maker space” at the innovation center to create and test the concept, Hicks added.

“At first it was just a thin frame with a very long handle at the front that you would put the RCEFS in and raise and lower it with manpower — basically a wheelbarrow,” Rogers said. “Now we’ve reinforced the frame, the handle is removable like the hitch to your car and it has a winch system that can raise or lower using a hand crank or even an impact drill.”

Adding that simple tool cut the loading and offloading speed down from a fast time of 7 minutes, 30 seconds to a minute.

“The first time we did it with the cart we got it in just over a minute,” Rogers said. “So, I would imagine that same crew, after using the cart over and over again, could probably get that down to 30 seconds with no issue.”

Currently the cart is in its testing phase at Fort Campbell, according to a service release.

“We want units to beat the heck of out of these things,” said Rogers. “Do everything you can possibly do. Take an RCEF off in the field, in the dirt, in the mud. Tell us what doesn’t work so we can make this better.”

Rogers said bringing the idea from a sketchbook to a physical tool that troops are using made him feel like he was truly helping soldiers.

“What really made things [happen] was how receptive he was to other people’s input on his project,” Hicks said of Rogers. “He was always quick to say, ‘Listen I want to make this thing as good as it can be and if that’s outside myself and my understanding then help me make it better.’ He was incredibly dedicated to the project.”

The Army’s concept of future warfare is getting the Tom Clancy treatment.

At the Association of the United States Army’s annual conference held in Washington in October, a session on the service’s plans to improve professional writing contained a teaser for a first-of-its-kind project: a novel envisioning a future conflict in a technology-infused battlefield.

“Task Force Talon: A Novel of the Army’s Next Fight,” written by “Ghost Fleet” authors August Cole and P.W. Singer, will “share the real-world lessons from Field Manual 3.0, as well as lessons learned from both contemporary conflicts and recent Army exercises and training,” according to an excerpt provided exclusively to session attendees.

The FM 3-0, most recently updated in October 2022, covers Army operations. As then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville wrote in the manual’s forward, it’s intended to demonstrate “the first principles of speed, range, and convergence of the cutting-edge technologies needed to achieve future decision dominance and overmatch against our adversaries.”

Task Force Talon is the name of the Army unit that provides ballistic missile defense for the island U.S. territory of Guam.

The protagonist of the novel is Maj. Derek Washington, who finds himself in the middle of a large-scale combat operation shortly after deploying to an unnamed allied country to join his new unit.

“As [Washington’s] unit faces overwhelming odds and new threats ranging from cyber attacks to drone strikes, he must learn both how to lead under fire and how to win the kind of war that the U.S. has not fought for generations,” the distributed synopsis states.

Warfighting tech described in the excerpt includes tactical augmented reality glasses; persistent hostile drone surveillance; micro-targeted disinformation targeting military families, including AI-generated video and audio; and next-gen dashboard screens fusing satellite data and ground networks.

Cole and Singer have pioneered the deliberate use of fiction to gain insights about the future of warfare and the integration of emerging technologies.

The civilian duo’s novel “Ghost Fleet,” published in 2015 and describing a successful attack by China against the U.S. that begins with a Pentagon-infiltrating computer virus, was embraced by numerous generals and flag officers. In the Marine Corps, for example, it spurred workshops and discussions that encouraged troops to brainstorm about the tools and information they’d need on the battlefield of the future.

Singer and Cole ultimately launched Useful Fiction, a partnership through which they hold writing workshops for U.S. and allied military entities including U.S. Special Operations Command and the Air Force’s Air University, among others.

At the Oct. 16 AUSA panel session, Singer described a “double challenge” that forward-looking organizations face, first to understand and frame new technologies and opportunities, and then to communicate the need to evolve and adapt to their members.

“How do you gain and retain attention when so much else is competing for it, whether it’s all the other publications out there, to what’s in their email inbox, to just the scarce resources of time?” Singer said.

He described storytelling as “literally the oldest communication technology of all,” capable of engaging the emotions and imagination in a way PowerPoint cannot. Story can also reframe the concept of change to organization members, he said.

“Change management programs are more likely to succeed when you’re able to tell the story of why we need to change, tell the story of what success will look like, what we’re headed towards,” Singer said. “Most importantly, you’re able to tell your organization you are characters. You are heroes in this story of change, rather than victims of it.”

While the Army has not announced a release date for “Task Force Talon,” Singer said more information about the project’s publication and the Army’s plans for it would be made public “in coming months.”

The information about the new novel was revealed as part of a presentation from The Harding Project, an Army initiative launched in 2023 and led by Lt. Col. Zachary Griffiths, to improve the service’s professional journals and encourage more soldiers to write and publish for the benefit of their fellow troops.

Disclaimer: Hope Hodge Seck has worked as a consultant for Useful Fiction.

A former U.S. Army soldier who was court-martialed for fatally shooting a handcuffed civilian in Iraq two decades ago was sentenced on Monday to more than four years in prison for his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Edward Richmond Jr. attacked police officers with a metal baton during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Richmond, 41, of Geismar, Louisiana, said he immediately regretted his actions that day.

“It was wrong. It was foolish. It was not thought-out. It was spur of the moment,” Richmond said before U.S. District Judge John Bates sentenced him to four years and three months behind bars.

Veterans involved in Jan. 6 riot expect Trump to keep pardon promise

The judge said Richmond appeared to be genuinely remorseful for joining one of the most violent episodes of the Capitol riot — a clash between rioters and outnumbered officers inside a tunnel entrance.

“Your conduct was pretty terrible. You've recognized that,” Bates said.

More than 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the Capitol riot. More than 650 of them have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years.

Several Jan. 6 riot defendants have asked judges to pause their cases until after President-elect Donald Trump takes office, citing his campaign vow to pardon supporters who stormed the Capitol after his “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on Jan. 6. Judges have largely rejected those requests and forged ahead with plea hearings and sentencings as scheduled.

Richmond didn't ask for his sentencing to be delayed. His lawyer, John McLindon, said after the hearing that such a request seemed like a “waste of time.”

Prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of five years and three months for Richmond, who will get credit for roughly nine months that he already has served in jail since his arrest.

Richmond was wearing a helmet, goggles and other military-style tactical gear when he attended then-President Trump's “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on Jan. 6. After marching to the Capitol, he joined other rioters in a “heave ho” push against police officers guarding a tunnel entrance.

Richmond carried a police shield into the crowd and then returned to the mouth of the tunnel, where he attacked officers with a retractable metal baton, hitting their shields.

Before leaving, Richmond passed along a wooden board for rioters to use against police as a makeshift weapon. He also carried out office furniture from a broken window.

“He pumped it up in the air several times over his head and shouted, drawing huge cheers from the crowd and spurring the rioters on in their violent attack against police,” a prosecutor wrote.

Richmond was arrested in January and pleaded guilty to an assault charge in August.

Richmond was 20 when an Army court-martial panel convicted him of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced him to three years of military confinement for killing a handcuffed Iraqi civilian near Taal Al Jai in February 2004. Richmond was incarcerated at Fort Sill in Oklahoma and also received a dishonorable discharge from the Army.

The Army said Richmond used a rifle to fatally shoot Muhamad Husain Kadir, a cow herder, in the back of the head from about six feet away after the man stumbled. During Monday's sentencing, Richmond told the judge that a superior officer had told him to shoot the man if he moved again.

“It was a mistake,” Richmond said. “It was a mistake by a young soldier.”

When Army chaplain Justin Roberts sought to make sense of his experiences at war in Afghanistan, it was the life and legacy of another chaplain — Medal of Honor recipient Emil Kapaun, who died in Korean captivity — that pulled him back from the brink and gave him a new purpose.

That’s the central conceit behind “Fighting Spirit: A Combat Chaplain’s Journey,” which opened in 150 theaters nationwide on Nov. 8.

Produced by the Catholic media company Paulist Productions, the 72-minute documentary grabbed the attention of A-list actor Chris Pratt, who signed on as an executive producer and promoted the project from his social media accounts.

The film, though, ventures well beyond the experiences of a single chaplain. In a series of poignant vignettes, it pays tribute to a spectrum of faith leaders in uniform, from the “Four Chaplains” who went down with the SS Dorchester, sacrificing their lives while comforting and helping rescue other passengers; to Charlie Liteky, who carried 20 soldiers to safety in Vietnam, but later renounced his Medal of Honor in protest.

It’s almost as if the filmmakers, with one shot to highlight chaplains on a national stage, couldn’t bring themselves to leave any story out.

The result can feel busy and meandering at times, as Roberts, the ostensible narrator, comes in and out of focus. But the creators of “Fighting Spirit” have a point: the stories of chaplains, those uniformed pastors and leaders who deploy to conflict but carry no weapons, are not as well known as they should be.

“The second that we forget about the sacrifices that were made, and we don’t learn those lessons, a part of our nation’s spirit dies,” Roberts, 44, told Military Times.

Billed as a co-director on the film, Roberts served as an Army chaplain from 2009-2015, deploying with the 101st Airborne Division to Afghanistan in 2010. The footage he captured with the division’s legendary 2/327th “No Slack” battalion would seed his first documentary project, “No Greater Love,” released in 2015.

The new film opens on Roberts at home with his family more than half a decade later, still at loose ends and sometimes despairing from his experience in combat with a battalion that sustained troublingly high suicide rates.

“My goal was to be there with them in the fight while they were facing the enemy,” Roberts says of his soldiers in the film, “so that whenever they faced the internal fight, they might be able to come to me.”

Amid this soul-searching, Roberts sees news: Kapaun’s remains, long missing, have been identified at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. The legendary chaplain was to be returned to his Wichita, Kansas, hometown for a September 2021 funeral vigil and burial. Roberts decides to find meaning in the moment and travel from his home in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to attend the ceremony.

From interviews with those who suffered in the prisoner-of-war camp alongside Kapaun, the film provides a clearer picture of his heroism. Fellow troops recall how Kapaun worked tirelessly to raise the spirits of other prisoners, volunteering to attend every burial and returning with the clothing of the deceased to distribute to the most needy survivors. They describe a man who instilled not only hope, but also dignity in his comrades.

“Father could turn a mud hut into a cathedral by walking into it,” one man memorably says.

Roberts told Military Times he was astounded by the packed-out Hartman Arena in Park City, Kansas, filled to capacity with those paying tribute. Footage of the horse-drawn caisson with Kapaun’s remains traveling down a street lined with unbroken rows of American flags makes up one of the most moving scenes of the film.

“I knew his story, but I didn’t realize that everybody else knew his story too,” Roberts said. “And the heartfelt gratitude that I saw from those people brought me to tears.”

Film director Richard Hull described the discovery of Kapaun’s remains as an unexpected development that took place as he was developing a documentary intended to tell chaplains’ stories.

He likened the evolution of “Fighting Spirit” to that in the Oscar-winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher,” which was originally envisioned as a nature film.

In that film, “it turns out [filmmaker Craig Foster] was going through something in his own life, and they went and interviewed him, and they wove those two [stories] together,” Hull said. “And we kind of took some inspiration from that, and we wove Justin’s journey through the journey of these other stories that had inspired him. And I think that’s really where the movie kind of found its heartbeat.”

Hull described Pratt as a personal friend who quickly signed on to support the film after hearing about it.

“I mean, this project checks a lot of boxes for Chris,” Hull said. “He’s a very vocal military supporter. He’s a very faith-forward guy. He’s somebody that really appreciates good storytelling. And these are surely a lot of good stories, and stories that I think have never been told.”

The film also has support from the military, with Col. Brandon Moore, chief of recruiting and accessions for the Army Chaplain Corps, serving as a co-producer.

Moore was part of a group representing the film who traveled to the Vatican for a 2023 special first screening for Pope Francis. Though a Protestant chaplain himself, the moment moved him.

“[Kapaun] died in a prisoner of war camp, and he never got to meet the Pope or go to the Vatican or be appreciated for what he’s done,” Moore said. “And I felt like in some way … I was doing this for [him].”

As for Roberts, his experience motivated him to take on new projects, including one that took him to Ukraine’s Donbas region for a year for an upcoming documentary.

“I can use my camera to do the ministry I feel called to do, and I can still serve and love people in this way,” Roberts said. “And really, what this enables me to do is to reach millions.”

More information about the film and local screenings can be found at https://www.fightingspiritfilm.com/.

A handful of Marines’ swimming skills were put to the test recently during incidents that required lifesaving measures for those involved.

On Oct. 12, personnel with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 262, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, were snorkeling around Cape Zanpa, an advanced dive spot with steep cliffs, crevices and rocky shorelines on Okinawa, Japan, according to a release.

As the Marines started packing up for the day, Lance Cpl. Jared Beachy, a flight line mechanic from New Braunfels, Texas, looked over the cliff’s edge and saw a couple swimming below.

Marine captains honored for saving a man's life in the Dallas airport

With the sun setting and waves intensifying, Beachy turned to leave with his group when he and the other Marines heard shouting.

“It didn’t sound right,” said Cpl. Robert Escamilla, a UH-1Y Venom helicopter crew chief from Houston, Texas. “Something sounded weird. You can usually tell when something is a little off in a situation, and that kind of triggered something in our heads into doing a little more investigation before we left.”

The group rushed to the cliff’s edge and saw a man standing alone without the woman he’d been swimming with moments earlier. But the Marines couldn’t spot the woman from land.

So, three of them jumped in.

“We were all super tired and drained at this point because we had been swimming for about four hours already,” said Cpl. Joshua Stevens, a native of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and a UH-1Y Venom helicopter crew chief. “But the adrenaline kicked in and it was a matter of it being a real serious situation. I didn’t know if I would be recovering a body or looking for someone who was banged up and we wouldn’t be able to carry her back.”

About 100 yards from the shore, Beachy found the woman in distress. She’d been carried away by the current and was being tossed by powerful waves into the rocky shoreline.

He swam toward her and began to assess her injuries.

“Her knee was hurting and she had light bruises and scratches, but the biggest thing was that she was in shock and couldn’t stand up on her own,” Beachy said.

Beachy and Stevens carried the woman to safety. Meanwhile, Michigan native Cpl. Theron Dubay, a helicopter airframe mechanic, gathered up everyone’s gear and swam ahead of the trio to guide the rescuers to safety.

On Nov. 6, three of the Marines who participated in the rescue received the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal.

The Okinawa-based Marines, meanwhile, were not the only personnel to recently have such efforts recognized.

Lance Cpl. Sean Olson was awarded in September for actions that took place a few thousand miles away and approximately a year earlier than those of his fellow Marines on Okinawa.

On June 16, 2023, Olson made his way to China Walls, a well-known local cliff-jumping spot near Honolulu, Hawaii. The sea was more rough than usual that day, he noticed.

Olson, a former lifeguard with Marine water survival training, had experienced rough water before, but what would happen that day would push the limits of his swimming abilities.

At the popular sea cliff, the administrative clerk with Headquarters and Service Battalion, Marine Corps Forces-Pacific, spotted a young woman “struggling to stay afloat in the rough surf below,” according to the release.

As waves pulsed higher, Olson spotted the woman battling to keep her head above water.

“As soon as I saw her plunge into the water, that’s when I knew it was time to jump in,” Olson said in the release.

Once he hit the water, Olson swam toward the panicking woman as she thrashed in the water. He first worked to calm the woman before beginning the fight against strong currents and crashing waves, eventually guiding the woman back to the base of the cliffs.

With the woman safely back on land, it seemed Olson’s rescue efforts were done. That’s when he spotted a second woman flailing in the water, struggling to stay afloat.

Exhausted, Olson jumped back into the sea, swimming hard toward the woman in distress.

A wave crashed over him, throwing him into the cliffs. He covered his head with his arms as his back scraped across the sharp surface, ripping a deep gash into his flesh.

Despite his injuries, Olson managed to get the second swimmer to safety, according to the release.

For saving two lives, the Marine Corps recognized Olson with the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and a meritorious promotion to corporal.

A career special operations veteran who was featured in a hazy green, night vision photo as the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan has been nominated to pin a fourth star and lead the U.S. Army in Europe.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue’s name was on a list of Pentagon-recommended general officer nominations released Nov. 15. If confirmed by the Senate, he could receive the promotion and take command in the coming weeks or months.

Following decades in the special operations community, Donahue took command of the Army Infantry School and its Soldier Lethality Cross Functional Team in 2017. He then served as deputy director for special operations and counterterrorism for the Joint Chiefs of Staff before taking over in May 2019 as commander of the Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan.

Donahue left that post to command the 82nd Airborne Division in July 2020, then assumed command of XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, in March 2022, according to his official biography.

18th Airvorne at center of major Pacific exercise for the first time

The XVIII Airborne Corps houses some of the most deployed operational units in the conventional Army, including the 10th Mountain Division, 82nd Airborne Division, 101st Airborne Division and 3rd Infantry Division.

But despite those lofty leadership posts, the general public is likely most familiar with Donahue due to the Aug. 30, 2021 photograph. The picture, taken from the back of a C-17 plane on an airfield at Karzai International Airport, shows Donahue boarding the aircraft, in full combat kit, with his M4 carbine at his side.

Donahue’s career has been largely defined by the Global War on Terror, even as he was selected to lead the Army’s operational units into new fights against new and resurfaced adversaries.

The general began his career in the shadow of the Cold War, commissioning as a second lieutenant in the infantry in 1992 following his graduation from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, according to his official biography.

He first served as a platoon leader in Korea before assuming the same role with units at Fort Polk, Louisiana (now Fort Johnson), and Fort Benning, Georgia (now Fort Moore).

As young captain, Donahue was working with Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, then vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when the attacks on 9/11 shook the United States.

Donahue subsequently went to Army Special Operations Command and would go on to complete 18 overseas deployments.

While with the command he served with the secretive 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, also known as Delta Force, and eventually commanded a Delta troop in Iraq and a Delta squadron in Afghanistan, Army Times previously reported.

“I have deployed to combat at every rank, from captain to two-star general,” Donahue said previously.

If confirmed, Donahue would take over the Army’s Europe-based assets and personnel during a critical time as the United States continues in its support of NATO allies and Ukraine through training and military equipment.

Donahue’s recommendation for promotion by the Pentagon came on a list that included 29 Army colonels, who were recommended for promotion to brigadier general, and Brig. Gen. Eugene Cox, who is recommended for promotion to major general.

Lt. Gen. Donahue’s staff did not provide a statement regarding the nomination.

Retired Air Force officer Larry Brock put on a tactical vest and helmet on Jan. 6, 2021, and illegally entered the U.S. Capitol Building, where he walked through the crypt and rotunda and eventually made his way to the Senate floor. About 25 minutes earlier, senators were gathered there to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Brock, a former lieutenant colonel who served in Afghanistan, was carrying a pair of zip-tie handcuffs. He was arrested only four days later. Prosecutors said Brock believed the false conspiracy theory promoted by Donald Trump that he, not President Joe Biden, won the election in 2020. Before the Jan. 6 attack, Brock posted on social media about an insurrection and wrote, “We need to execute the traitors that are trying to steal the election,” The Associated Press reported.

Brock was convicted in 2022 of six crimes, including one felony of obstructing an official proceeding. The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year about that particular felony, determining it must include proof of a defendant trying to tamper with or destroy documents – a decision that affected hundreds of Jan. 6 criminal cases, including Brock’s. He’s currently waiting to hear about the possibility of a retrial.

Now, Brock is among the wave of Jan. 6 defendants asking the courts to delay their cases until after Trump’s inauguration, expecting the incoming president to follow through on promises to pardon them. On the campaign trail this year, Trump referred to the people convicted for their participation on Jan. 6 as “hostages.” At a conference of the National Association of Black Journalists in July, he said they were convicted “by a very tough system.”

“Former President Trump explicitly campaigned on justice for the January 6 defendants,” wrote Brock’s attorney, Charles Burnham, in a Nov. 11 request to push their next meeting about Brock’s retrial from November to after Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Of the approximately 1,400 people who have faced charges for their involvement in the Capitol breach, 222 have military backgrounds, according to data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. That number includes two veterans convicted of orchestrating the attack, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers leader Stuart Rhodes. Tarrio was sentenced to 17 years in prison, and Rhodes received 22 years.

Both far-right extremist groups targeted veterans for recruitment, experts have said. Twenty-one of the veterans and service members charged for their roles on Jan. 6 were part of the Oath Keepers, and 27 were Proud Boys members, according to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

Joseph Biggs, an Army veteran and Proud Boys leader who was charged with Tarrio, is among those seeking relief from Trump. Biggs helped lead other Proud Boys members in their march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, where he tore through a fence and was among a group that pushed through police lines, according to prosecutors.

His attorney, Norm Pattis, wrote a letter that he’s trying to get into Trump’s hands, he told Military Times. In the letter, he argues that Biggs and other Jan. 6 defendants should be pardoned in the same way confederates were pardoned after the end of the Civil War, stating that the “broader public interest would be served.”

“Mr. President, the time for a pardon is past due,” the letter reads. “We ask you to make the pardon of Mr. Biggs a top priority in your administration. We make this appeal directly to you because we believe in the power of justice and the ability of a courageous leader to make a real and sustaining difference in American life.”

The attorneys for both Biggs and Brock claimed their clients’ military service was among the reasons they should receive full pardons. Burnham, Brock’s attorney, wrote in his motion that Brock had served his country honorably as an Air Force officer.

“We would go so far as to say there is not a single January 6 defendant whose treatment by the government was so far out of proportion to his or her service to the country,” Burnham wrote. “It is obvious that Larry Brock will be at the top of any pardon list.”

In his letter, Pattis said Biggs served with distinction and because of his conviction has been “deprived of a military pension that he risked his life in service of this country to earn.”

Some Jan. 6 defendants, as well as their supporters, celebrated Trump’s win on social media sites like Telegram, Gab and X. The group Proud Boys USA posted on Telegram, “FREE ENRIQUE TARRIO!!! FREE ALL J6 PRISONERS NOW!!! PARDON EVERYONE!!!” Another post read, “I cant wait to see all of these prisoners freed and vindicated. Next we take down and penalize everyone involved in persecuting these fine Patriots.”

In a call from jail that aired on MSNBC last year, Biggs said, “I do believe Donald J. Trump will pardon us, and he should. We didn’t do anything. We’re his supporters. We went there when he asked.”

It remains uncertain whether Trump will follow through on his promises to pardon Jan. 6 defendants, or how he might go about it. The Constitution gives the president the power to grant full pardons, which completely expunge legal punishments for criminal convictions. Presidents can also grant commutations, which reduce penalties from convictions.

Presidents can issue sweeping pardons, which grant clemency to groups of people all at once. However, since Trump’s election, his transition team has told multiple news outlets Trump would handle pardons on a case-by-case basis.

Extremism prevention experts have expressed concern about the potential pardons, arguing they could embolden people to commit political violence.

“Pardoning the January 6 participants will make a mockery of our justice system, and it will send the message to his followers that violence is a legitimate response to political outcomes they don’t like,” the Global Project on Hate and Extremism said in a statement.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to [email protected].

A jury in Hawaii has found a Navy wife guilty of manslaughter in connection with the overdose death of a 7-month-old baby in military housing, according to local news reports.

Dixie Denise Villa is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 26, according to a report from Hawaii News Now. Abigail Lobisch was found dead Feb. 24, 2019, in Villa’s house at Aliamanu Military Reservation in Hawaii, where Villa was babysitting her.

An overdose of antihistamine was determined to be the cause of Abigail Lobisch’s death, according to court documents.

The trial, which began Nov. 4, was held in Hawaii’s civilian court system.

In September 2019, in the wake of the baby’s death, the Defense Department’s personnel chief called for officials to investigate reports of unauthorized daycare operations on installations. James Stewart, then-acting under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said officials should take appropriate steps to shut down these unauthorized operations.

DARWIN, Australia — The U.S., Australia and Japan agreed to broaden a series of drills and trainings Sunday, the next step in preparing their militaries to work together in crisis.

To announce the changes, the three countries’ top defense official gathered at a base in Darwin, which sits on Australia’s northern coast and, in a sign of how much their relationship has grown, was once bombed heavily by Japan during the second world war.

A group of U.S. Marines have rotated through the site for almost 15 years, and it’s since become a symbol of Washington and Canberra’s military ties.

Those two countries are now expanding the clique to include Japan.

Starting next year, Tokyo will send a brigade to train with the Australian and American militaries. The first of these exercises will be Talisman Sabre held farther west in Queensland in 2025, though Japan said it would also play a larger role in other drills — building up to a live-fire version of the exercise in 2027.

Australia, meanwhile, committed to the same in exercises held in Japan.

“Because you’ve got the exercises bilaterally, what you’re really doing is accelerating the cooperation between Australian and Japanese forces,” said Brad Glosserman, an expert on the Japanese military who advises the Pacific Forum, a think tank.

The upshot is that the drills will no longer act as a straight line, connecting two militaries. They’ll now look more like a triangle, helping each country learn each other’s habits, language and equipment.

The teaming could help in the event of a crisis, whether from a natural disaster or conflict with America’s top rival, China. In particular, a U.S. defense official said, Japan and Australia will learn from American Marines on how to fight in littorals. These shallow-water environments resemble Taiwan and the South China Sea, where China has grown more aggressive in recent years.

And in the case of Japan and Australia, the exercises will involve two of the region’s most powerful and growing militaries. In the last two years each country has pledged to increase defense spending and buy more advanced weapons. The change has been especially stark in Japan, whose pacifist constitution still restricts its armed forces.

Partnering U.S. allies in the region in new ways has been a hallmark of the Biden Pentagon’s approach to the Indo-Pacific. For almost 70 years, the U.S. interacted with other countries like the hub and spokes of a bike wheel: each had a relationship with America, but not each other.

That model is changing as the U.S. — and a more threatening China — has encouraged such countries to work together. After the reelection of Donald Trump in November, it’s also a sign of American allies clinging to each other amid uncertainty in Washington.

“All of this is about trying to insulate them from the potential disruptions of the Trump administration,” Glosserman said.

Two years ago, Australia and Japan signed a deal that allows their militaries to access each other’s territory. In 2026, Japan may deploy its advanced F-35 fighters to Australia during exercise Pitch Black, its defense minister said Sunday. And the two are also building weapons together, with Japan interested in the second pillar of AUKUS, a submarine pact between the U.S., U.K. and Australia that includes development of advanced technology.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is on his last official trip to the Indo-Pacific. While there, he’s trying to reassure his counterparts that Washington won’t veer from its commitments despite the change in administration.

In part to make the U.S., Japan and Australia relationship more durable, the three countries agreed to a more formal schedule of meetings for their top defense officials. It’s a similar structure to what the U.S. has built with Japan and South Korea, two historic rivals, over the last two years.

“There’s an enormous strategic benefit in us working more closely together,” Richard Marles, Australia’s deputy prime minister and defense minister, said in a briefing here.

Concerning for allies in the region, though, is the chance America doesn’t follow what they see as its strategic interest. Trump’s nominee to replace Austin is Pete Hegseth, a military veteran and Fox News host with no Washington experience.

When asked whether he was confident in Hegseth’s ability, Marles argued just that.

“I approach the prospect of getting to know Pete Hegseth and working with him with enormous optimism,” he said.

Every person who chooses to serve in the United States military has a different and unique experience.

Recognizing this individuality, we as elected officials try to smooth out the highs and lows that impact veterans and service members and assess the potential unintended consequences of our legislative initiatives.

It’s these “unintended consequences” that have become a recurring theme of the Veterans and Military Advisory Council, or VMAC, that I established to help inform me on the issues facing veterans, military service members and their families. The VMAC is an ad hoc and evolving group of elected officials, veterans, concerned citizens and veteran advocates from Northern Virginia (Fairfax, Loudoun, Fauquier, and Prince William Counties) that meets quarterly to discuss state and federal issues affecting veterans and determine how we can affect positive change.

At our most recent meeting, we turned our attention to an inconsistency between the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, and Tricare’s treatment of dependent children.

What military families need to know about Tricare open season

Nationally, the ACA prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage or charging higher rates based on preexisting conditions. In Virginia, Medicaid expansion, finally enacted in 2019, has provided health care access to approximately 500,000 Virginians who previously did not have coverage. The ACA also made a significant step forward in ensuring that young adults have access to health insurance during their transition from teenagers to adult independence.

One of the most widely recognized provisions of the ACA is the requirement that health care plans allow dependent children to remain on their parents’ health insurance until they turn 26. This provision has provided millions of young Americans with a safety net, including my two daughters, allowing them to focus on their education or early professional careers without the additional burden of securing their own, and potentially expensive, health insurance.

Surprisingly, this protection is not extended equally to all American families, particularly those who serve in our military.

Under current regulations, military service members who rely on Tricare for their health care face a different reality. Once a dependent child turns 21, they are no longer eligible for coverage under Tricare Prime unless they are enrolled in a university, in which case coverage can be extended, but only until age 23.

After this, the only option available to them is Tricare Young Adult, which requires premiums and has a deductible. This option is not only more expensive, but it is also more administratively burdensome. The result is a situation where the children of those who have dedicated their lives to serving and protecting our country are left with higher costs compared to their civilian counterparts.

For many military families, the additional premiums and deductibles required under Tricare Young Adult are not just a financial inconvenience — they are a significant burden. This is especially true when compared to the no-cost or low-cost coverage their dependents enjoyed under Tricare Prime.

The disparity is glaring: While civilian children can stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26 without additional costs, military families — who often endure frequent relocations, deployments and other unique stressors — must face a higher financial burden for their children’s health care during this critical, transitional time in their lives.

The solution to this problem is both simple and just: We must encourage our congressional delegations across the nation to extend the same protections to military families that we afford to civilian families under the ACA. Specifically, dependent children of military service members should be allowed to remain on their parents’ Tricare plan until they turn 26, without the need to transition to a more costly health care plan like Tricare Young Adult.

This simple reform would not only alleviate the financial burden on military families but also ensure that the children of service members have the same opportunities for stability and success as other young Americans. It is a matter of fairness, of ensuring that those who serve our nation are not disadvantaged simply because of their service. From a legislative perspective, this should be considered “low hanging fruit” to correct an unintended consequence.

Del. David Reid has represented the 28th District in the Virginia House of Delegates since 2017. He has served for five years as co-chair of the General Assembly’s Military and Veterans Caucus (GAMVC) and is the vice chair of the House Transportation Committee. He served 23 years in the U.S. Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, where he was awarded the prestigious Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal on three occasions, and retired as a commander.

PARIS — Norwegian defense firm Kongsberg won a five-year contract from the US Navy worth around US$900 million to supply anti-ship missiles, in what the company says is its biggest missile contract ever.

The company will provide its Naval Strike Missile, which is being installed on the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships and Constellation-class frigates, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. The fixed-price contract is valued at 10 billion Norwegian kroner (US$896 million), with options that could lift the cumulative value to about 12 billion kroner.

The company will also supply the missile to the U.S. Marine Corps for the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, or NMESIS.

Kongsberg said in September it would open a new missile production facility in Virginia, with the company citing demand for its Naval Strike Missile and the air-launched Joint Strike Missile. That follows the opening of a new factory for both missiles in Norway in June and plans to build a new missile plant in Australia,

“This contract is an example of the strong demand we see for our strike missiles across NATO and allied nations, which is why we this year have opened a new missile factory in Norway and announced two facilities in Australia and the U.S.,” Eirik Lie, the president of Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, said in the statement.

The Naval Cruise Missile was first deployed by the Norwegian Navy in 2012, and has also been selected by NATO partners including Poland, the U.K., Spain and the Netherlands.

The subsonic missile has a range of more than 100 nautical miles or 185 kilometers, weights 407 kilograms and has a length of 3.96 meters or 13 feet, according to Kongsberg. The missile uses a high-resolution imaging infrared seeker for autonomous target recognition, and its sea-skimming capabilities and low signature allow it to survive enemy air defenses, the company says.

A Marine Corps gunnery sergeant and Afghanistan war hero saw his drug conviction overturned this fall by the Navy and Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals.

Gunnery Sgt. Rory R. Hirst’s conviction was based on a urine sample that tested positive for an illegal drug.

But during the course of the appeals process, the case against Hirst revealed troubling shortfalls in how at least one urinalysis lab handled samples of service members being tested for drugs.

A positive drug test result is a career killer for service members, and can lead to a federal conviction, confinement and a dishonorable discharge.

Given the stakes, precision is a must in such settings, and Hirst’s court records raise questions about how at least one such lab is being run.

“The Sailors and Marines who face the devastating consequences of a criminal conviction while being afforded diminished constitutional protections should expect, and this Court will require, substantial compliance with the Department of the Navy’s urinalysis program,” appeal judge Navy Capt. Brian Mizer wrote in the ruling overturning Hirst’s conviction.

“That did not happen here.”

The gunny pleaded not guilty at trial in April 2022 and was initially convicted, reduced in rank to sergeant and sentenced to 90 days in the brig.

Sailor charged with trying to set fire to his urine sample

That conviction was based on a purported positive test for the illegal drug MDMA that happened following the July 4th holiday in 2021.

A lab doctor testified that the drug level found in Hirst’s urine “was so low that he may not have felt the effects of the drug,” and given that low level, the doctor was unable to say whether Hirst’s alleged use of the drug was wrongful, according to the appeal court ruling.

In the September appeal court’s overturning of the conviction, Mizer recounted the recurring, widespread and shoddy practices of the Navy urinalysis lab at Great Lakes, Illinois, that handled Hirst’s sample.

The Marine staff sergeant who oversaw the urine sample processing at the time, referred to in court records only as “SSgt. D.W.,” conceded during trial testimony that paperwork discrepancies were “sloppy” and depended on “how lazy I [was] that day.”

“It’s been very frustrating from our perspective when a client says I did not do this, I would not do this, and then we start pulling the string and we see there are problems with the drug program,” Hirst’s civilian defense attorney, Bethany Payton-O’Brien, told Military Times.

Evidence presented in court showed a pattern of negligence both on the part of the substance abuse control officer, SSgt. D.W., tasked with getting Hirst’s urine sample to the testing lab, as well as the Navy Drug Screening Laboratory at Great Lakes, Illinois, that processed the sample.

Discrepancies noted while SSgt. D.W. was in charge and during the time that Hirst’s sample was processed “totaled more than 31 pages,” Judge Mizer wrote.

“Some of the boxes sent to the [Great Lakes drug screening lab] were missing the urine samples listed on SSgt D.W.’s paperwork, some contained the wrong Unit Identification Code, some had tamper-proof seals that were broken, other specimens had two seals, signatures and dates were missing, some of the paperwork was missing entirely, boxes were improperly packaged, the initials of some Marines didn’t match those on the sample, there were insufficient samples, there were discrepancies in the initials of the purported observers, and there were discrepancies with the DoD identification numbers on the labels of some of the samples,” the judge wrote.

In Hirst’s case, his urine sample was sent to the lab on August 3, 2021, 28 days late by the standard of the Marine Corps’ Urinalysis Program Coordinator’s handbook. The handbook instructs those handling the urine to abide by a 48-hour window from collection to shipping the sample out.

The conduct of the lab also fell into question.

One of the lab technicians handling urine samples was suspended for three days in July 2021, shortly before Hirst’s sample arrived, for “improperly pouring samples” containing MDA, which led to false negative test results.

Navy finds fault in drug testing of sailors at Great Lakes, investigation underway

The drug at the core of the lab technician’s suspension was MDA. MDA is a relative of the drug MDMA, for which Hirst was initially convicted of using.

Other employees at Navy Drug Screening Laboratory Great Lakes were found to have been careless with sensitive materials in the years leading up to Hirst’s wrongful conviction.

All told, 18 lab technicians at Great Lakes were decertified between April 2017 and August 2023, according to documents provided to Military Times by Payton-O’Brien.

Technicians were decertified for a litany of reasons related to improper conduct, including:

-reporting false positive drug results.

-incorrectly labeling steroid batches.

-failure to conduct proper quality control.

-making critical errors during sample review.

-failure to follow review criteria.

-failure to understand review protocol.

-signing other employee’s names on important documents.

-deliberate destruction of important documents.

-demonstrating patterns of careless work.

-mishandling samples.

Several of the technicians were decertified more than once, but appear to have continued working at the lab after their initial decertification, according to a list of decertified techs provided by Payton-O’Brien.

“Many of the military practitioners are oblivious,” said Payton-O’Brien. “They don’t know that the drug lab is having these issues. They don’t know about these de-certifications.”

It remains unclear just how widespread such urinalysis program failures are, or whether anyone at the Great Lakes lab has been held accountable for such errors.

Through the course of Hirst’s appeal hearing, eight fellow Marines spoke of his high character - he rescued a Marine from heat exhaustion while evading Taliban fire - and described him as “superman” and as a Marine Corps rock star.

Several also testified that they were with Hirst during the July 4, 2021, weekend before the urine sample was collected, and did not observe him taking any drugs or appear to be on any drugs.

One Marine lieutenant colonel described Hirst’s courage under enemy fire during the 30-day battle for Marjah, Afghanistan in 2010, which resulted in the gunny receiving a Navy-Marine Corps Commendation Medal with a “V” device for valor.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump stunned the Pentagon and the broader defense world by nominating Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary, tapping someone largely inexperienced and untested on the global stage to take over the world’s largest and most powerful military.

The news was met with bewilderment and worry among many in Washington as Trump passed on a number of established national security heavy-hitters and chose an Army National Guard captain well known in conservative circles as a co-host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend.”

While some Republican lawmakers had a muted response to the announcement, others called his combat experience an asset or said he was “tremendously capable.”

Hegseth’s choice could bring sweeping changes to the military. He has made it clear on his show and in interviews that, like Trump, he is opposed to “woke” programs that promote equity and inclusion. He also has questioned the role of women in combat and advocated pardoning service members charged with war crimes.

In June, at a rally in Las Vegas, Trump encouraged his supporters to buy Hegseth’s book and said that if he won the presidency, “The woke stuff will be gone within a period of 24 hours. I can tell you.”

The 44-year-old Hegseth, a staunch conservative who embraces Trump’s “America First” policies, has pushed for making the military more lethal. During an interview on “The Shawn Ryan Show” podcast, he said allowing women to serve in combat hurts that effort.

“Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat, that means casualties are worse,” Hegseth said.

And while he said diversity in the military is a strength, he said it was because minority and white men can perform similarly but the same isn’t true for women.

By opening combat slots to women, “we’ve changed the standards in putting them there, which means you’ve changed the capability of that unit,” Hegseth said in the podcast interview.

Since then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened all combat roles to women in 2016, women have successfully passed the military’s grueling tests to become Green Berets and Army Rangers, and the Naval Special Warfare’s test to serve as a combatant-craft crewman — the boat operators who transport Navy SEALs and conduct their own classified missions at sea.

While Trump lauded Hegseth as “tough, smart and a true believer in America First,” others were quick to point to the TV personality’s lack of experience. Some suggested he could be Pentagon chief in name only as the Trump White House runs the department.

A number of other names floated as possible defense choices had included Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg; Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; and Robert Wilkie, a former Pentagon official who was head of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Trump’s first term.

“There is reason for concern that this is not a person who is a serious enough policymaker, serious enough policy implementer, to do a successful job,” said Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Hegseth’s lack of senior national security experience makes it more difficult to get Senate confirmation.

“I think Trump was tired of fighting with his secretaries of defense and picked one who would be loyal to him,” Cancian said.

Military officials said the choice came out of the blue. A senior military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said Hegseth’s selection is raising concerns about whether he has the practical experience to manage a large department with an enormous budget.

The Defense Department has a budget exceeding $800 billion, with about 1.3 million active-duty troops and another 1.4 million in the National Guard, Reserves and civilian employees based worldwide.

If confirmed, Hegseth would face a daunting array of global crises, from the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and the expanding alliance between Russia and North Korea to the growing competition with China. There is also the need to upgrade the complex U.S. missile and nuclear defense apparatus and ensure the defense industry can keep up with America’s need for weapons systems.

Smith said that while Hegseth’s combat experience is a plus, running the Pentagon requires a lot of other skill sets, and his nomination will need some time for consideration.

“What’s your plan? What are you going to do? ... How can you assure us that that lack of experience, you know, isn’t going to make it impossible for you to do the job?” Smith said. “I think those are questions that need to be answered over the next couple of months.”

Even some Republicans in the Senate, who would vote on his nomination, had a subdued response.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis called the choice “interesting.” Indiana Sen. Todd Young, who served in the Marine Corps, said, “I don’t know much about his background or his vision, so I look forward to learning more.”

North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said he’s not surprised that Trump chose Hegseth because Trump is “close to him and likes him and trusts him.”

“The guy’s obviously tremendously capable, a great communicator,” Hoeven said. “I look forward to getting to know him better.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Hegseth brings a lot to the table and will be “reform-minded in the areas that need reform.”

Hegseth has been a contributor since 2014 for Fox News, developing a friendship with Trump, who made regular appearances on his show. He is the author of “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”

“With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump said in a statement. “Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy.”

___

Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

BOSTON — A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a Massachusetts Air National Guard member to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to leaking highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine.

Jack Teixeira pleaded guilty earlier this year to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act following his arrest in the most consequential national security case in years. Brought into court wearing an orange jumpsuit, he showed no visible reaction as he was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani.

Before being sentenced, he apologized for his actions.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry for all the harm that I brought and caused,” Texeira said, referencing the “maelstrom” he caused to friends, family anyone affected overseas. “I understand all the responsibility and consequences fall upon my shoulders alone and accept whatever that will bring,” he said, standing as he addressed the judge.

Afterward, Teixeira hugged one of his attorneys and looked towards his family and smiled before he was led out of the court.

The security breach raised alarm over America’s ability to protect its most closely guarded secrets and forced the Biden administration to scramble to try to contain the diplomatic and military fallout. The leaks embarrassed the Pentagon, which tightened controls to safeguard classified information and disciplined members found to have intentionally failed to take required action about Teixeira’s suspicious behavior.

Earlier in Tuesday’s hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Dolan argued that 200 months — or a little more than 16 1/2 years - was appropriate given the “historic” damage caused by Teixeira’s conduct that aided adversaries of the United States and hurt the country’s allies. He also said that recommendation by prosecutors would send a message to anyone in the military who might consider similar conduct.

“It will be a cautionary tale for the men and women in the U.S. military,” Dolan said. “They are going to be told this is what happens if you break your promise, if you betray your country ... They will know the defendant’s name. They will know the sentence the court imposes.”

But Teixeira’s attorney Michael Bachrach told the judge in court Tuesday that 11 years was sufficient.

“It is a significant, harsh and difficult sentence, one that will not be easy to serve,” Bachrach said. “It will serve as an extreme deterrent to anyone particularly young servicemen. That is enough to keep them deterred from committing serious conduct.”

Teixeira, of North Dighton, Massachusetts, had pleaded guilty in March to six counts of the willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. That came nearly a year after he was arrested in the most consequential national security leak in years.

The 22-year-old admitted that he illegally collected some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and shared them with other users on the social media platform Discord.

When Teixeira pleaded guilty, prosecutors said they would seek a prison term at the high end of the sentencing range. But the defense wrote in their sentencing memorandum earlier that the 11 years is a “serious and adequate to account for deterrence considerations and would be essentially equal to half the life that Jack has lived thus far.”

His attorneys described Teixeira as an autistic, isolated individual who spent most of his time online, especially with his Discord community. They said his actions, though criminal, were never meant to “harm the United States.” He also had no prior criminal record.

“Instead, his intent was to educate his friends about world events to make certain they were not misled by misinformation,” the attorneys wrote. “To Jack, the Ukraine war was his generation’s World War II or Iraq, and he needed someone to share the experience with.”

Prosecutors, though, had countered that Teixeira does not suffer from an intellectual disability that prevents him from knowing right from wrong. They argued that Teixeira’s post-arrest diagnosis as having “mild, high-functioning” autism “is of questionable relevance in these proceedings.”

Teixeira, who was part of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, worked as a cyber transport systems specialist, which is essentially an information technology specialist responsible for military communications networks. He remains in the Air National Guard in an unpaid status, an Air Force official said.

Authorities said he first typed out classified documents he accessed and then began sharing photographs of files that bore SECRET and TOP SECRET markings. Prosecutors also said he tried to cover his tracks before his arrest, and authorities found a smashed tablet, laptop and an Xbox gaming console in a dumpster at his house.

The leak exposed to the world unvarnished secret assessments of Russia’s war in Ukraine, including information about troop movements in Ukraine, and the provision of supplies and equipment to Ukrainian troops. Teixeira also admitted posting information about a U.S. adversary’s plans to harm U.S. forces serving overseas.

A Marine Corps recruit fled boot camp earlier this month before being apprehended at the San Diego airport, the Marine Corps said.

The recruit in question was attending boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and was snagged by local law enforcement nearby.

“We can confirm that a recruit assigned to Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego was apprehended by San Diego Harbor Police at the San Diego International Airport on November 4, 2024,” a spokesperson for the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego said. “The recruit was returned safely to the MCRD Provost Marshall’s Office.”

The Marine Corps declined to comment on why the recruit was at the airport in the first place, or the circumstances that led to him leaving basic training.

Recruit escape.
by u/Bearded_Devildog in USMC

The service also declined to name the recruit.

“We take this matter seriously as the safety and welfare of our recruits and permanent personnel is of the highest priority,” the spokesperson said. “In respect to the privacy of our recruits and permanent personnel, no further details will be released at this time.”

The service confirmed that a video posted to Reddit, titled “Recruit Escape,” is of the incident.

The subheading of the video reads: “Recruit from MCRDSD made a break to the airport lmao. We all had the same idea at one point.”

In the video, several San Diego Harbor Police, one in a tactical vest, capture the recruit and place him in handcuffs.

Midway through the video, Linkin Park’s hit 2000 song “In the End” fades in. The camera pans as the recruit is escorted out of the building by the police.

“His DI’s back at the barracks rubbing their hands and licking their lips just waiting,” one Redditor commented.

The Marine Corps sniper community is seeking honor their community’s fallen via a new war memorial.

Members of the USMC Scout Sniper Heritage Foundation have a long-term plan, design and are raising the necessary $5 million it will take to build the Marine Scout Sniper War Memorial at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia.

The team is selling raffle tickets now for its first annual raffle of an authentic Marine M40 sniper rifle used in combat in the Vietnam War.

The rifle and its components are valued at about $15,000. Those interested can purchase raffle tickets on the foundation website. The drawing will be held on Thanksgiving.

The Marine Corps has trained its final 8 scout snipers

Retired Master Sgt. Tim Parkhurst heads the foundation, which is partnered with the Marine Scout Sniper Association, and is trying to appeal to a wide swath of veteran supporters to raise funds for the project.

“Our mission is to remember the sacrifice and honor the legacy of 105 years of scout sniper service,” Parkhurst said. “We feel like your average patriotic American ought to be able to get behind this.”

The names of the fallen will be included on the memorial when completed, and Parkhurst and his team are digging through thousands of personnel records from more than 100 years to identify who served as snipers and who among them died because of combat action.

The project started earlier this year, and the team has nearly 3,000 names, with likely a few thousand more to be added.

Parkhurst estimates that they’ve discovered nearly 250 Marine scout snipers killed in action so far.

The foundation has raised $100,000 toward their project goal. Once the total amount is raised, construction could be completed in under 18 months, Parkhurst said.

Parkhurst joined the Corps in 1986 and graduated scout sniper training in 1991. He later served as a sniper team leader with the Surveillance and Target Acquisition Platoon, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment before briefly leaving the military.

“It was the best time of my life,” Parkhurst said.

Parkhurst rejoined the Corps five years later, ultimately serving 25 years and retiring in 2014.

But he didn’t serve the rest of that time as a sniper, because in the Corps’ infinite wisdom, they made him a parachute rigger.

The master sergeant’s story is a common one among generations of Marine snipers – early training, perhaps a deployment and then it’s time for those snipers to return to their primary jobs.

The job of sniper is not a primary military occupational specialty, and that has ramifications on the work that Parkhurst and his team are doing to honor the fallen scout snipers going back to at least 1918.

“It was never treated like a real job,” Parkhurst said. “It’s something they sort of grudgingly acknowledged they need when the war starts.”

And in this current interwar period, snipers have once again fallen victim to defense cuts.

Marine Corps Times reported that the service held its final Scout Sniper Course graduation at the School of Infantry-East at Camp Geiger, North Carolina in December 2023.

Earlier that year, the Corps announced it would cut scout sniper platoons from its infantry battalions and replace them with reconnaissance scout platoons as part of restructuring the service has conducted in recent years to prepare for potential conflicts with nations such as China and Russia.

Scout sniper training has ceased but other sniper training will continue such as at the service’s Reconnaissance Training Center and the Marine Raider Training Center, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

Because the scout sniper platoons have been treated as an add-on to infantry battalions, their members have often fallen under their respective infantry communities, Parkhurst said.

While the Marine Raiders, Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets and even Recon Marines have an identifiable parent unit, primary MOS and officer and staff noncommissioned officer with the same job, most snipers saw their careers as shooters end at the rank of staff sergeant.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that snipers received dedicated officers to command their units. Before then, Parkhurst said, one of the infantry battalion staff officers would oversee snipers.

CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to clarify some of the fundraising process for the memorial and organizational aspects of past scout sniper units.

On Sunday, Marine veteran Patrick Dailey will shovel dirt at a site in Philadelphia where his nonprofit group plans to build a replica of the birthplace of the Marine Corps – Tun Tavern.

The groundbreaking is a ceremonial step toward Dailey’s dream of seeing Marines hoist tankards of ale there by the 250th Marine Corps Birthday in 2025, if his group can raise $8 million in the coming months,

Such a place would bring Marines to a replica of their birthplace.

Capt. Samuel Nicholas started the Marines at Tun Tavern on Nov. 10, 1775 when he signed up the first volunteers who began a legacy that would later include Iwo Jima, Chosin, Hue and Fallujah, along with nicknames such as “Devil Dog” and “Leatherneck.”

Tun Tavern is also purportedly the location where John Adams and the Naval Committee met in 1775 to write the documents structuring what would become the U.S. Navy, according to foundation research.

Once operational, proceeds from the new Tun Tavern and restaurant will go to charities connected to the organizations with connections to Tun Tavern, Dailey said.

About a decade ago Dailey was at Cookie’s Tavern in Philadelphia where, for years, the owner, a Marine Vietnam Veteran, hosted a street party for the Marine Corps Birthday that saw 2,000 to 3,000 people show up to a hole-in-the-wall bar that could seat maybe a dozen drinkers.

Tun Tavern, traditional birthplace of the Marine Corps, set to get rebuilt

Dailey thought, if thousands of Marines travel from all over the country on their birthday to this bar, what would they do if Philly had a Tun Tavern of its own?

That thought led Dailey to form the nonprofit Tun Tavern Legacy Foundation, naming the future location “The Tun,” which will be a replica of the tavern serving drinks, with an adjacent building called “Peg Mulligan’s Red Hot Beefsteak Club” serving food common to the 1700s-era of the Tun’s history.

The site is at 19 South 2nd Street in Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood, about 250 yards from the original Tun Tavern site.

The project also has the support of a key figure in Marine circles, President and CEO of the Marine Corps Association retired Lt. Gen. Charles Chiarotti, who said previously that a new Tun Tavern would mean that “Marines of past, present and future will have their rightful gathering spot in the very city where the Marine Corps was formed.”

Dailey grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, driving a truck for his father’s business down near the Delaware River, not far from the original home of Tun Tavern.

But he didn’t learn of the famed drinking spot and its place in Corps lore until 1981, when a barrel-chested gunnery sergeant spit out Marine Corps history and facts as Dailey huffed through the early weeks of Officer Candidate School at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.

He’d never heard of the place in all his years near Philly.

“I thought, ‘this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about,’” Dailey told Marine Corps Times. “But you don’t correct a gunnery sergeant in Officer Candidate School.”

Dailey would go on to serve in 1st Marine Aircraft Wing and the 3rd Marine Division from 1981 to 1985 before rejoining civilian life. The former officer worked a nearly 40-year career in accounting and pharmaceuticals and along the way got involved with Marine and community-centered nonprofits.

For the past 20 years, he’s run a small Japanese restaurant and market location in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, less than 10 miles from Philadelphia.

Dailey and his partners, including Rob Brink, the foundation’s board chair and deputy grand master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania Free and Accepted Masons, acquired the land first. They’ve since received all the proper zoning, permits and permissions from the city to begin building once they’ve raised nearly $12 million.

That’s a little more than half of the total price tag of $21 million. The foundation has so far raised $6.5 million. If they’re able to get an additional $8 million, then they can begin construction, Dailey said.

The foundation has received that money from board members and private donations from individuals, federal and state grants. Dailey said he hopes a corporate sponsor with links to the Marine Corps might assist with a larger donation.

The foundation recently received a $1 million challenge grant from a Marine veteran and anonymous donor who will contribute $500,000 once the challenge reaches $1 million and another $500,000 when the challenge reaches $4.5 million, according to the foundation website.

The freemason partnership on the board has its own history.

Historical records show Tun Tavern was first granted its business license in 1686, likely opened for operation as a brewery that served beer to patrons in 1693, Dailey said.

The establishment was likely the first bar that visitors saw when they got off their boats on the Delaware River, the main waterway for ship traffic to Philadelphia.

Taverns in colonial times were centers of commerce, politics, community events and more.

The tavern is the birthplace of Freemasonry in Pennsylvania, Dailey said. The St. George, St. Andrew and Friendly Sons of St. Patrick societies were founded or held meetings in the tavern, according to the foundation.

More deals added at 8:45 p.m. Nov. 9.

Military, veterans and their families know that Veterans Day means much more than a discount or deal at their local eatery or store.

But as the cost of living continues to stretch everyone’s budget, check out the deals below that honor your service.

Our annual list of verified Veterans Day deals is here to help you navigate offers from restaurants, retail establishments and other businesses. If you plan wisely, you could fortify yourself with free breakfast, lunch and dinner while you head to stores with a trove of in-person and online markdowns.

Check back here before Veterans Day, as we update the list. Contact Karen Jowers at [email protected] with suggestions.

Food and Drink

• Another Broken Egg Cafe: Offering active duty and other veterans a free Patriot French Toast and coffee on Nov. 11. Dine-in only. Show proof of service.
• Applebee’s: Offering active duty and other veterans free lunch or dinner from a select menu, Nov. 11. Dine-in only. Also offering a $5 bounce back card for a future visit within a three-week redemption window. Show proof of service.
• Aroma Joe’s: Offering military and other veterans a free 24-ounce beverage on Nov. 11, at its locations across Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida, Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut. Show proof of service.
• Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar: Offering active duty and veterans a free 5-ounce All American Burger with cheese and choice of side, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nov. 11. Show proof of service.
• Bar Louie: Offering active duty and other veterans a free burger Nov. 10-11. Show proof of service. Dine-in only.
• Biscuit Belly: Offering active duty and veterans choice of free biscuit breakfast sandwiches, plus free drip coffee or soda on Nov. 11. Show proof of service.
• BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse: Offering active duty and other veterans a free Chocolate Chunk Pizookie, with no minimum food purchase, on Nov. 11, dine-in. They’ll also provide a coupon for a free appetizer which can be used between Nov. 12 and Dec. 31.
• Black Rifle Coffee Company: Offering military and other veterans a free 16-ounce coffee on Nov. 11 at Black Rifle Coffee Company Outposts (coffee shops). From Nov. 8-11, offering a 25% discount on retail merchandise at those shops. Also Nov. 8-11, BlackRifleCoffee.com is offering a 40% discount for active duty and other veterans throughout the site, with ID.me verification.
• Bob Evans: Offering active duty and other veterans a free meal from a select menu of seven options, on Nov. 11. Dine-in only. Show proof of service.
• Bombshells: Offering active duty and other veterans a free entree on Nov. 11. Other items will be discounted by 20%. Families accompanying these veterans will receive a 20% discount. Veterans also receive a 20% discount year-round. Show proof of service.
• Bonefish Grill: Offering active duty and other veterans a free Bang Bang Shrimp appetizer and a non-alcoholic beverage on Nov. 11. Show proof of service.
• Chick-fil-A: 28 restaurants in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area are offering active duty and other veterans a free chicken biscuit during breakfast hours or a free original chicken sandwich during lunch/dinner hours. Show proof of service.
• Chicken Salad Chick: Offering active duty and other veterans a free meal with drink on Nov. 11. Available to those in uniform, and those who show proof of service.
• Eddie Merlot’s: Offering active duty and other veterans free Eddie’s Prime Cheeseburger with Fries, Nov. 11. Dine-in only. Show proof of service.
• Farmer Boys: Offering active duty and veterans a free Big Cheese burger on Nov. 11, at participating restaurants. Most of the restaurants are located in California, but some are in Arizona and Nevada. Show proof of service; dine-in only.
• Fogo de Chao: Offering active duty and other veterans a 50% discount off Full Churrasco, and three guests will receive a 10% discount on Nov. 11. Dine-in. These Brazilian steak houses are located in a number of states, with a second Washington, D.C. location opening at The Wharf on Nov. 11.
• Friendly’s: Offering active duty and other veterans a free All American Burger with cheese and a beverage, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 11. Dine-in only. Show military ID or honorable discharge document.
• Golden Corral: Offering military and veterans a free buffet meal and drink from 4 p.m. to closing on Nov. 11, their annual Military Appreciation Night.
• Good Times Burgers & Frozen Custard: Offering active duty and other veterans a free Deluxe Cheeseburger Combo, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nov. 11. Dine-in. Show proof of service. Locations in Colorado and Wyoming.
• Happy Joe’s: Offering active duty and veterans a free lunch smorgasbord with drink, or a free small two-topping pizza, Nov. 11. At participating locations only.
• Hard Rock Cafes: Offering active and retired military a free Legendary Burger on Nov. 11. Accompanying friends and family members can receive the always-available 15% military discount.
• Hooters: Offering active and retired military who present proof of service or military ID, one free meal from a menu of five select entrees on Nov. 11, with purchase of a beverage, at participating restaurants. Dine-in only.
• Kolache Factory: Offering active duty and veterans a free kolache and a cup of coffee, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 11. Show proof of service.
• Krystal: Offering active duty and other veterans a free breakfast sandwich from opening until 11 a.m. Nov. 11. Show proof of service.
• Legal Sea Foods: Offering active duty and other veterans free bowl of chowder on Nov. 11, dine in. All locations except airports.
• Logan’s Roadhouse: Offering active duty and other veterans a free meal from a select menu from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nov. 11. Dine-in only, at participating restaurants. Proof of service required.
• Peet’s Coffee: Offering active duty and other veterans a free drip coffee or tea of any size on Nov. 11. Only at Peet’s retail coffee bar locations. Show proof of service.
• Perry’s Steakhouse: Active duty and other veterans receive a 50% discount on dinner-cut pork chop from 4 p.m. to closing on Nov. 11; if dining with a guest purchasing a full dinner entree, the veteran’s pork chop is free. Military ID or proof of service required.
• Pilot: Offering active duty and other veterans and their families a free meal up to $12 on Nov. 11, through Pilot’s myRewards Plus app at participating Pilot, Flying J and One9 Fuel Network travel centers. Get verification of status through ID.me in the myRewards Plus app.
• Playa Bowls: Offering active duty and other veterans a free bowl on Nov. 11, in shop only, and at select locations. Show proof of service.
• QDOBA: Offering active duty and veterans discount of 50% off any full-size entree on Nov. 11 at participating restaurants, with valid military ID. Dine-in only,
• Raising Cane’s: Offering active duty and veterans and their spouses a 10% discount off entire purchase on Nov. 11 when they mention the Hero Discount Program at the register. Show proof of service.
• Red Lobster: Offering active duty and veterans free Veteran’s Shrimp and Chips, on Nov. 11. Dine-in only. Show proof of service. The restaurants offer 10% discount on the check the rest of the year, dine-in, with proof of service.
• Sizzler: Offering active duty and other veterans free lunch from a select menu, from opening until 4 p.m. Nov. 11. All locations except for those in Utah, Idaho and Puerto Rico will participate.
• Starbucks: Offering active duty, veterans and their spouses free tall (12-ounce) hot or iced brewed coffee on Nov. 11 at any U.S. Starbucks location.
• Sullivan’s Steakhouse: Offering active duty and other veterans a free Sullivan’s Signature Angus Burger with Fries, Nov. 11. Dine-in only. Show proof of service.
• Taffer’s Tavern: Offering active duty and other veterans a discount of 50% on plates and handhelds, with valid ID, from Nov. 11 to Nov. 17. Two locations in Georgia.
• Taziki’s: Offering veterans free Grilled Chicken Gyro meal, on Nov. 11, at participating locations. Dine-in only.
• The Greene Turtle: Offering veterans a free meal valued at up to $15 at participating locations with a valid ID on Nov. 11. Dine-in.
• Tim Hortons: Offering active duty and other veterans a free classic donut on Nov. 11. Available in participating restaurants to those in military uniform or with a valid ID.
• Twin Peaks: Offering active duty and retired military a free lunch from a select menu from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Nov. 11, at participating locations.
• Tuscan Brands Restaurants: Offering veterans and their guest a free traditional Italian family style meal from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 11 at the company’s Tuscan Kitchen locations, Tuscan Sea Grill and Bar, and Tuscana Italian Chop House and Wine Bar. These are located in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Veterans must call their local restaurant to make a reservation, or reserve online at www.tuscanbrands.com/veterans-eat-free/
• Wendy’s: Offering active duty and other veterans a free breakfast combo, at participating locations during breakfast hours, Nov. 11. Combo includes any beverage, breakfast sandwich and seasoned potatoes. No purchase required. Notify the crew member at the register or show the WeSalute+ card.
• Whataburger: Offering active duty and other veterans a free 16-ounce hot or iced coffee, starting on Nov. 11 and continuing every day all year.
• White Castle: Offering active duty and other veterans a free individual combo meal or a breakfast combo meal on Nov. 11. No purchase necessary, but military ID needed.
• Yogurtland: Offering active duty and other veterans a 15% in-store discount on Nov. 11. Show military ID.

Recreation

• The Capital Wheel at National Harbor, Maryland: Offering active duty and retired service members a free ride from noon to 10 p.m. Nov. 11. Accompanying family members are eligible for military discount. Show military ID.

Retail

• 4Patriots: Offering active duty and other veterans a free 72-Hour Survival Food Kit for emergency preparedness, on Nov. 11. Contains 20 individual breakfast, lunch and dinner servings and is designed to last 25 years. To receive the free food kit, customers register on the 4Patriots Veterans Day Celebration Event page on Nov. 11 only.
• Academy Sport + Outdoors: Offering active duty and veterans a 10% discount on purchases in stores and online, through Nov. 11. To use the discount online, verify military status with the ID.me buttons on the Shopping Cart page, then paste the promo code into the promo code section on the Shopping Cart page for a single-use redemption. In stores, present military ID.
• Office Depot: Offering active duty and other veterans 25% discount on qualifying regular and sale-priced purchases in Office Depot and OfficeMax stores nationwide, from Nov. 9-Nov. 11. Show proof of service at time of purchase. The stores offer year-round 20% military discount on a qualifying regularly priced purchase.
• Samsung: Through their Military Offers Program, active duty and other veterans and their families can get discounts of up to 30% on phones, tablets, smart watches and other items at Samsung.com. That includes products such as the Tab S10 series, the Galaxy S24 series, Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip6 and Galaxy Z Fold6. Also, veterans enrolled in the WeSalute+ program can get discounts of up to 40% on Samsung products.
• Sleep Number: Offering active duty and other veterans additional 10% discount on entire purchase through Nov. 11, with verification of status from SheerID. Get promo code and additional details at sleepnumber.com/pages/military
• Walgreens: Offering active duty and other veterans and their families 20% discount on regularly priced eligible items, from Nov. 8 through Nov. 11. Available at any Walgreens or Duane Reade drugstore. Show proof of service. Walgreens is also offering free rapid COVID-19 and flu testing for veterans during the fall respiratory season, in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Services

• AutoNation: Offering active duty, other veterans and their spouses a 20% discount on all services in-store at AutoNation locations nationwide, from Nov. 11-16. Also applies to the AutoNation Mobile Service at the customer’s preferred location. Maximum $300 discount. Show proof of service.
• Great Clips: Offering active duty and other veterans a free haircut on Nov. 11, or a free haircut card to use later.
• Take 5 Oil Change: Offers active duty and other veterans a year-round 25% discount on oil changes at participating locations. Show proof of service.
• UFC GYM: Offering active duty and retired military free 30-day access at UFC GYM and UFC FIT locations. To redeem the offer, call or visit a local club, and register by Nov. 30.

What to know before you go

• Check the fine print and call the participating organization to be sure the offer is available at the time you plan to arrive. That’s especially important in these times of supply chain issues and labor shortages.
• Let the host, cashier, attendant, reservation agent or other relevant employee know up front that you want the discount or deal.
• “Free” isn’t always completely free. A free meal doesn’t always come with a drink, for instance. Be prepared to pay for extras such as taxes (and tip). Most restaurants require patrons to dine in for the deal.
• Call ahead to local establishments to be sure they are aware of, and are participating in, national chain programs. Confirm availability and what type of ID is required.
• Not all offers apply to veterans of all stripes. Be sure you are eligible and you have the appropriate ID/paperwork.
• Not all discounts apply to the entire party. Be sure you’re clear whether family members or guests are covered in the discount.
• It doesn’t hurt to ask a company whether they offer a military discount before you book a reservation or order from your waitress. But don’t act like you expect it.

Twenty years ago, on Nov. 7, 2004, a coalition assault force of more than 15,000 troops, mostly Marines, launched a massive attack on the city of Fallujah, Iraq.

Over the next seven weeks they would retake the city, capturing or killing as many as 2,000 insurgents who had controlled the stronghold since April 2004 following the killing and mutilation of four private U.S. security contractors.

But the coalition and Marines did not fight through long days and nights unscathed. The Second Battle of Fallujah — known as Operation Phantom Fury — was the most intense urban fighting of the Iraq War, more even than the initial surge into Baghdad during the 2003 invasion.

The estimated population of Fallujah in 2004 was fewer than 300,000 residents. All but 30,000 fled the city ahead of the fight. Baghdad, meanwhile, had a population of more than 5.7 million.

In the bloody street-by-street, house-by-house fighting, 82 U.S. troops died and another 600 were wounded. Fallujah marked the most intense urban fighting the Marine Corps had seen since the Battle of Hue during the Vietnam War.

And though the November 2004 battle is considered a success, the city would fall approximately a decade later to Islamic State fighters, who held the city until 2016 when they were defeated by Iraqi-led coalition forces.

Today, two decades after Marines entered the hornet’s nest, Fallujah is regarded for its ferocity and the lessons it yields for Marines in a future urban fight. And in 2023, the Navy laid the keel for the future amphibious assault ship Fallujah, named in honor of the Marines who fought in the battle.

“Fallujah has come to represent Iraq to the Marine Corps,” said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel who now serves as a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Politics, media and social media

Public attention and political pressure were major factors in both the first — in the spring of 2004 — and second battles of Fallujah, as calls at the time for more aggressive operations sounded from Washington.

That push resulted in Marines, who had only been in the Fallujah area for two weeks prior to the spring operation, being rushed into the city without proper planning, resources or training.

Marines took the subsequent five months to refit, redistribute and coordinate before launching the second large-scale assault on the city.

Also modified was media coverage of the war. During the first battle the Marines did not include embedded reporters, which allowed insurgents to propagandize anything coming out of the fight to garner outside support. In the second battle of Fallujah, however, the Marines embedded as many as 60 reporters with units to highlight the atrocities being committed by insurgents.

Getting the U.S. side of the fighting out through the media, Cancian said, helped ease pressure on politicians and allowed military leaders to conduct the operation.

Since that time, development of new technology that favors urban defenders, the presence of social media and real-time evolution of urban combat in Gaza and Ukraine have raised the stakes for how the Marine Corps, and the U.S. military as a whole, prepares for another urban fight.

Today’s constant stream of online video, such as battlefield footage regularly posted from Ukraine and Gaza, allows for a flood of disinformation, which could again ratchet up pressure on civilian leadership.

“The Marines were trying to move into Fallujah, a pretty bloody and destructive battle that was on TV. Political leadership blinked and told the Marine Corps to stand down,” Cancian said. “If we’re ever in this situation where you get these images of destruction and death day after day, that creates a backlash and we’re seeing that in Gaza.”

While military leaders today might plan for such challenges with political leaders, Cancian is skeptical if that will even help.

“I say that because politics is a very short term, immediate game,” Cancian said.

He’s not alone in his thinking.

Retired Army Maj. John Spencer, a leading expert on urban warfare who fought in battles in Iraq in 2003 and the Siege of Sadr City in 2008, co-authored a case study of the battle for the Modern War Institute. The study captures the demands of the fight, which still might differ from what an urban, peer adversary fight would look like today.

A single Marine tank company in Fallujah, for example, fired 1,600 main gun rounds, 121,000 7.62mm machine gun rounds and nearly 50,000 .50-caliber machine gun rounds. Most of their targets were within 200 yards.

One Marine weapons company reported that, on a daily basis, each of its six assault teams used an average of six satchel charges, three cases of Bangalore torpedoes and 10 shoulder-launched weapons.

Over the course of the battle, coalition forces fired more than 4,000 artillery rounds, dropped 318 aerial bombs and fired 391 rockets to support ground troops in the city.

Those munitions figures align with Canadian Army doctrine, which estimates urban operations consume four times the amount of ammunition, according to the case study. The same doctrine shows that such fighting can create three to six times the number of casualties and require nearly three times the amount of water and rations per soldier than operations in other terrain.

Lance Cpl. Chris Lowe was one of the Marines in Fallujah and saw firsthand the effects of those rounds, bombs and rockets.

Lowe, then 20 years old, served as a warehouse clerk but was assigned to a security detail with the 5th Marine Regiment’s bomb technicians. He manned machine guns and automatic grenade launchers as bomb techs blasted Improvised Explosive Devices and other hazards all over the city’s cluttered battlefield.

“You’re bound to come across carnage, particularly in our line of work — it happens,” he told Marine Corps Times.

The post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury that Lowe experienced surfaced after the fight, he said, mostly when he got home.

He struggled over the ensuing years, eventually leaving the Marine Corps in 2016. For more than 14 years Lowe has been working with a case manager at the Semper Fi and America’s Fund, which has provided him neurological fitness training and financial assistance.

Despite his post-war struggles, when Lowe looks back on that harrowing experience, he wants people to know how much the battle meant to those who fought it.

“The time spent there, the blood, sweat and tears and even laughter — because there were a lot of really good times, good camaraderie — those memories are going to last forever,” he said. “The best I can do is live for those who cannot come back.”

Preparing for the next Fallujah

Both Spencer and Cancian told Marine Corps Times that they don’t see much preparation in the Marine Corps or the Army when it comes to facing another Fallujah.

“There was a massive battle in the hospital in the first days,” Spencer said. “The enemy [was set up] in a hospital. But I don’t think you could repeat Fallujah II today, based on social media.”

Since the 2004 battle, both commercial and military technology have advanced. Everything from target-recognition software to commercial drones are now accessible to any nation and non-state actors.

But if a future urban fight arises, the Marines will be without one critical tool — tanks. Former Commandant Gen. David Berger discarded tanks from the Marine Corps inventory in 2021.

In the Modern War Institute case study, authors noted that, in the early days of fighting, an armor-backed task force maneuvered through the city rapidly while dismounted Marines stalled following a breach failure.

Cancian argued that, prior to the Marine Corps Force Design changes, which eliminated tanks, the service should have at least preserved an enhanced battalion of six armor companies.

Berger said at the time that if the Marines need armor in the future, the Army can be relied upon.

But both Cancian and Spencer doubt that pairing the two will be that easy.

For one, Spencer said, integrating infantry and armor requires training. Without regular work between Marine infantry units and Army tankers, there’s not much practice.

Spencer noted that time also plays a factor.

Russia’s early struggles in urban fighting in Ukraine came in part from the brief buildup to the invasion, he said. In Gaza, Hamas fighters had decades to lay their defenses.

“The lesson is, if you give them the time to prepare it’s going to be a lot harder to take the city or do it without destruction,” Spencer said.

It’s unlikely the U.S. will have a first go at an urban battle against an adversary such as Russia or China and be able to reset for five months before launching another operation, he said.

Spencer has long advocated, as a partial solution, for both the Army and Marine Corps to create permanent urban training centers, expert staff, training manuals and better gear.

That wide-reaching resolution may not be as feasible with current military priorities and spending, however. Still, adding urban combat planning into military education and pushing leaders to dedicate a portion of their regular training to that environment are good first steps, he said.

But in 2020, the Marines canceled what was supposed to be a five-year-long experiment on urban technology and tactics in favor of developing new formations for its anticipated naval role in the Pacific.

“The Marine Corps has essentially moved on strategically from an urban fight and counterinsurgency,” Cancian said.