Marine Corps News
Marines continue to make female infantry officers, with little fanfare
Women are now making it through the course with a success rate of better than 50%, though the number of volunteers opting to attend remains low.
Marine 1st Lt. Marina Hierl made national headlines in 2017 when she became the first woman to graduate the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course in Quantico, Virginia, earning the 0302 Infantry Officer military occupational specialty in the process.
Not only was Hierl the first woman in an MOS that had been restricted to men just two years earlier; she had also made it through the grueling 13 weeks of IOC, a feat of physicality and endurance that many previously thought was beyond the capability of women.
But since then, even without the press releases and news profiles, women have continued to graduate from IOC in small, but consistent, numbers.
According to data from the last four years provided to Marine Corps Times, women are now making it through the course with a success rate of better than 50%, though the number of volunteers opting to attend IOC remains low. The course attrition and redesignation rate for male officers, meanwhile, has at times been as high as 25%.
Marine gender study reveals importance of ‘explosive strength’
The following are the outcomes for women at IOC since 2020, according to data provided by Marine Corps Training and Education Command spokesman Capt. Jacoby Getty.
- In fiscal 2020, two women attended the course; both did not pass and were redesignated to another MOS.
- In fiscal 2021, five women attended IOC. Four graduated, for a pass rate of 80%. Three received an 0302 infantry officer MOS and one opted to train as a ground intelligence officer.
- In fiscal 2022, seven women attended IOC. Four graduated, for a pass rate of 57%. Three received the 0302 MOS and two went on to train as ground intelligence officers.
- In fiscal 2023, seven women attended IOC. Four graduated, for a pass rate of 57%. All took the 0302 MOS.
- In fiscal 2024, eight women attended IOC; five achieved the infantry officer MOS, for a pass rate of 63%.
As of the end of the fiscal year, Getty said, 12 female 0302 infantry officers are currently serving.
Prior to Hierl’s graduation, 36 female officers had attempted the IOC course over five years, only to wash out through injury or inability to complete requirements or meet standards.
The Marines opened the course to women on an experimental basis in 2012, four years before a decision by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened ground combat specialties to women, allowing female officers to actually hold an infantry MOS.
In 2014, 2nd Lt. Sage Santangelo wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post explaining her experience of dropping out during the infamous Combat Endurance Test on Day One of the course.
“There came a point when I could not persuade my body to perform,” she wrote. “It wasn’t a matter of will but of pure physical strength.”
Santangelo went on to argue, though, that it wasn’t innate ability, but training, that was to blame for the female failure rate.
“I believe that I could pass, and that other women could pass, if the standards for men and women were equal from the beginning of their time with the Marines, if endurance and strength training started earlier than the current practice for people interested in going into the infantry, and if women were allowed a second try, as men are,” she wrote.
While Santangelo never got a second attempt at IOC, her op-ed persuaded then-Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller to allow future female attendees a second shot at the course.
After the first several women graduated IOC, some changes were also made to the program of instruction.
In 2018, officials announced they’d reduce the number of evaluated hikes with combat loads from six to three, and remove passage of the Combat Endurance Test from the list of graduation requirements. At the time, officials said the change acknowledged climbing attrition rates for men as well as women.
With goading from Congress, the Corps has also moved toward a more gender-integrated model of training, most notably at boot camp. The service got rid of its all-female 4th Recruit Training Battalion last year and now trains enlistees in integrated battalions at both of its recruit training locations.
An independent study commissioned by the Marine Corps and published in 2022 contained a host of recommendations focused on strength training and injury prevention, many of which the service has said it’s implementing.
For some women who served in the Marines as trailblazers, seeing women quietly and consistently accomplish a feat previously seen as impossible is gratifying, and also validating.
Riane Moser served in 2010 on a Female Engagement Team in Afghanistan, working as a cultural support and adjunct to a male infantry unit a half-decade before women were technically allowed in the infantry.
Moser said she had confronted differences in strength and physicality between the genders early in her Marine Corps training with tasks like shouldering heavy combat loads. But her FET deployment also convinced her that, with the right training, success was more than possible.
“I do not doubt that there are females who can complete infantry courses,” she said. “I know women who would have been great at it if they had the opportunity 15 years ago.”
Zoe Bedell played a role in women receiving that opportunity to prove themselves. The former officer-in-charge of a Marine Corps FET team, Bedell was a plaintiff in the 2012 lawsuit against the Defense Department that helped lift combat exclusions and open all previously closed jobs to women.
Bedell told Marine Corps Times that the continued progress of women through IOC helped validate her convictions that led to the lawsuit.
“It turns out that this is, in fact, exactly as doable as we thought it was,” Bedell said. “There are real differences. Not every woman is going to be able to do it, but we’ve always said not every man is going to be able to do it either. So, it’s a real improvement and really strengthens everyone involved.”
The small numbers of women attempting IOC on an annual basis don’t worry Bedell, she added, as her desire was simply to grant female Marines an option and a pathway that had previously been denied them.
“I’m very relieved to see that ... some women do want this. And the fact is, that men always got to choose what they wanted, and now women do, too,” she said. “I’m glad to see that the Marine Corps is at least making some moves to live up to what I think it should have been doing as an institution all along.”
Marine gender study reveals importance of ‘explosive strength’
A major predictor of training injury and attrition was reduced muscular power and lower relative peaks in explosive strength, the study found.
Two years after the publication of a wide-ranging independent study on best practices for integrating men and women at Marine Corps boot camp, the service has yet to implement a key recommendation: integrating the genders at the platoon level in training.
But researchers say certain findings about how to test and build fitness for injury prevention may work their way into future service protocols.
The 700-page, $2 million study, commissioned by the Marine Corps and completed by the University of Pittsburgh, was completed in summer 2022 and released to Military Times several months later in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
This summer, after a lengthy publication review process, the study’s key findings were published in a special issue of the journal Military Medicine.
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One major observation that emerges — applicable to both genders — is the value of testing “explosive strength” to assess overall fitness and predict future military performance.
In the recruit training study, which involved 584 volunteer Marine recruits — 183 female, 401 male — at Marine Corps Recruit Depots Parris Island, South Carolina, and San Diego, researchers collected “baseline data” on factors they believed might predict attrition or injury before tracking the recruits through training.
One risk factor researchers quickly pinpointed isn’t terribly surprising: cigarette smoking. In the population studied, smokers were over 110% more likely to drop out of training than non-smokers.
And this contrast may be about more than the effects of smoke on young recruits’ lungs; researchers said smoking may be a top-off to other behavioral or psychosocial factors, “such as risk taking or resistance to authority.”
The other major finding researchers identified is specific to physical training: a major predictor of training injury and attrition was reduced muscular power and lower relative peaks in explosive strength.
The Pittsburgh team studied these factors by applying a pair of physical tests at the start of the research period. The first of these tests was a “countermovement jump,” in which participants placed their hands on their hips and attempted to jump “as high and fast as possible” for three peak efforts in a row.
Their efforts were judged not only in the height achieved in the jumps, but also in relative peak power and force of deceleration, assessed by software readings from “force plates” recruits stood on during the exercise.
The second test was an “isometric mid-thigh pull,” also done on top of the force plates. For this test, recruits were told to grip a steel testing apparatus simulating a heavy weight and “pull as hard and fast as possible” for five seconds at a time. After warmups and familiarization, recruits performed this test for two reps.
Notably, these tests do not precisely replicate anything in the existing standard Marine Corps fitness assessments. The Marine Corps physical fitness test includes pushups or pullups; planks for time; and a three-mile run or equivalent rowing session.
The service’s combat fitness test, meanwhile, contains more power and agility elements, including maximum reps on lifting a 30-pound ammunition can and a maneuver-under-fire event with a shuttle run, grenade throw and agility course in addition to a half-mile run in battle dress uniform.
Ahead of boot camp, under current standards, Marines must pass an “initial strength test” that more closely resembles the PFT. They perform maximum-repetition pull-ups or push-ups, crunches or planks, and a 1.5-mile run. Ammo can lifts are added for recruits planning to enter a ground combat military occupational specialty.
Though the jump and pull tests introduced by the Pittsburgh team are not as physically depleting as the Marines’ current assessment battery, researchers found the exercises to be highly predictive of injuries and attrition.
A recruit whose peak power was lower and who had a shorter deceleration period was more likely to sustain a lower-extremity injury in training, they found.
Conversely, for each “unit increase” in peak power, likelihood of injury went down more than 8%. Recruits who took longer to reach peak force and less time to decelerate were more likely to drop out of training at a rate of 2% per each unit change, they found.
Notably, the research also confirmed that subjects’ performance on these tests can improve with training.
While female recruits are still significantly more likely to sustain musculoskeletal injuries, or MSIs, than their male counterparts, it remains a Corps-wide problem. The study found these injuries are estimated to cost the Corps $111 million and 356,000 lost duty days each year.
“We advocate for neuromuscular training programs to bolster strength and power, integrated nutrition and exercise strategies for optimal body composition, and support for smoking cessation to alleviate the incidence of MSIs and curtail attrition,” the study concluded. “Effectively addressing these risk factors is pivotal for diminishing the rates of MSIs and attrition among recruits, thereby enhancing overall military readiness and operational efficiency.”
In a September round-table interview with the study’s authors, Bradley Nindl, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Neuromuscular Research Laboratory/Warrior Human Performance Research Center, said he believed the explosive-movements tests could be adapted away from the sophisticated pressure-plate setup so they could be performed anywhere.
“At the end of the day, it’s something that you can take from the laboratory to the field,” he said. “So, I do think you’ll see more and more studies for the military, specifically, assessing performance using these two technologies.”
Karl Friedl, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine and a guest editor on the study, gave credit to the Corps for incorporating lifting, carrying and pull-ups, all of which require musculoskeletal power, in their existing fitness evaluations. He said further expansion of explosive-strength assessments may already be in the works.
“The Marines are actually considering some kind of jump test that Marines might be able to do on a regular basis voluntarily and track on their own, to track their fitness over their whole career,” he said. “They’re still considering those sorts of technologies they’re always looking for.”
A spokesman for Marine Corps Training and Education Command, however, said not to expect any near-term changes to the Corps’ standard tests.
“No changes are planned for the PFT or CFT,” Maj. Hector Infante told Marine Corps Times. “Jump exercises and other power development exercises do occur in entry level training and at other parts of the training and education continuum and have for some time.”
That said, he indicated the strength concepts highlighted by the study are already making their way into less visible aspects of recruit training.
“USMC human performance policies and programs are in a constant state of analysis, assessment, and modification if warranted,” Infante said. “UPitt’s recommendations to enhance the sequencing of training progression in terms of frequency, duration, intensity, and timing have been incorporated into entry level training.”
US needs more AI investment, not just guardrails, defense experts say
Defense and industry officials said the White House's AI policy memo should be accompanied by greater investment in enabling infrastructure.
New White House AI guidance offers a solid framework for safely using the technology, but there needs to be more investment in the enabling infrastructure to better harness AI’s national security potential, Defense Department and industry leaders said this week.
President Biden issued a first-of-its kind memorandum Thursday meant to provide guidance for national security and intelligence agencies on how to effectively and responsibly use AI to further American interests.
“If the United States Government does not act with responsible speed and in partnership with industry, civil society, and academia to make use of AI capabilities in service of the national security mission — and to ensure the safety, security, and trustworthiness of American AI innovation writ large — it risks losing ground to strategic competitors,” the document states.
Alex Miller, chief technology officer for the Army’s chief of staff, said he appreciates the White House’s leadership on the issue, but he’s concerned a lack of access to and funding for core, enabling technologies like cloud storage and computing power is slowing down the Defense Department’s integration of AI tools.
“We haven’t done all the infrastructure work to set up the core technologies to do AI at scale,” Miller said at the Military Reporters and Editors conference. “If we’re really serious about it, there is a lot more investment we should be making at a national level.”
Matt Steckman, chief revenue officer at Anduril, advocated for a more robust national push to make sure the U.S. leads competitors like China on AI adoption.
“We need a national-level response,” said Steckman, who spoke on a panel with Miller. “I’m hoping this memo is the start of it, but I would go way, way further in order to get ahead of everybody else as fast as we probably can.”
In a briefing Thursday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan acknowledged “critical gaps” in AI research and development funding. He said the Biden administration will work closely with Congress to increase funding for innovation along with the other requirements in the memo.
“We’ve received strong bipartisan signals of support for this from the Hill,” he said. “It’s time for us to collectively roll up our sleeves on a bicameral, bipartisan basis and get this done.”
Building trust
Throughout the document, the White House stresses the importance of building a level of trust in artificial intelligence and calls on national security agencies to implement guardrails to ensure it upholds laws regarding civil rights, human rights, privacy, and safety.
Organizations that leverage AI must use it in a way that aligns with “democratic values,” the document states.
That means designating trusted sources that government agencies can rely on for AI-related inquiries, investing in workforce training, creating standards for evaluating the safety of AI tools and ensuring systems adhere to federal laws around equity, civil rights and consumer protection.
“Artificial intelligence holds extraordinary potential for both promise and peril,” the memo states. “Responsible AI use has the potential to help solve urgent challenges while making our world more prosperous, productive, innovative, and secure. At the same time, irresponsible use could exacerbate societal harms such as fraud, discrimination, bias, and disinformation.”
The document calls for extensive analysis related to fostering a robust AI talent pool, assessing the competitiveness of private sector AI firms in the U.S. and understanding existing barriers to establishing key AI infrastructure.
It directs the Director of National Intelligence to work with DOD and other federal agencies to identify “critical nodes” in the AI supply chain and craft a regularly updated plan for mitigating risk to those areas.
DOD and the intelligence community should also establish a working group with a wide range of responsibilities — from establishing metrics for assessing AI safety and effectiveness to accelerating AI acquisition efforts to ensuring the U.S. has a competitive AI industrial base.
Marines score aviation firsts with F-35 squadron, drone test and more
A new East Coast F-35 squadron and key Valkyrie drone test mark significant steps in the Corps's push toward more nimble and responsive air combat power.
The Marine Corps recently notched a series of aviation firsts with an advanced drone under development and its newest jet, as the service works toward achieving more nimble and responsive air combat power.
The Corps’ XQ-58A Valkyrie drone completed a test flight last week at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, marking the platform’s first integration with other military branches, according to a Marine Corps release.
“The flight focused on the use of tactical data links to enable digital communication between the XQ-58A and an airborne four-ship of F-35Bs from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 214 and other joint aircraft,” said Col. Derek Brannon, branch head for the Cunningham Group, deputy commandant for aviation.
Marines work with new ships, interceptors and drone platforms
Those tests are how the Corps aims to team crewed aircraft with uncrewed aircraft.
The Valkyrie is the service’s test platform for new technology and concepts as the Corps pursues a central node for commanding and controlling battlefield assets.
The drone acts as a sensing platform that collects and sends back targeting data to fifth-generation aircraft such as the F-35B and F-35C, the Corps’ most exquisite — and newest — aviation asset.
The Corps first deployed the F-35B Lightning II to combat in 2018. The service has since worked to procure variants of the F-35, build out squadrons and replace the legacy F/A-18 Hornet and AV-8B Harrier.
Also, earlier this month, Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 533 became the second East Coast operational F-35B Lighting II squadron and the first such squadron aboard Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina.
Until now, the only other similar F-35 squadron on the East Coast has been the service’s training squadron.
Lt. Col. Zachary Hartnett, commander of Squadron 533, said the aircraft’s arrival at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort signals a “new era” in how the service employs the advanced aircraft.
The F-35 combines the capabilities of the Hornet and Harrier while adding a suite of reconfigurable sensor platforms, which touch all of the ground, maritime and other aviation assets the service uses as part of its combined arms approach to warfighting.
On the other side of the country, Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 211, also an F-35B Lightning II unit, out of Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona, integrated the aircraft on amphibious assault ships.
Beginning in April, the unit trained with the flight deck crew of the America-class amphibious assault ship Tripoli and Marine crews from tiltrotor and rotary wing squadrons within the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing.
That work culminated in the service marking aviation certification for day and night operations aboard the assault ship, which is a crucial step for specialized aircraft such as the F-35 to operate in the manner and mode the Marines expect in a disparate Pacific fight.
Practicing this teaming helps the various pieces of the larger aviation-maritime team learn how to operate ahead of a real-world conflict, officials said.
“The flight deck is very dynamic and can be a dangerous place, so it is imperative that we ensure the personnel on the deck are trained and qualified to safely operate around the aircraft,” said Maj. Courtenay Franklin, an F-35B pilot and aviation safety officer with Squadron 211.
In another significant milestone for Marine aviation, two Marines recently turned to 3D printing to improve aviation maintenance.
In July, the Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 13, also in Yuma, encountered a critical shortage in reamers, a precision cutting tool critical for aviation maintenance, according to a release.
A combination of the reamers’ long procurement times and the limited lifespan threatened to stall maintenance, training and operations of Yuma-based aircraft, officials said.
Staff Sgt. Nicholas Bevan, an airframes technician, and Sgt. Landon Boroday, an aviation machinist, brainstormed a solution using 3D printing to develop a high-performance reamer that extended the tool’s lifespan by 300%.
The pair developed a process by using chopped carbon fiber strands and high-temperature resin instead of the usual high-performance thermoplastic known as Torlon, which is normally used in reamer production.
“Torlon is a high strength, highly abrasive material that doesn’t damage the aircraft structure but is still abrasive enough to remove corrosion from the aircraft,” Bevan said.
Boroday spearheaded the procurement of two Markforged X7 industrial 3D printers, which allowed the two Marines to create the reamer solution.
“I got the information on which type of reamers the supply section was ordering, I did the math, and figured out it can cost less if we print them internally,” Boroday said.
The move cut maintenance costs involving reamers by half to about $15 and reduced procurement time from a three-month wait to delivering the tool on the same day, according to the service.
Overall, the reamer solution saved the logistics unit $10,000 in tool procurement and reduced aircraft downtime by nearly 20% over a three-month period, officials said.
Maj. Gen. James Wellons, 3rd MAW commander, awarded the two Marines the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for their accomplishment.
“Their ability to develop solutions at the tactical level not only saves resources but keeps our aircraft mission-ready,” Wellons said.
B-2 stealth bomber completes maintenance in record time
A B-2 stealth bomber is ready to fly again after finishing its maintenance nearly 100 days ahead of schedule.
The B-2 stealth bomber “Spirit of Nebraska” set a new maintenance record, the Air Force announced Monday.
The bomber is ready to stalk the skies after its scheduled tune-up finished 91 days ahead of schedule on Oct. 15.
Before the new record, the bombers took 470 days for programmed depot maintenance, or PDM, which occurs every nine years and focuses on repairing the bomber and its stealth materials.
This time around, “Spirit of Nebraska” only took 379 days, thanks to updates to the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Bombers Directorate made to the approach.
“Bringing these jets into PDM, getting the work done quickly, and delivering them back to the warfighter early is a big deal,” said Col. Francis Marino, a B-2 system program manager who serves in the Bombers Directorate.
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The Directorate reduced maintenance time by bumping the fuel inspection up earlier in the process so it takes place at the beginning of the repair.
“In the past, if an inspection identified a fuel leak, the team would have to pull parts and materials back off the aircraft, repair the leak, and redo previous work, often causing a 45-day delay,” the Air Force said.
The Air Force also began conducting preinspections before the aircraft underwent maintenance, which allowed the service to identify problems earlier.
“Until the B-21 is fielded, the B-2 is the world’s only long-range penetrable strike bomber and the only aircraft that can do what we need it to do today,” Marino said.
Marino noted it’s important to continue to invest in the bomber, especially as adversaries constantly update their weaponry across the electromagnetic spectrum.
The first B-2 was rolled out in 1988, and its first flight followed soon after on July 17, 1989. The bomber, which can skate through enemy defenses undetected due to its reduced radar signature, is capable of delivering lethal munitions, including nuclear warheads.
There are currently 20 B-2 bombers in circulation, with one of them being a test plane.
Federal employees should retain rights to reservist differential pay
The government's stance in a pending Supreme Court case would financially harm reservists employed by the federal government, writes Hampton Dellinger.
Members of our armed services, including reservists, risk their lives to keep Americans safe. This sacrifice should not come at the added cost of lost wages, particularly when they work for the same employer — the federal government — as both civilian employees and part-time members of the military (here, “reservists” and “reserves” include both the National Guard and military reserves).
Federal government employees constitute a vital part of our military reserves, with up to 20% of the total one million reservists employed by the executive branch as civilians, according to a 2024 RAND report.
Congress enacted a “differential pay” statute to support federal workers called to arms. Under the differential pay law, employees — in this case, reservists — get paid their full (higher) salary from the federal government and do not have to incur a pay cut when they serve in uniform. Pursuant to the law, federal employees in the reserves are entitled to differential pay when “order[ed] to perform active duty in the uniformed services” in different scenarios, including “during a war or during a national emergency declared by the President or Congress.”
Pending before the Supreme Court is Feliciano v. Department of Transportation, a case about the interpretation of the differential pay statute. The Department of Transportation (DOT) argues that the law should be construed narrowly by requiring reservists to demonstrate not only that their service was performed “during” a war or national emergency, but that it was also “connected” to such war or national emergency.
I have concerns with the government’s interpretation. By limiting which federal reservists are entitled to differential pay, DOT’s position will have detrimental financial effects on brave federal employees and their families.
I am speaking out because the agency I lead, the Office of Special Counsel, enforces the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) as it applies to federal employees. The purpose of USERRA is to protect military personnel from civilian employment discrimination and ensure that they get their jobs back after service as if they had never left. The law protects the non-military professional lives of those who serve by minimizing disadvantages to their careers and ensuring their prompt reemployment after deployment. The law also seeks to encourage uniformed service. Notably, Congress intends that the federal government be a “model employer” under USERRA in seeking to reacclimate military personnel to their civilian lives.
But caring for their return is only part of the job. It also matters that military personnel do not suffer financial hardship while they are serving. This is where the differential pay statute comes in. Designed to maintain the financial health of reservists, the differential pay statute seeks to ensure that workers called to arms are paid as much as they receive during their federal civilian employment — that is, that they don’t suffer a loss of income by serving. This view — shared by petitioners, members of Congress and veterans’ groups — is consistent with other laws designed to protect service members like USERRA. And it is something that many private companies already provide to their employees who serve.
For over 80 years, the Supreme Court has held that statutes concerning service members should be “liberally construed to protect those who have been obliged to drop their own affairs to take up the burdens of the nation,” aiming to “benefit … those who left private life to serve their country in its hour of great need.” Under this canon, where statutes concerning reservists and veterans are open to multiple interpretations, they should be read “in the beneficiaries’ favor.”
Earlier this year, in Rudisill v. McDonough, a majority of the Supreme Court affirmed the canon’s continued vitality. Where the statute is “ambiguous, the … canon … favor[s]” the service member, the court concluded. In the present case (and much like the court’s approach in Rudisill), where the differential pay statute is possibly open to several interpretations, I believe it should be interpreted in favor of reservists — providing a more expansive view of the benefits afforded to them, not less.
Congress’s intent at the time the differential pay statute was enacted further supports this view. Sen. Richard J. Durbin, who co-introduced the underlying act in 2001 with then-Sen. Barbara Mikulski, encouraged Congress to “provide … reservist employees with financial support so they can leave their civilian lives to serve [the] country without the added burden of worrying” about the financial well-being of their families. “They are doing so much for us; we should do no less for them,” he said.
Sen. Mikulski added, “[W]e need to … close the gap between the income [reservists] are leaving behind and the country they are working to defend.”
In sum, the pro-military benefits canon and congressional intent lead me to the conclusion that the differential pay statute should be read to ensure that all civilian federal employee reservists who serve are granted differential pay whenever a war or national emergency is ongoing.
The federal government should not impose two different salaries on the same employee. If the Supreme Court does not rule in the federal employee’s favor, I urge Congress to act, again, to protect our service members and not add to their sacrifice.
Hampton Dellinger was confirmed by the United States Senate to head the Office of Special Counsel in March 2024. OSC’s military-related responsibilities include working with and protecting whistleblowing federal employees at the VA, DOD and other agencies, plus ensuring civilian workers’ reemployment rights are protected after their deployments and reserve duties are fulfilled.
Marines tackle barracks repairs with elbow grease, outside expertise
The cleanup and repair at Camp Pendleton is an early step in fixing the Corps' decades-long barracks problems.
Marines at Camp Pendleton, California, are pairing up with building maintenance experts to tackle barracks repairs as part of a two-week standdown to address unaccompanied housing issues across the base.
Called “Operation Clean Sweep,” the event, which began Oct. 16 and runs until Oct. 30, is an early step in the Corps’ long-term effort to repair, restore and build out better housing for Leathernecks and their families force-wide, according to a Marine Corps release.
Deferred maintenance and funding shortfalls have plagued Marine housing for decades, leading to “wall-to-wall” inspections of the Corps’ more than 60,000 barracks rooms earlier this year along with Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith’s launch of a barracks overhaul initiative dubbed Barracks 2030.
Marines implement new QR code system to report barracks maintenance problems
As part of the overall initiative, the Corps will consolidate Marines in the better buildings and demolish the worse ones, hire professional barracks managers and increase funding for barracks restoration.
Assistant Commandant Gen. Christopher Mahoney previously said those inspections were the “baseline” for understanding where the Corps should focus its efforts.
“None of this is going to happen overnight,” Mahoney said. “But this inspection is one of many first steps.”
The “Barracks 360 Reset,” which includes Operation Clean Sweep is a local initiative between I Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Corps Installations-West to address immediate issues as the Corps works on its larger Barracks 2030.
The Barracks 360 Rest seeks to address some low-hanging fixes by pairing experts in areas such as drywall repair, window screen replacement and air conditioning installation with Marine staff at the West Coast base to identify and make these minor repairs.
I MEF and MCI-West are investing nearly $4.2 million in housing maintenance and repairs.
More than half of that funding, or $2.2 million, was spent for a “surge” to address backlogged maintenance requests, according to the statement. The remaining dollars were spent on air-conditioning units to be delivered in the coming months.
In addition to the spending and repairs, the Corps has identified housing rights and responsibilities and minimum acceptable standards for barracks rooms in a “resident’s guide.”
Staff at Pendleton held town hall meetings ahead of “Operation Clean Sweep” to educate residents on barracks upkeep and available resources.
Navy Seabees will work with Marines and sailors on self-help projects such as minor room repairs, according to the release. The Corps hired contracted civilian labor to reduce the maintenance backlog on the installation.
In a separate effort aimed at improving barracks conditions, the Corps launched the QSRMax system in July that allows Marines to submit maintenance requests to USMCMax through a QR code on their phone. QSRMax then routes the request to barracks and building managers on the base, Marine Corps Times previously reported.
Marine housing has deteriorated as the Corps prioritized spending on weapons and training over the past two decades during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A 2023 Government Accountability Office report found “mold, dysfunctional plumbing, and poor heating and cooling” in Marine barracks.
An estimated 87,000 Marines live in barracks, Maj. Gen. David Maxwell, head of Marine Corps Installations Command, wrote in a February Marine Corps Gazette article.
Maxwell noted that 17% of the Corps’ 658 barracks buildings were listed as in “poor or failing condition.”
As of March, an estimated 17,000 Marines, or 20%, live in barracks that fell short of military standards regarding privacy and room configuration, according to the GAO report.
The Corps’ “wall-to-wall” inspections conducted earlier this year found half of all barracks rooms were “partially mission capable,” which means the rooms were deficient in at least one of the regulated living standards, Marine Corps Times previously reported.
At the annual Modern Day Marine conference in May, Smith addressed the decades-long shortfalls.
“So, again, I can’t apologize for previous generations of Marines to prioritize training and equipping over quality of life,” he said. “But now the tide has to turn, and we have to get back to quality of life.”
In recent years, the Corps has spent an average of about $200 million annually on barracks maintenance.
The Corps requested $274 million in its fiscal 2025 budget to address barracks conditions, a $65 million increase over fiscal 2024. The service’s requested total fiscal 2025 budget is $53.7 billion.
However, according to an internal memo obtained by Marine Corps Times in January, the service estimates it will need about $1.5 billion each year to bring all its barracks up to “good/fair” condition.
The Corps’ deferred maintenance amounts to more than $15.8 billion, according to Navy budget documents.
But catching up requires smart strategies for the money the Corps does have.
“The Marine Corps cannot overcompensate with significant sums of money that cannot be spent smartly and risk investing in the wrong initiatives because it must spend money now,” Maxwell wrote in the Marine Corps Gazette article.
Veterans urge Americans against political violence ahead of election
The Committee for Safe and Secure Elections created the PSA in response to increased threats against election officials leading up to November.
In a public service announcement that first aired Tuesday, local election officials and retired military officers urge Americans to not interfere in the voting process or engage in political violence this Election Day.
The Committee for Safe and Secure Elections created the PSA in response to increased threats against election officials leading up to the presidential election on Nov. 5.
Violent threats have been on the rise since 2020, when former President Donald Trump began criticizing the people who administer elections and making unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
In the PSA, retired Army Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess and retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Marty France urge the U.S. population to not give into the false rhetoric about elections being unfair.
“I would say to voters as we look at the current environment we find ourselves in, we are a nation of values, we are a nation of laws. And we need to allow our election officials to do their jobs,” said Burgess, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
A Brennan Center poll of election officials found in May that 38% of officials had experienced threats, harassment or abuse for doing their jobs.
Widespread threats prompted the Justice Department to establish an Election Threats Task Force in 2021, and on Monday the department announced it would set up a special hotline for people to report harassment or other types of voting interference. The hotline — (888) 636-6596 — will become available Saturday and remain open until Nov. 8.
Carly Koppes, the county clerk and record in Weld County, Colorado, is one of two election officials who participated in the PSA. Koppes has been working local elections for 20 years, and November will mark her sixth presidential election.
“The atmosphere going into this one is definitely more heightened and intense,” Koppes told Military Times.
Before 2020, Koppes didn’t hear from many people who were curious about how elections work. But in the four years since, she’s engaged in thousands of one-on-one conversations, group presentations and tours to try to alleviate concerns and push back against incorrect claims, she said. Most of the time, the conversations are successful in giving people renewed trust in the voting process, she added.
Koppes hopes her participation in the PSA will help remind Americans that election workers are people who live in the communities where they work, and not “somebody behind a curtain pulling strings.”
It helps to have the public support of veterans, she said, because they’re widely perceived as trusted and respectable. Koppes’ husband is a veteran, and several veterans volunteer to work the polls in her county, she said.
“It really gives me an extra boost in my backbone to stand firm against all of this, and to be able to know I have some extremely high integrity, strong people that are supporting me in my role,” Koppes said. “I feel very appreciative for the veterans who have decided to come out and support us, because I do believe veterans voices are some of the most respected in our society.”
Disinformation creates ‘precarious year for democracy,’ experts warn
One of the veterans in the PSA, Gen. France, said in the video, “Condoning, inciting or participating in political violence is really the threshold between a free and fair democracy and authoritarianism. Attacking and threatening election officials and their families happens in war-torn countries, not America.”
France was motivated to become involved after seeing the attacks on election workers following the 2020 presidential election, he told Military Times.
“If nothing else, I did this out of empathy and support for the election officials that are doing such a difficult job, made more difficult by extremists who think it’s their role to intimidate and even harass them,” France said.
Service members’ oaths to the Constitution should extend after their military service and include defending the country’s democratic institutions, France added.
He encouraged other veterans to help and suggested they start by talking to their friends and families about their news consumption. Academics warned this summer that a proliferation of websites were mimicking the appearance of real news organizations and targeting U.S. voters with disinformation.
One Iranian-linked website was discovered earlier this month to be attempting to stir up antidemocratic sentiments among veteran voters, specifically.
“Anything I can do to tone down the rhetoric concerning election officials and the threats against them — anything I can do to help support the validity of safe and secure elections — I want to do,” France said. “This should not be a partisan issue. Our elections are safe, they are secure, and we can’t allow doubt and intimidation to creep into the process.”
This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to [email protected].
Two service members wounded in raid on ISIS leaders in Iraq
The two are in stable condition after the latest in a series of raids on the terrorist group.
Two American service members were wounded Tuesday in a series of raids with the Iraqi military that killed at least seven ISIS operatives, U.S. Central Command announced.
The raids, following earlier strikes in the area, targeted senior leaders of the terrorist group and took place in central Iraq. The two American service members were wounded while “assisting Iraqi forces with site exploitation” according to CENTCOM, which added that the troops were in “stable condition.”
On Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said those service members were injured by an explosion during the raid and sustained “serious” injuries. They’re being moved to Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland for additional treatment, while another service member is being evaluated for traumatic brain injury, Singh said.
The U.S. supported another Iraqi-led raid on ISIS Thursday in Iraq’s Anbar province, she added, and there were no American personnel injured.
“U.S. Central Command, alongside our coalition and Iraqi partners, will aggressively pursue ISIS and other terrorists that pose a threat to US forces, allies, partners, and security in the region,” wrote CENTCOM head Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, in a statement.
This week’s operation is the latest in a series conducted against ISIS in recent months — many of which have included, or in this case, been led by the Iraqi Security Forces. The U.S. and Iraq announced in September that a multi-national task force to fight the terrorist group would end its work in Iraq and Syria over the next two years.
“During these past years, we’ve seen very significant improvement in the Iraqi Security Force’s capability,” a senior defense official told reporters on a call announcing the decision.
The U.S. military has said that ISIS is diminished far below its peak power of the mid 2010s, when it seized swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria. But it still remains a threat, both in the Middle East and northern Africa.
In a Tuesday briefing, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that CENTCOM was still running its assessment of the raids after the fact, and that the injured service members are being treated, though he didn’t say where.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information regarding the severity of injuries sustained Tuesday by U.S. personnel during raids on ISIS.
How the Beirut bombing of a Marine Corps barracks changed everything
A new book showcases how the 1983 bombing of a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, paved the way for America's war on terrorism.
Forty-one years ago today, a Hezbollah affiliate rammed his yellow Mercedes stake-bed truck through a chest-high concertina wire fence at the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, detonating a deadly payload that killed 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers.
To this day, that event remains the largest loss of life the Marine Corps has suffered since the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.
A new book on the bombing argues that it was also an opening salvo in the decades-long fight between the United States and Middle East terrorist organizations. The truck driver was later found to have links to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed, armed wing of the Lebanese Shiite Muslim political party.
Hezbollah has largely operated as an informal arm for Tehran for years, and is now in battle with Israel in Lebanon.
40 years after Beirut: How the bombing still haunts the Corps today
How the Beirut bombing has echoed through decades of American foreign policy frames the central thesis of “Targeted: Beirut: The 1983 Marine Barracks Bombing and the Untold Origin Story of the War on Terror.”
Former Navy SEAL sniper turned New York Times bestselling author Jack Carr, creator of numerous military-political thriller novels, co-wrote the book with James M. Scott, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and nonfiction writer, producing a work that examines the barracks bombing and its reverberations through the years.
Both men talked with Military Times ahead of the publication of the book, which is now available, sharing some of what they remembered themselves and what they learned in the research and writing.
This interview has been edited for length and style.
Military Times: This bombing happened more than 40 years ago, do either of you remember when and how you learned about this event?
Jack Carr: I was very aware of this as I was already on a path to joining the military. I devoured anything I could find, specifically on terrorism. I remember the Time and Newsweek magazine covers on our dining room table. I probably still have them in a box somewhere.
James M. Scott: I distinctly remember when this happened. I remember coming home from school and my mom telling me that it had happened. This also happened the same week as the Grenada invasion. It was huge news. My parents had been in the Navy. I remember being worried if the United States was going to end up war again?
MT: Mr. Carr, you have a fiction background while Mr. Scott is a nonfiction writer, what brought the two of you together on this project?
Carr: I like to weave a lot of historical events into my work. I always knew that I’d move into the nonfiction space, much like Tom Clancy did in the 1980s and 1990s. So, I began looking to start a series of books focused on terrorist events. I wrote down about three pages worth of different terrorist events from the end of World War II. There were a lot, unfortunately. But I kept coming back to Beirut because it was such a turning point in our relationship with the Middle East and Iran in particular, through its proxies.
Iran learned lessons through the bombing that became almost the model for everything they did afterward. I told Simon and Schuster I want to work with someone and there’s only one person I want to work with, it’s this guy James Scott. I have all his books and I love his work. My editor and agent had a connection, and we started talking on a Zoom call, which kicked things off and we’ve become friends throughout this process.
Scott: When he reached out it was so serendipitous. I’d watched the TV show “The Terminal List,” based off Jack’s books. Then I get this email about the Beirut project. At about that same time I was going to this conference on World War II history and one of the guys there was a former director of the Marine Corps History Division. I told him about this new Beirut project, and he said the Marine Corps archives have all these oral histories of Marines who experienced the incident or were in command at different levels at the time of the bombing. I thought, this is just meant to be.
MT: What are some of the things you learned while researching and drafting the book?
Carr: What I didn’t realize at the time this happened in October 1983 is all the things that led to the event, starting in April. Most people are aware that something happened in Beirut in the 1980s. They’re usually thinking about the barracks bombing in October. But if you understand that there was a bombing at the U.S. embassy in April 1983, and that at the time the servicemembers there were peacekeepers. We did lose troops over the summer; they were in combat long before the barracks bombing.
Scott: I think one of the best lines that sums up Beirut is from Col. Timothy Geraghty, commander of the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit at the time.
He said, “During the time they were there the situation changed but no one changed the situation.” I think that sentence encapsulates more than anything what happened to the guys over there. The Marines landed in Beirut in 1982 as a stabilizing force. The idea is if the Americans are there as a peacekeeping force along with the French, Italians and British, that we can provide some sort of stability.
But over time, that peace erodes, the infighting begins again between the separate groups and, essentially, there is a civil war. So, you see the situation starts sliding over the summer. Iran sees this opportunity to come in and capitalize off the chaos, send revolutionary guardsmen to create terror training camps and an infrastructure. The guys on the ground in Beirut, they see what’s going on right outside the wire. But it takes a lot longer for Washington to catch up to the reality of what’s going on over there.
MT: What should servicemembers today understand about the bombing and its effects on U.S. policy and military engagements in the Middle East?
Carr: There was a lot of tough talk from the presidential administration in the direct aftermath of the bombing. And then we slowly and quietly essentially leave in early 1984 and that teaches Iran that, one, proxies work, and two, they can get the result they want by using proxies and by using terrorism and a spectacular event. That’s to describe an event that draws the lens of the world media. So, this really became the model for Iran going forward.
Scott: I’d say that it’s not just this event but for history in general, it’s our duty as citizens to study history. Yes, there are lessons here for operational and tactical levels. But now that this event is humanized, we need to ensure that people in power understand the nature of the conflict in which they’re engaging before committing U.S. forces.
Lockheed feels financial pinch from F-35 upgrade, contract delays
Lockheed Martin expects to deliver dozens more jets than usual starting in 2025 as it works through a backlog.
Lockheed Martin expects to strike a deal with the U.S. government by the end of the year to build the 18th and 19th lots of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, company officials said in an earnings call Tuesday.
But the delay in reaching the contract for upcoming batches of F-35s — along with multi-million dollar payments the government is withholding from Lockheed until the newest fighters can fly in combat — is costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars.
Lockheed’s aeronautics sector reported $6.5 billion in sales in the third quarter of 2024, a 3% decline from one year earlier, as well as a 2% decline in aeronautics profit. Officials said higher volume on C-130 aircraft and belt-tightening on spending helped it absorb most of the F-35 losses.
The U.S. government at the end of 2023 authorized Lockheed to start initial work on lots 18 and 19, and awarded the company an advance acquisition contract to fund production and ensure they didn’t fall behind schedule.
But that initial funding has run out, Lockheed said, and the company said it incurred about $700 million in delayed revenue on the F-35 in the third quarter.
The earnings call with investors provided more insight into the financial repercussions Lockheed is facing as it tries to recover from a year-long F-35 delivery delay, stemming from software and hardware troubles with an upgrade known as Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3.
TR-3 is meant to give the jets improved displays, computers and processing power, beginning with lot 15. But software integration problems and hardware delays meant the upgrades did not work as intended, and the government refused to accept jets intended to have TR-3.
Lockheed developed an interim version of the software that allows TR-3 jets to fly combat training missions, which satisfied the government enough to resume deliveries this summer. But those jets are not yet able to fly in combat, and won’t be until 2025.
Lockheed delivered its first 48 F-35s of the year in the third quarter, chief executive Jim Taiclet told investors, and expects to deliver between 90 and 110 jets by the end of 2024.
That is less than the roughly 156 jets Lockheed typically aims to produce and deliver annually, and about in line with the 98 fighters the company delivered in 2023, as the delivery halt began.
Lockheed expects to take a $600 million hit in 2024 on the delays associated with lots 15 through 17 jets, chief financial officer Jay Malave told investors. But he expects the company to recover those costs over the next few years.
While Lockheed Martin won’t deliver its full complement of F-35s in 2024, Malave said the company expects to deliver about 180 annually over the subsequent three years, as it works through its backlog.
Malave also expects the government to start releasing withheld payments starting next year, as TR-3 improves. The F-35 Joint Program Office is withholding about $5 million in payments for each jet until they are fully combat-capable. About 95% of the new TR-3 jets’ combat capabilities have been validated, Taiclet told investors.
Malave expects Lockheed to receive about $300 million to $400 million more in 2025 as it delivers more jets and withheld payments from the government start to shake loose, with more to come in 2026.
“Cash collections will smooth out over this period of time,” Malave said.
But some lawmakers have lost patience with Lockheed and its difficulties with the F-35.
Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Seth Moulton, D-Mass., on Tuesday introduced a resolution that would say Lockheed and its subcontractors have failed to deliver what the company promised on the F-35, and that the Pentagon has failed to hold the program accountable.
The proposed resolution outlines a litany of shortcomings with the F-35, most recently its TR-3 troubles and the delays in future upgrades known as Block 4 that are now resulting.
“Its unacceptable to leave the American taxpayer on the hook for a broken system and allow appropriators in Congress to divest funds from service members’ child care to invest in broken F-35s,” Gaetz said. “We must stop rewarding failure and prioritize our military families.”
Watchdog sues for info about Army labeling nonprofits as terror groups
The conservative group claimed the training was made with ill-intent and wasn’t merely a blunder, as the Army has perviously said.
The conservative organization Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon this month in an attempt to obtain information that could shed more light on an Army antiterrorism training that labeled several legitimate nonprofits as terrorist groups.
Photos of slides shown during an antiterrorism training at Fort Liberty were posted online this summer, prompting outrage about the groups labeled as terrorists. Nonprofits that were incorrectly labeled included People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known as PETA, as well as the anti-abortion groups Operation Rescue and National Right to Life. The advocacy groups Earth First, Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front were also listed.
National Right to Life issued a news release calling the situation “deeply offensive to all pro-life Americans,” and PETA told Military Times the Army made the correct decision to get rid of the “counterfactual presentation.”
Judicial Watch, which often files Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to investigate claimed misconduct, accused the Army of targeting anti-abortion Christians. The group wants the Defense Department to hand over any documents that could show why National Right to Life and other anti-abortion groups were on the list.
Judicial Watch is also suing for any emails written by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo, Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Mingus that might mention designating anti-abortion groups as terrorist organizations.
The group claimed the training was made with ill-intent and wasn’t merely a blunder, as the Army has perviously said.
Oops! Army training mislabeled nonprofits as terror groups for years
Army leaders testified to lawmakers in September about the training. An internal investigation found that the soldier who created the slides was an employee of the local garrison and added the nonprofits based on open-source research, said Army Assistant Secretary Agnes Gereben Schaefer. The Army didn’t find any evidence that the soldier sought to subvert Defense Department policy or to further a personal political viewpoint.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle criticized Lt. Gen. Patrick Matlock, the Army deputy chief of staff, after he refused to reveal what disciplinary measures the soldier faced. Matlock said only that the soldier was retrained, and the chain of command took action. He cited privacy and safety concerns as the reason he wouldn’t give more details.
In a news release last week, Judicial Watch blamed President Joe Biden’s administration for “trying to set our military against conservative American citizens.” However, the Army investigation found that the training slides were created in 2017, while former President Donald Trump was in office.
About 9,100 soldiers saw the slides over the past seven years, the Army investigation found.
“The training materials were very poorly developed, and we fully acknowledge that failure,” Matlock testified. “That length of time is almost unexplainable.”
This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to [email protected].
Tricare announces temporary enrollment freeze and online limitations
Tricare beneficiaries are encouraged to make online changes to their health plan now, as DOD announced an enrollment freeze from Oct. 25-27.
Editor’s note: This story was updated Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, with comment from Health Net Federal Services; on Oct. 23 with comment from TriWest Healthcare Alliance; and on Oct. 24 with comment from Humana Military.
Military community, take note: Defense health officials recently announced some limitations to online options for Tricare beneficiaries making changes to their health plans, starting with a global enrollment freeze that will affect any Tricare plan from Oct. 25-27.
During those three days, Tricare beneficiaries won’t be able to update their information or make changes to their plans, including overseas and dental plans.
The Oct. 25-27 outage is scheduled to allow the Defense Health Agency and its partners to transfer beneficiary enrollment information to the regional contractors, DHA officials said in an announcement Monday.
Additionally, after that freeze ends, Tricare beneficiaries won’t be able to make online health plan updates in milConnect through Beneficiary Web Enrollment beginning Oct. 28 through Dec. 31. Instead, beneficiaries will need to contact their regional Tricare contractor by phone to do things like change their primary care manager, update their plan due to a qualifying life event or change their plan during Tricare open season, which runs Nov. 11 through Dec. 10.
Those not currently enrolled in a Tricare plan can still enroll in one online between Oct. 28 and Dec. 31 through milConnect.
Tricare beneficiaries who live overseas can continue to use milConnect between Oct. 28 and Dec. 31. However, those transferring from the U.S. to an overseas location will need to contact International SOS.
Officials advise beneficiaries to check their information in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System as soon as possible.
At Humana Military, officials acknowledged they expect the call volume to increase for the East Region during these last months of the year. Their contact center has been working throughout the year to staff and train “a robust level of employees to manage the elevated demands that we expect as a result of open season” and the transition to the new contract happening at the same time, officials told Military Times. “During this time, we encourage Tricare East Region beneficiaries to call on Wednesdays, Thursdays or Fridays as we anticipate shorter wait times on those days of the week.”
The current West Region contractor, Health Net Federal Services, is staffed appropriately to handle the extra calls between Oct. 28 and Dec. 31, officials told Military Times. They’ll follow their established process for accepting enrollment changes outside of the Beneficiary Web Enrollment.
Officials with TriWest Healthcare Alliance, which takes over the West Region contract Jan. 1, told Military Times they are “well prepared” to open their contact center on Nov. 11 to support beneficiaries during open season. DHA has conducted a validation of their operational readiness, and their staff is trained to handle customer inquiries, they said.
The temporary online limitations come ahead of Tricare’s new regional contracts, which begin Jan. 1.
Those who want to make changes effective from Oct. 28 through Dec. 31 should call their current regional contractor. Humana Military, which covers the East Region, is at 800-444-5445. The current West Region contractor, Health Net Federal Services, is at 844-866-9378; TriWest Healthcare Alliance will take over as the new West Region contractor effective Jan. 1.
Those who want to make changes effective Jan. 1 and beyond, including Tricare open season:
- East Region: Call Humana Military at 800-444-5445.
- West Region, which adds Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas and Wisconsin effective Jan. 1: Call TriWest Healthcare Alliance at 888-874-9378. Their call center will open the first day of Tricare open season on Nov. 11.
- Overseas: Update information in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System or contact International SOS.
Weighing benefits: Could anti-obesity meds help troops’ weight issues?
Advocates argue that anti-obesity drugs like Ozempic could help overweight troops, but the services have no uniform policy for such treatments.
As his years in the military progressed, Shaun Gamble began finding it harder and harder to keep his weight in check.
Gamble, 46, characterized the last few years of his nearly 25-year career as a struggle to stay in fighting shape.
That changed in April 2023, when a civilian doctor prescribed him Ozempic. He soon shed 44 pounds, he told Military Times, getting down to about 200.
Gamble was medically separated from the Kentucky Army National Guard, retiring as a master sergeant earlier this year. He alleges his discharge was in part due to taking a personal route toward acquiring and using Ozempic, instead of going through military-approved channels to get the prescription.
But despite how his career concluded, Gamble is clear about one thing: Ozempic, a weight-loss drug now sweeping the nation, helped get him into shape.
“As soon as I started taking the Ozempic, it just kind of toned me up pretty quick,” he said.
Gamble’s struggles with weight are not unique.
The U.S. military needs its troops in fighting shape to carry out the mission, but like many other Americans, service members have become heavier in recent years.
More than two-thirds of active duty troops are now considered overweight or obese, Military Times previously reported, citing a study by the American Security Project, a nonpartisan research organization.
Nearly 70% of active service members are overweight, report finds
Anti-obesity drugs like Ozempic can offer troops fast weight loss, and their use has grown across the ranks in recent years, even as some researchers argue that the military brass is not using them as much as they could.
At the same time, while usage has increased, the military is in short supply of policies that determine when such drugs should be prescribed.
Some researchers argue that the military health care system should be taking advantage of drugs like Ozempic to improve service member health, refine military readiness and reduce fiscal costs associated with being overweight or obese.
Military officials have publicly expressed concern about how an overweight force endangers the mission. Active-duty service members struggling with obesity are 33% to 47% more likely to suffer musculoskeletal problems, contributing to injuries, impaired readiness and possible medical separation, according to a Defense Health Agency-funded study published in August.
But problematic health trends also pose financial burdens shouldered by the Defense Department.
Service member obesity costs the Pentagon more than $1.35 billion annually, with direct care costs in 2023 accounting for $1.25 billion and productivity losses — due to hospital stays — costing an additional $99 million, according to a separate report by the American Security Project.
Promises and perils
Drugs like Ozempic work in part by regulating one’s appetite. And while makers of the drugs have warned about side effects, which occur with other medications as well, experts note that long-term impacts still need to be explored.
Many of the drugs have long been used to treat diabetes, but their use as weight-loss wonder medications — lifetime use is required to maintain a lower weight — is relatively unchartered territory.
Ozempic isn’t approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for weight loss, but is sometimes prescribed off-label to help people lose weight. Wegovy, Saxenda and Zepbound are among FDA-approved options for weight loss.
Some studies warn of pitfalls that can occur when trying to transition away from using the expensive medications, including the regaining of weight, NPR reported. And as their popularity has grown, some Americans remain dubious.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in February examined American attitudes toward weight-loss drugs and found that, while more than half of those familiar with the medications consider them a valuable weight loss option, 19% believe they are not, while 28% are unsure.
The military’s Tricare health program began approving coverage of FDA-approved weight-loss medications in May 2018. And while associated prescriptions in the ranks have dramatically increased since, they are still being used by a small percentage of the force.
The prevalence of weight-loss prescriptions in the active component increased from 1.2 per 100,000 service members in the first quarter of 2018 to 104.4 in the second quarter of 2023, a recent study by Medical Surveillance Monthly Report noted. That dramatic surge involved prescriptions increasing from seven to 816 during the study period.
Less than 1% of active duty personnel currently use anti-obesity medications, according to the Defense Health Agency-funded report.
But that report’s authors contend that at least 22% of the active duty population would qualify for the medications because they meet body-mass index criteria for obesity. In fact, the prevalence of those considered overweight and obese within the Military Health System is 41.6% and 30.5%, respectively, the study notes.
Researchers and analysts outside the military argue that a pervasive weight bias in the military, along with a confusing and administratively burdensome system of authorization, play into a lack of wider adoption of the drugs.
They also point to a lack of obesity training and education for providers and a limited nationwide supply as factors.
Such issues have been top of mind for some military leaders of late.
Marine Sgt. Maj. Troy Black, senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a podcast interview this summer that removing fast-food restaurants from military bases would help curb the obesity crisis.
Cut on-base fast food to trim a super-sized force, leader says
Accessible and affordable healthy food options are critical for service members to get into or remain in shape, but analysts say the military’s obesity struggles result from more factors than a simple lack of willpower among troops.
Regardless of contributing factors, the small number of troops who have been prescribed drugs like Ozempic must follow a course of treatment that depends on the specific drug prescribed as well as physician instructions, said Peter Graves, a spokesperson for the DHA.
Tricare protocols require patients to use the anti-obesity medication phentermine before others — also approved by the FDA — can be prescribed.
“It’s not as simple [as having] a provider sit in a clinic, recognize the patient would benefit from this medication, order it and hand it to them that same day,” said Army Capt. Taylor Neuman, who co-authored the August study.
There is also the issue of supply and demand. While some companies have announced in recent months that they are lowering the cost of weight-loss drugs, offering them as single-dose vials, the FDA as of August listed limited availability for other anti-obesity medications as a result of increased public demand.
“Shortages have caused a dramatic underutilization rate across all services,” Courtney Manning, a senior research scientist at the American Security Project, told Military Times.
Getting core ingredients for the drugs, some of which are produced abroad, adds complexity to scaling importation and production, she added.
Opinion: Fixing the military’s overweight and obesity crisis
Troops using the drugs
The DHA-funded study looked at service member demographics most likely to be prescribed the drug by assessing troops and beneficiaries — 18 to 64 years old — in the military health care system who were prescribed at least one Tricare-approved anti-obesity medication from fiscal 2018 to fiscal 2022.
Those more likely to be prescribed such medications included females, individuals between 30 and 60 years of age, enlisted troops and warrant officers.
Another study published in January in the Medical Surveillance Monthly Report found that sailors, older troops, those working in health care and non-Hispanic Black troops were prescribed the drugs more often than their peers.
The DHA-funded study also found troops and beneficiaries under the age of 20, between 60 and 64 years old and those who identify as “Asian/Pacific Islander or other race” to be associated with lower odds of getting the medications.
Neuman, one of the study’s authors, said more research is needed about what overweight and obese troops are costing the Pentagon.
Additional research is also needed to understand the long-term impact of weight-loss drugs. While short- and medium-term impacts have been looked at, studies to determine whether there are long-term side effects will be necessary, according to Manning.
Despite any potential detriments, demand in the civilian world for weight-loss drugs has surged, even in light of the cost to procure the medications — some starter doses are going for over $1,000 a month, according to a congressional panel.
Such drugs came to prominence back in 2017, when the FDA approved Ozempic, a brand name for the drug semaglutide, which works as a diabetes treatment and has been used to help reduce body weight. Other options followed suit, including Wegovy, also a semaglutide injection, which was approved in 2021.
In 2022, the FDA approved Mounjaro, an injection of the drug tirzepatide, and in 2023, it approved the similar drug Zepbound.
A poll in May by the nonprofit KFF Health found that about one in eight adults said they have taken a GLP-1 agonist, an increasingly popular class of prescription drugs used in part for weight loss in products like Ozempic. Of those polled, 6% said they are currently taking such a drug.
A strong desire among Americans to use the medications aligns with the high prevalence of overweight and obese populations across the country. In 2022, all U.S. states and territories reported an obesity prevalence of more than one in five adults, with the Midwest and South showing the highest prevalence of obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Obesity struggles impact children and young adults as well. About one in six children and adolescents, ages 2 to 19, are overweight, according to data from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and almost one in five children and adolescents in that same age group are categorized as obese.
And while weight management issues are currently plaguing those in uniform, such problems are also thinning the list of prospective recruits amid an historic recruiting crisis.
Being overweight was recently listed as the number one disqualifying factor among young military applicants, constituting 11% of all disqualifications, according to a 2020 Pentagon study.
“The whole issue of not as many people [qualifying for military service] because of obesity, because of behavioral issues — that’s going to continue,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at the annual Defense News Conference in September.
No uniform policy
To date, the services have not aligned their policies for the use of weight-loss drugs.
The policies that do exist, meanwhile, are “unclear, outdated or restrictive,” the authors of the DHA-funded study wrote.
“These are doctor-prescribed medications and would not be issued directly to troops,” Graves told Military Times. “Service members see a Tricare-
authorized provider who prescribes the medication based on medical necessity.”
Manning said it remains unclear whether troops are asking their providers first about taking such drugs, or whether the providers are suggesting them to the troops.
She noted that she has heard of providers who have prescribed medications to eligible troops for a non-weight-related condition to avoid putting them into a category that would negatively impact their military careers.
Such medications are not routinely prescribed to sailors who enter the Navy’s Body Composition Program — a remedial program for troops who fall short of physical standards — according to Cmdr. Jessica McNulty, spokesperson for the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, or BUMED.
McNulty added that BUMED is working alongside the Marine Corps on an anti-obesity medication policy that will enable operational medical officers to prescribe them.
“We seek to improve the health and readiness of our fighting force in the safest manner possible and will continue to monitor advancements in research,” she told Military Times.
A review of Coast Guard prescription data from 2018 through the end of 2023 showed similar increases in use of weight-loss medications compared to the other military branches, according to the service. Women, older age groups and senior enlisted and officer groups in the Coast Guard reported a higher number of prescriptions issued.
But Coast Guard officials added that the number of prescriptions distributed may not equate to the number of individuals treated, considering there may be multiple prescriptions for the same individual.
An Air Force official said the service does not prescribe such medications “solely for failing to meet the service’s body composition standards.”
In accordance with Air Force instruction, weight-control medication is not approved for routine use by overweight active duty members, a spokesperson said. The service does, however, allow for the prescription of weight-control medication in select circumstances.
In May 2023, the DHA issued a policy memo that allowed military health care facility providers to prescribe weight-loss medication, an Army spokesperson said.
All Army beneficiaries must meet clinical criteria indicated in the DHA policy and receive prior authorization before receiving anti-obesity or weight-loss medications, the Army spokesperson added. In fiscal 2024, there were 9,464 active duty soldiers who received at least one anti-obesity medication.
Still, more changes around anti-obesity drugs in the military could be on the horizon.
The House-version of the annual defense policy bill, which passed out of the chamber this summer, includes a provision that would require the defense secretary to develop a strategy to align the Pentagon’s obesity-related programs with the classification of obesity as a medically accepted disease.
But the legislation still has a number of hurdles to clear before it becomes law.
Marine veteran charged in subway chokehold death set to stand trial
Daniel Penny is charged with manslaughter for placing a man in a deadly chokehold on a New York City subway train last year.
NEW YORK — To some New Yorkers, he’s the white vigilante who choked an innocent Black man to death on the subway. To others, he’s the U.S. Marine Corps veteran whose attempt to subdue a mentally ill man ended in tragedy.
A Manhattan jury will soon have its say on Daniel Penny, who is charged with manslaughter for placing Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold on May 1, 2023. Jury selection in Penny’s trial begins Monday.
The court proceedings, which are expected to last six weeks, will shed light on a killing that was a flashpoint in the nation’s debate over racial injustice and crime.
Judge declines to dismiss case against Marine vet in NYC subway death
Neely’s death also divided a city grappling with what to do about people experiencing mental health crises in a transit system where some subway straphangers still don’t feel safe, despite a drop in violent crime rates.
“There is simply no reason for Jordan Neeley to be dead today,” David Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “So many systems failed Jordan and contributed to his death."
Penny, 25, has been free on a $100,000 bond. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of second-degree manslaughter and up to four years if convicted of criminally negligent homicide.
Witnesses said Neely — a 30-year-old former Michael Jackson street impersonator struggling with drug addiction, mental illness and homelessness — had been shouting, throwing things and acting erratically on a subway train in Manhattan when Penny approached him.
With the help of two other passengers, Penny pinned Neely to the ground and placed him in a chokehold for more than three minutes until Neely’s body went limp and he lost consciousness. The medical examiner’s office ruled the death a homicide caused by compression of the neck.
The encounter sparked nearly two weeks of protests before Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office brought an indictment.
Meanwhile, millions of dollars in donations poured in from across the country to help Penny cover his legal costs, including from prominent conservative personalities and Republican candidates for president.
Penny’s lawyers have argued that the Long Island native didn’t intend to kill Neely, just to hold him down long enough for police to arrive, as he was concerned for the safety of others.
“If Danny is convicted, his conviction will have a chilling effect on every New Yorker’s right and duty to stand up for each other,” Penny’s lawyer Steven Raiser said Wednesday. “Our sincerest hope is that New Yorkers selected for this jury will stand up for Danny just like Danny stood up for them back on that train over a year ago today.”
Penny, who served four years in the Marines before being discharged in 2021, claimed that Neely shouted “I’m gonna’ kill you” and that he was “ready to die” or go to jail for life.
But Neely’s family and supporters have said he was simply crying out for help. They said his mental health deteriorated after his mother’s body was found stuffed in a suitcase in the Bronx and he testified at her boyfriend’s murder trial.
Some witnesses, including a freelance journalist who captured video of some of the altercation, also said Neely had been acting aggressively and frightening people but hadn’t attacked anyone before Penny pulled him to the floor.
Neely’s surviving family members say they’ve been anticipating this moment and intend to attend the trial.
“I just want to look into his face and wonder why he would do something like that,” said Mildred Mahazu, Neely’s 85-year-old aunt and primary caretaker after his mother died. “Jordan was somebody’s child. He was loved by his family.”
Neely’s uncle, Christopher Neely, agreed.
“Justice for Jordan is all we think about,” the 45-year-old Manhattan resident said. “We can’t let Jordan’s name be added to the list of Black people killed by a racist white person with no justice.”
Prosecutors argued in court filings that Penny’s actions were unwarranted, reckless and negligent, even if he didn’t have the intention to kill.
They’ve focused on recorded statements Penny made to police in which he describes Neely as a “crackhead,” touts his armed forces experience and demonstrates to officers the submission technique he used.
“I just put him out. I just put him in a chokehold,” Penny said, according to a transcript of the recordings included in court filings. “He was threatening everybody.”
“I’m not trying to kill the guy,” Penny said at another point to police. “I’m just trying to deescalate the situation.”
Bragg’s office declined to comment beyond what its said in court filings. Prosecutors, in pretrial hearings, sought to exclude evidence about Neely’s medical and psychological history, including his record of substance abuse. The judge hadn’t released his ruling on that request as of Friday.
Raiser said Penny’s defense will offer up other potential causes for Neely’s death, including high levels of the synthetic cannabinoid known as K2 that were identified in toxicology reports.
They’ll also argue that video shared widely on social media proves Penny was not applying pressure consistently enough to render Neely unconscious, much less kill him, he said.
“If he was applying that kind of pressure, Mr. Neely would have been rendered unconscious long before the video, circulating online, ever started,” Raiser said.
In January, Penny’s lawyers lost their bid to have the case dismissed outright. Then earlier this month, Judge Maxwell Wiley rejected their request to prevent jurors from hearing Penny’s statements to police, as well as body camera footage from officers who initially responded.
Penny’s attorneys argued that police should have read Penny his Miranda rights sooner and that his questioning at the police station amounted to an illegal arrest.
But Wiley, in a written ruling, determined that Penny’s statements were admissible. The judge said Penny had waived his rights against self-incrimination in the interrogation room and willingly spoke to officers without a lawyer present.
As for Christopher Neely, he hopes what’s not lost in the trial is the memory of his late nephew.
“I want people to remember his strengths and his conquests to greatness and his conquering of fears,” he wrote. “I want people to remember that mental health is a serious issue and that it needs tenderness, not spontaneous rage. Most importantly, I want people to know that Jordan Neely was supremely loved and still is.”
Marine Corps veteran allegedly kicked off flight for her T-shirt
A Bay Area veteran told local media that a Delta flight attendant kicked her off for wearing the shirt.
Editor’s note: This report has been updated with a comment from Delta.
A Marine Corps veteran alleges she was booted from a Delta flight last week for wearing a shirt calling for an end to veteran suicide, according to multiple media reports.
Catherine Banks told NBC Bay Area that the incident occurred Wednesday as she wore a shirt that read, “Do not give in to the war within. End veteran suicide.”
Banks told NBC that she was attempting to fly out of San Francisco International Airport.
“A male flight attendant was saying, ‘Ma’am, ma’am.’ I looked around, like, ‘Who was he talking to?’ And it was me. He said, ‘You need to get off the plane,’ and I was like, ‘What did I do?’” Banks said, according to NBC.
Banks could not be reached for comment Monday, but NBC reported that she learned why she was booted from the plane while on the jet bridge by a flight attendant.
“He said that shirt you’re wearing is threatening,” Banks said, according to NBC. “I said, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m a Marine Corps vet. I’m going to see my Marine sister. I’ve been in the Marine Corps for 22 years and worked for the Air Force for 15 years. I’m going to visit her.’ He said, ‘I don’t care about your service, and I don’t care about her service. The only way you’re going to get back on the plane is if you take it off right now.’”
Army snipers subdue man who tried to open plane’s exit door mid-flight
Banks told NBC that Delta eventually let her get back on her flight, but that she had to sit in the back and missed a connection because of the delay.
Delta said in a statement to Marine Corps Times Monday that the matter had been resolved.
“We appreciate [Banks’] patience as we continued to work to understand what occurred during this event,” Delta said. “Most importantly, we are thankful for her service to our country.”
The airline’s website states that flight crews may remove passengers when their “conduct, attire, hygiene or odor creates an unreasonable risk of offense or annoyance to other passengers.”
Troops, veterans and family members experiencing suicidal thoughts can call or text the 24-hour Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net.
US Navy ousts top commanders of ship repair facility in Japan
Capt. Zaldy Valenzuela and Cmdr. Art Palalay were fired from their respective positions on Sunday.
The Navy fired both the commanding and executive officers of the U.S. Naval Ship Repair Facility and Japan Regional Maintenance Center in Yokosuka, Japan, this weekend.
Capt. Zaldy Valenzuela, the CO, and Cmdr. Art Palalay, his second-in-command, were removed from their respective positions on Sunday due to a “loss of confidence in their ability to command,” according to the Navy.
Capt. Dan Lannamann, the former commanding officer of Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center in Norfolk, Virginia, is now leading the facility while Cmdr. Timothy Emge, the center’s operations officer, is filling in as executive officer until a permanent replacement is identified.
“The Navy holds commanding officers and others in authority to the highest standards,” the Navy said in a statement. “Naval leaders are entrusted with significant responsibilities to their Sailors and commands.”
Navy ousts CO of Hershel ‘Woody’ Williams amid soft grounding probe
The Navy rarely shares any rationale behind firing commanding officers aside from the “loss of confidence” statement, and no additional details were provided on Valenzuela and Palalay’s reliefs.
Valenzuela’s previous assignments include ship superintendent and carrier type desk officer at SRF-JRMC, electrical division officer aboard the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, and the combat and communications officer aboard the amphibious command ship Blue Ridge.
Palalay, who enlisted in the Navy in 1993 and commissioned in 2006, previously served as the readiness officer at Commander Naval Surface Forces Pacific before becoming the XO of SRF-JRMC in 2023.
The maintenance center, equipped with six dry docks, conducts intermediate and depot-level maintenance and repairs for Navy ships across the 7th Fleet.
One of last Marine Corps World War II Navajo Code Talkers dies at 107
With John Kinsel Sr.'s death, only two Navajo Code Talkers from World War II are still alive.
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — John Kinsel Sr., one of the last remaining Navajo Code Talkers who transmitted messages during World War II based on the tribe’s native language, has died. He was 107.
Navajo Nation officials in Window Rock announced Kinsel’s death on Saturday.
Tribal President Buu Nygren has ordered all flags on the reservation to be flown at half-staff until Oct. 27 at sunset to honor Kinsel.
“Mr. Kinsel was a Marine who bravely and selflessly fought for all of us in the most terrifying circumstances with the greatest responsibility as a Navajo Code Talker,” Nygren said in a statement Sunday.
With Kinsel’s death, only two Navajo Code Talkers are still alive: Former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald and Thomas H. Begay.
Hundreds of Navajos were recruited by the Marines to serve as Code Talkers during the war, transmitting messages based on their then-unwritten native language.
Navajo Code Talkers museum is about $40 million shy of reality
They confounded Japanese military cryptologists during World War II and participated in all assaults the Marines led in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945, including at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu and Iwo Jima.
The Code Talkers sent thousands of messages without error on Japanese troop movements, battlefield tactics and other communications crucial to the war’s ultimate outcome.
Kinsel was born in Cove, Arizona, and lived in the Navajo community of Lukachukai.
He enlisted in the Marines in 1942 and became an elite Code Talker, serving with the 9th Marine Regiment and the 3rd Marine Division during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
President Ronald Reagan established Navajo Code Talkers Day in 1982 and the Aug. 14 holiday honors all the tribes associated with the war effort.
The day is an Arizona state holiday and Navajo Nation holiday on the vast reservation that occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah.
His country trained him to fight. Then he turned against it.
The U.S. military trained him in explosives and battlefield tactics. Now the Iraq War veteran was calling for taking up arms against his own country.
MOUNT OLIVE, N.C. — The U.S. military trained him in explosives and battlefield tactics. Now the Iraq War veteran and enlisted National Guard member was calling for taking up arms against police and government officials in his own country.
Standing in the North Carolina woods, Chris Arthur warned about a coming civil war. Videos he posted publicly on YouTube bore titles such as “The End of America or the Next Revolutionary War.” In his telling, the U.S. was falling into chaos and there would be only one way to survive: kill or be killed.
Arthur was posting during a surge of far-right extremism in the years leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He wrote warcraft training manuals to help others organize their own militias. And he offered sessions at his farm in Mount Olive, North Carolina, that taught how to kidnap and attack public officials, use snipers and explosives and design a “fatal funnel” booby trap to inflict mass casualties.
While he continued to post publicly, military and law enforcement ignored more than a dozen warnings phoned in by Arthur’s wife’s ex-husband about Arthur’s increasingly violent rhetoric and calls for the murder of police officers. This failure by the Guard, FBI and others to act allowed Arthur to continue to manufacture and store explosives around young children and train another extremist who would attack police officers in New York state and lead them on a wild, two-hour chase and gun battle.
Military service key factor in 3 decades of extremist attacks
Arthur isn’t an anomaly. He is among more than 480 people with a military background accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection.
At the same time, while the pace at which the overall population has been radicalizing increased in recent years, people with military backgrounds have been radicalizing at a faster rate. Their extremist plots were also more likely to involve weapons training or firearms than plots that didn’t include someone with a military background, according to an Associated Press analysis of domestic terrorism data obtained exclusively by the AP. This held true whether or not the plots were executed.
While the number of people involved remains small, the participation of active military and veterans gave extremist plots more potential for mass injury or death, according to data collected and analyzed by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. START researchers found that more than 80% of extremists with military backgrounds identified with far-right, anti-government or white supremacist ideologies, with the rest split among far-left, jihadist or other motivations.
In the shadow of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — led in part by veterans — and a closely contested presidential election, law enforcement officials have said the threat from domestic violent extremists is one of the most persistent and pressing terror threats to the United States. However, despite the increasing participation in extremist activity by those with military experience, there is still no force-wide system to track it. And the AP learned that Defense Department researchers developed a promising approach to detect and monitor extremism that the Pentagon has chosen not to use.
As part of its investigation, the AP vetted and added to the data and analyses provided by START, and collected thousands of pages of records and hours of audio and video recordings through public records requests.
Free of scrutiny in Mount Olive, Arthur stockpiled weapons, some with the serial numbers scratched off to make them untraceable. He trained a pack of Doberman pinschers as guard dogs. He rigged his old farmhouse, where he lived with his wife, their three kids and two children from her previous marriage, with improvised explosives, including a bomb hidden on the front porch and wired to a switch inside.
As early as 2017, his wife’s former husband had reported concerns about his children's safety to military, federal and local authorities, according to call records and police reports.
All the while, Arthur continued growing his business and connecting with more like-minded individuals.
In early 2020, a man with a raging hatred for police and an interest in building a militia in Virginia came to the farm, eager to learn.
A festering problem
Service members and veterans who radicalize make up a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the millions and millions who have honorably served their country.
However, when people with military backgrounds “radicalize, they tend to radicalize to the point of mass violence,” said START’s Michael Jensen, who leads the team that has spent years compiling and vetting the dataset.
His group found that among extremists “the No. 1 predictor of being classified as a mass casualty offender was having a U.S. military background — that outranked mental health problems, that outranked being a loner, that outranked having a previous criminal history or substance abuse issues.”
The data tracked individuals with military backgrounds, most of whom were veterans, involved in plans to kill, injure or inflict damage for political, social, economic or religious goals. While some violent plots in the data were unsuccessful, those that succeeded killed and hurt dozens of people. Since 2017, nearly 100 people have been killed or injured in these plots, nearly all in service of an anti-government, white supremacist or far-right agenda. Those numbers do not include any of the violence on Jan. 6, which left scores of police officers injured.
A month after people in tactical gear stormed up the U.S. Capitol steps in military-style stack formation on Jan. 6, the new defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, addressed the long-festering problem. He ordered a force-wide “stand down” to give time to local military commanders to discuss the issue with personnel. He empaneled the Countering Extremist Activity Working Group to study and recommend solutions. Among the group’s eventual recommendations was to clarify what was prohibited under the military’s ban on extremist activity. The revised policy, released in December 2021, now specifies that anti-government or anti-democratic actions are violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, federal laws that apply to all service members.
Some applauded the changes, but military and political leaders had been concerned about extremism in the ranks for years after a wakeup call in 1995 when Army veteran and white supremacist Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing. And the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security and a research arm of the U.S. Justice Department have all funded START’s research.
Bishop Garrison, a U.S. Army veteran and former senior advisor to Austin, led the working group to address extremism following Jan. 6 and the widespread unrest in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic and a racial reckoning.
“We believe the vast majority of people who serve do so honorably, and this is a small group of individuals having an outsized impact,” Garrison told the AP. “But we also still need to analyze data to ensure that our hypothesis is correct and supported by fact.”
Yet a chief hurdle cited by Pentagon officials has been a lack of data — how to understand the scope of extremism in the ranks when there are millions of active duty service members across all of the branches?
“What’s vexing about this is we don’t have a great sense of the scope of the problem,” then-Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told CNN in the weeks after Jan. 6. “Many of these people … work very hard to conceal their beliefs. We can’t be the thought police.”
The Pentagon did develop at least one way to detect extremist incidents across military branches and among civilian defense contractors. But it isn’t using it.
The method was revealed in a research memo published the summer after Jan. 6 that, until now, has not been released publicly. American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, obtained the memo through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit it brought against the Pentagon and shared it with the AP.
In a project that began in September 2020 and lasted into 2021, DOD researchers studying “insider threats” and other security issues in the workforce developed a way to mine data from a DOD security clearance database to identify white supremacist and extremist incidents. This database included details from security incident reports filed about people who held security clearances — a wide swath of the military population, civilians and contractors included.
The operation identified hundreds of reported incidents of white supremacy and anti-government and other extremist activity over 20 years — the kinds of internal red flags that could identify issues with service members.
The researchers, whose names were redacted, wrote that the results were a first step toward developing a way to identify incidents of extremism, and that the method could be used in other DOD databases.
And while the research was shared among some departments in the DOD after Jan. 6, it never made it to Garrison, who was leading the Pentagon’s extremism working group, he told the AP. He called the oversight “problematic” given his, and the working group’s, mission.
“I am very surprised by the existence of the report.”
A defense official did not address why the report was not sent directly to the working group. In a statement, the official said the DOD is “committed to understanding the root causes of extremism and ensuring such behavior is promptly and appropriately addressed and reported to the proper authorities,” and that the department has enhanced its ability to track extremism allegations.
‘Very violent and very ugly’
Arthur’s young children sat atop a blue plastic tub on his farmhouse’s porch in Mount Olive, their feet dangling as their older sister tied their shoes. In the tub was an improvised bomb that Arthur had wired to a switch inside the house, according to evidence presented at Arthur’s trial.
“They would swing their feet as kids do and pop holes in it. I wasn’t very careful around [the explosives],” the older sister, the daughter of Arthur’s wife and her ex-husband, told the AP. The AP is not naming the children interviewed for this story because they are minors.
As an Army cavalry scout who served two tours in Iraq, Arthur learned more specialized skills than an average soldier, such as how to rig improvised explosives. He left the National Guard in 2019 to focus full-time on Tackleberry Solutions, his military tactics business where he sold access to this deadly expertise. Tackleberry was Arthur’s nickname in the Army, after the gun-loving veteran in the “Police Academy” films known for using inappropriately aggressive military tactics in civilian contexts.
After leaving the Guard, he also turned his attention to local politics. Arthur, a former deputy sheriff himself, backed a “constitutional sheriff” candidate who believed sheriffs, not federal or state law enforcement, held ultimate authority in the U.S. He tried to enlist county officials, according to court documents, to aid in creating a militia to guard against the “tyrannical government.”
“You’re gonna have to secure your smallest municipality and governing body first, that means townships or cities will have to be conquered immediately through force,” Arthur said in a video posted just after he left the Guard.
“Whatever you do, it has to be very violent and very ugly.”
Arthur’s videos had become increasingly unhinged, said Ben Powell, who was hearing from his children that there were explosives hidden throughout the farm. Powell’s son said he often used a hand-cranked wringer in the “bomb shed” to dry his clothes. The wringer sat near a barrel of the explosive Tannerite and Arthur’s storage area for his homemade grenades and pipe bombs.
“The older I get, the more screwed up I see the stuff is,” the son, now in his teens, said.
Powell drove a truck as a civilian DOD contractor at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah. He said he felt a professional responsibility to report Arthur after watching the videos, and hearing stories from his kids about the goings on at the farm.
“That’s kind of what I’m supposed to do, is report if there’s issues, especially if it’s an inside threat, like a guy in the military,” he said.
He called an Army “I Salute” hotline set up to receive “suspicious activity” reports, and an intelligence hotline.
“I called and said, ‘You guys need to do something before somebody gets hurt. He’s talking about killing cops. He’s talking about killing the FBI.’”
He’d called the North Carolina National Guard previously with his concerns, and not seen any action. So Powell told his supervisor at the Utah Army depot about Arthur, and showed some of the videos. Still, there was no response. The North Carolina National Guard and the U.S. Army said they did not have any records of discipline involving Arthur. Heather J. Hagan, an Army spokeswoman, would not comment on the particulars of Arthur’s case but said “we do forward all information to our law enforcement partners when appropriate.”
Things continued to escalate quickly. Arthur and his wife pulled the kids from the public school and began home-schooling them, with no input from Powell.
In March 2020, Powell spoke with the Duplin County Sheriff’s Department, where Arthur had worked briefly as a deputy in the 2000s before he joined the Army. Powell had not spoken with his children since Christmas, and was worried.
He asked for officers to make contact with the children to check their welfare. The sheriff did not respond to a request for comment, but provided records showing that a deputy reported seeing the children at the farm in March 2020. The deputy determined the children “appear to be well taken care of” and took no further action.
That same month, a man came for an extended stay at Arthur’s farm.
Joshua Blessed slept on a cot in the kitchen and refused to talk to Arthur’s wife or children. During the day, he would disappear with Arthur for long training sessions in wartime tactics.
The fatal funnel
Weeks later, Blessed raced his tractor trailer down a rural highway between Buffalo and Rochester in upstate New York, firing a pistol out his window at the parade of police cars behind him.
The sleepy evening in LeRoy, New York, in May 2020 had been disrupted when an officer pulled Blessed over for speeding. After a brief verbal exchange, Blessed drove away with the officer still standing on the truck’s running boards, forcing him to jump off the moving rig.
Blessed, a 58-year-old truck driver and former security guard from Virginia, had spent years posting conspiracy-laden videos that vilified law enforcement.
Now he was leading more than 40 officers on a high-speed chase and gun battle, ramming multiple squad cars that tried to slow him down.
The FBI’s office in Richmond, Virginia, had looked before at Blessed, who also went by Sergei Jourev. In April 2018, they’d learned that he was attempting to organize a militia extremist group in preparation for “The Army of God, for the upcoming Civil War.”
Blessed eventually found Arthur and traveled to his farm to learn about improvised explosives and other deadly warfare tactics. The two had continued texting in the weeks before Blessed’s trip to New York about the technical details of gunpowder, igniters and how to make Claymore mines, which spray shrapnel.
“Unfortunately, he knew what he was doing,” said Livingston County Undersheriff Matthew Bean, who was among those involved in the response.
Midway through the chase, Blessed stopped his rig, blocking a narrow highway onramp and trapping pursuing vehicles behind him. He’d also turned the truck’s cab at a slight angle to see the patrol cars behind him.
Then he opened fire, his bullets pelting the pursuing cruisers.
It was a “fatal funnel,” the tactic Arthur taught that was meant to make single combatants facing a much larger force more deadly.
However, during the gunfire an officer managed to make their way around to the truck’s passenger side, surprising Blessed, who drove off. Police vehicles forced him from the interstate onto a road that crossed through farms. Officers waiting there fired their weapons as Blessed’s truck roared by.
Finally, the truck crashed into a ditch off the road. The bullet-scarred cab pulsed with police lights as rattled officers approached cautiously on foot. Inside, Blessed was slumped over dead, shot in the head.
It was “divine intervention” that no officers were hit by the truck or Blessed’s bullets, Bean said. Ammo struck at least five law enforcement vehicles, according to police reports; a forensics report found a bullet lodged in an officer’s backpack on the passenger seat next to him.
“All 40 men and women who responded had some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder from that incident,” said Bean. Two left law enforcement because of it, he said.
Investigators figured that Blessed had been planning a much larger attack.
A few months later, on Jan. 6, Arthur’s apocalyptic visions of the future began to play out when many like-minded men and women stormed the U.S. Capitol. Arthur wasn’t in Washington, D.C., he said, but the aftermath found him almost immediately.
Federal agents were knocking on the doors of his fellow militia members in North Carolina, he said, and his own actions would come under tighter scrutiny.
In Blessed’s truck, investigators had found two how-to explosives and military tactics manuals for which he had paid $850 from Arthur’s Tackleberry Solutions. They would find $125,000 in cash, 14 live pipe bombs, an AK-47 with a scope, a .50-caliber rifle, a sniper rifle and tens of thousands of dollars in ammunition.
Years had passed since Powell reported Arthur to multiple military, local and federal law enforcement agencies. Powell said he called the U.S. Army, FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and others so many times that he lost count.
“And there was nothing,” Powell said. “There was no response.”
When asked about Powell’s reports, an FBI spokesperson in Charlotte said the agency would not provide information beyond what was published in court records. An ATF spokesperson in North Carolina said there was no record of them opening a case.
Indeed, federal law enforcement agencies have a questionable recent history assessing domestic terrorism threats accurately. The FBI assessment of domestic violent extremists written before the Jan. 6 attacks reported, incorrectly, the participants’ “low willingness to take action in response to a disputed election result” and “those who are interested lack the capability to carry out anything beyond a simple attack.”
And before the white supremacist “Unite the Right” violence in Charlottesville in 2017 that killed a woman and left others severely injured, the Department of Homeland Security had focused much of its threat assessment on the dangers posed by far-left counterprotesters.
After years of missed opportunities, the FBI was investigating Arthur. “It takes over 100 rounds and Joshua Blessed is shot and killed,” Powell said. “It takes cops getting shot at on public roadways during a high-speed chase with a 40,000-pound truck. That’s what it takes before anybody even looked into this.”
‘Buckshot’
On May 5, 2021, Michael Thompson drove to a wartime tactics training session in Mount Olive. He pulled his truck up to the small, single-story farmhouse Arthur’s grandfather had built.
It was a year after Blessed’s rampage in upstate New York and just a few months after Jan. 6. Thompson had contacted Arthur through the Tackleberry webpage.
They approached each other warily.
With a chuckle, Arthur assured Thompson that he wasn’t a cop.
“You never know man, these days,” Thompson said.
“No you don’t. … And the thing is, that half the cops are good guys, and half are the bad guys,” Arthur said. “But if I don’t know who’s good and who’s bad, I’m just gonna walk in and clean house.”
As the two men became acquainted, Arthur claimed to have built a local militia with other highly trained veterans including a Navy SEAL, an Army Ranger and a couple of Marine veterans in the area. One of his military buddies he called “Priest” stayed at the farm and trained too, according to both children who spoke to the AP.
“Every night at about 10:30, [Arthur] would go out into the shed and open up his radios and would just call out and touch bases with a whole bunch of other people. To kind of bring together the militia that come together and exchange information,” said Powell’s daughter, who often sat with Arthur during these communications when she couldn’t sleep.
Thompson had contacted Arthur saying he needed to prepare for battle against federal agents. ATF agents confiscated some of his guns while he was out and his wife was home with their children alone, he said. They were coming back. This time he wanted to be ready.
Arthur and Thompson discussed using hidden, improvised explosive devices, and how Thompson could transform his house into a “spider web” of fatal booby traps meant to kill raiding federal agents.
Thompson was wearing a wire for the FBI under the code name “Buckshot.”
“I want to show you something called a spider web,” Arthur said. “This was something I built for a fellow recon buddy of mine.”
“It is a freakin’ death box.”
Thompson and Arthur talked for hours, eventually settling into seats in the house with Arthur’s kids swirling around. Then talk turned to assassination; using snipers and hidden explosives against well-guarded politicians, according to the recordings.
Arthur said such killings will be necessary in the coming civil war — and that snipers are most effective, in many cases.
“I know if I can put a round right there in the base of the windshield where it meets the dashboard. I’ll hit him. So is the sniper hit better? Yes.
“Say it’s a whole walled-off gated house … the governor’s mansion. Alright, how do I attack him? Well, he’s going to have to leave to go to the Capitol at some point, right?” Arthur said, his wife and children nearby talking about school and working in the garden.
It is these targeted attacks that the data show people with military backgrounds are making more successful. Those include the 2020 murders of a federal security officer and a sheriff’s deputy in California by an active duty Air Force staff sergeant and the 2018 attack by a former Army soldier who shot six women at a Florida hot yoga studio, killing two, before he killed himself.
When military members are involved, the plots are more likely to seek and inflict mass casualties — and in an election year it is this kind of attack that worries people who are studying how military expertise is influencing extremist action. A mass casualty attack is defined as one that kills or injures four or more people.
“My primary concern is not a march on the Capitol or any other government building. It’s that somebody with the skills that were imparted on them by the military to be extremely lethal uses those skills,” said START’s Jensen.
“And they go out and attack civilians and have a real impact on public safety.”
Armed with Thompson’s recordings, FBI agents planned for a way to arrest Arthur safely — a threat assessment of the farm had determined it was too dangerous to try it there.
The informant told Arthur to meet him at a gun show in Raleigh. He said he had contacts there who would buy some Tackleberry manuals.
Arthur met Thompson at the event entrance and the two passed through metal detectors — Arthur wasn’t armed. A SWAT team waiting inside surprised Arthur, who initially resisted attempts to restrain him, agents said. Officers then forced Arthur to the ground, and arrested him.
At the same time, bomb disposal teams were searching Arthur’s home. They found sandbags and cans filled with Tannerite — which, if hit by gunfire from afar, can explode. The teams also discovered the pipe bomb wired to a switch on the porch.
‘You took the oath’
In May, U.S. District Judge James C. Dever III sentenced Arthur to 25 years in federal prison after a jury convicted him on charges related to teaching the FBI’s informant how to make bombs meant to kill federal law enforcement officers, as well as illegal weapons possession.
Prosecutors said they’d found improvised grenades and other “mass casualty” and “indiscriminate” weapons on Arthur’s farm.
A psychological workup found no evidence of mental illness, but did cite likely war trauma as a factor in Arthur’s paranoia. Still, the conclusion was that Arthur did not need “acute mental health treatment.”
Dever, also a veteran, told Arthur that his specialized military training in explosives and other warfare techniques made his conduct that much more serious.
“You took the oath that all of us who served took,” Dever told Arthur. “You know better.”
But Arthur is unrepentant.
In messages to AP from a federal prison in Tennessee, he said he is a target of “political warfare.”
“I’m a political prisoner,” he wrote, echoing the language former President Donald Trump and others have used to minimize the crimes committed in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
In Arthur’s view, the imprisonment of “vets and patriots” like himself and the attempted assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania prophesy the civil war he has long argued is coming.
“This is happening,” he wrote. “All the signs are there.”
Kessler reported from Washington, D.C. Contributing to this story were Rhonda Shafner, Michael Rezendes and Marshall Ritzel in New York; Serginho Roosblad in San Francisco; Allen G. Breed in Mount Olive, N.C.; Rick Bowmer in Salt Lake City; and Michael Kunzelman, Lolita Baldor and Tara Copp in Washington, D.C.
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Army special forces join search for missing Navy pilots after crash
The search continued late Thursday for the aviators whose jet crashed in remote terrain Tuesday, the Navy said.
Editor’s note: The Navy identified the two aviators killed in the crash as Lt. Serena Wileman and Lt. Cmdr. Lyndsay Evans on Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. For more details, see our latest story here.
Army special forces soldiers have joined the mission to locate and find two Navy aviators whose EA-18G Growler jet crashed Tuesday in a remote area east of Mount Rainier in Washington state.
The two-person fighter jet, assigned to Electronic Attack Squadron 130 at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, crashed east of Mount Rainier at approximately 3:20 p.m. local time Tuesday while conducting training, the Navy said.
Wreckage was found Wednesday, but the Navy said Thursday night that it “rests at approximately 6,000 feet altitude in a remote, steep and heavily-wooded area east of Mount Rainier.”
Soldiers from the 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) based at nearby Joint Base Lewis-McChord are assisting in the search, the Navy said.
“The unit brings specialized mountaineering, high-angle rescue, medical, and technical communication skills necessary to navigate the difficult terrain associated with the Cascade Mountain Range that is inaccessible by other means,” the Navy said.
Two Navy EA-18G Growler crew members missing after crash
Any confirmation of whether either of the aviators survived the crash cannot be done without a debris area site assessment, according to the Navy.
“Our priority is to locate our two aviators as quickly and as safely as possible,” Capt. David Ganci, commanding officer of Electronic Attack Wing, said in a statement. “Adhering to [Pentagon] procedure, we cannot identify or confirm the names of aircrew involved in a mishap until 24-hours after their next of kin have been notified of their status. Please remain patient and limit speculation about the incident. That is one of the best ways we can respect the privacy of the loved ones who are impacted by this tragic event.”
US stealth bombers strike 5 Houthi weapons bunkers
Central Command said the attacks hit missiles and other weapons components used by the militia group.
The U.S. military struck five bunkers housing weapons for the Houthis in Yemen on Oct. 16, the largest strike on the militia group in months.
The Air Force used B-2 stealth bombers to hit the targets, described as “hardened underground weapons storage locations,” according to a Pentagon release.
“This was a unique demonstration of the United States’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened or fortified,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
After Hamas’ attack on Israel last October, the Houthis started attacking commercial ships traveling through the Red Sea, through which 15% of global trade flowed before last year. The group’s stated reason is to protest Israel’s war in Gaza, though Houthi strikes have at times targeted ships that have no ties to Israel.
In December 2023, the Pentagon launched Operation Prosperity Guardian, a mission led by the U.S. and involving multiple countries, which has sought to protect ships transiting the waterway. Most companies have instead rerouted away from the Red Sea, though, and U.S. Navy vessels located there have faced repeated attacks from the group, which America’s government considers a terrorist organization.
The U.S. military has since debated its goals for the mission — and how much it should attempt to damage the Houthis’ ability to launch such attacks, given that Iran continues to resupply the group’s stockpiles.
“At the direction of President Biden, I authorized these targeted strikes to further degrade the Houthis’ capability to continue their destabilizing behavior and to protect and defend U.S. forces and personnel in one of the world’s most critical waterways,” Austin said.
In a separate statement, U.S. Central Command said the strikes hit bunkers filled with “various advanced conventional weapons” that had been used to hit American warships and civilian vessels. Those stocks included “missiles, weapons components and other munitions,” CENTCOM said, assessing for now there were no casualties.
Soldiers exposed to new combat realities with expanded training
Drill sergeants now serve as squad leaders in field training.
A new approach to training brand new recruits in large-scale combat aims to prepare soldiers for future conflicts as the Army readies the force for a potential slugfest against foes like the Russian or Chinese militaries.
In March, the service launched “Forge 2.5,” another update to “The Forge,” which began as a concept in 2016 with a 96-hour field exercise for week-seven trainees. The Forge has been in place since 2018 as a regular feature of basic training.
The event closely mirrors “The Crucible,” which the Marine Corps instituted in its recruit training in the 1990s. The field endurance test puts recruits in a patrol base, and they run through a variety of combat and logistical scenarios over the course of the four-day stretch.
The Army has graduated 25,000 soldiers through pre-basic prep course
Forge 2.5 ratchets up recruit learning by running large-scale combat operation scenarios, all while involving drill sergeants and company command teams as leaders within the trainee teams.
This structure gives young soldiers firsthand field experience while keeping drill sergeants sharp on basic soldiering and leadership skills, said Gen. Gary Brito, head of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command.
“What this is meant to do — part one is now immersing soldiers with threat actors from the moment they arrive in the reception company,” Brito said.
Part two of Forge 2.5, which rolled out this year, puts drill sergeants in squad leader positions.
As recently as three years ago, new soldiers conducted events in a fashion resembling a round robin, where individual soldiers would rotate between tasks. Now, every event is collective, and soldiers are always working with and leading small teams, Brito said.
In doing so, recruits are learning more than marching or basic rifle marksmanship, with many completing tasks they would not have encountered until pinning on an NCO rank.
From digital tool signature management to mission planning and order development, the drill sergeants are exposing the new soldiers to more complex considerations as they train, Brito said.
“The trainees are the ones actually executing casualty evaluation, gathering and sending reports, and the drill sergeants are leading them through all those different things they’ve learned so far in the basic combat training portion of [initial training],” said Capt. Julio Sanchez, commander of Company A, 31st Engineer Battalion out of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
Sanchez’s unit conducted a pilot version of the Forge 2.5 format this year at the home of basic training for most of the Army’s non-combat arms jobs.
And that, Brito said, is why Army leaders must be at the top of their game for when these new soldiers arrive.
“You all will be charged in leading cohesive teams,” Brito said. “Privates will be introduced to why we need to be cohesive and the importance of the battle buddy.”
Brito tied that soldier development back to how the Army is expecting more of lower level tactical leaders, who will have high-level assets such as satellite feeds, drone-based fire support and other tools that soldiers previously never needed to consider.
The new training structure has been implemented at Fort Moore, Georgia; Fort Jackson, South Carolina and Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
Beyond the Forge 2.5 implementation, another program recently surpassed a milestone. The Future Solder Prep course has seen 25,000 soldiers complete entry-level training and join Army units as of this year, Army Times previously reported.
The pre-basic training program began in 2022 to take prospective recruits who did not meet minimum physical or academic standards and give them up to 90 days to reach those standards with the help of Army training staff.
CORRECTION: This article has been corrected to include accurate references to geographic locations for Army installations and the type of training being adjusted.
No pilots, all cargo: Airbus tests loading of autonomous helicopter
The nose of this autonomous variant of the UH-72 Lakota will open up, allowing weapons or larger pieces of cargo to be front-loaded into the helicopter.
Airbus U.S. Space and Defense has conducted its first demonstration as part of a program to build an autonomous, uncrewed version of the UH-72 Lakota transportation helicopter for the U.S. Marine Corps.
The Lakota variant, which Airbus calls the UH-72 Logistics Connector, is the company’s bid for the Marines’ Aerial Logistics Connector program, senior manager for business development Carl Forsling said Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Washington.
Aerial Logistics Connector is one of several Defense Department programs aimed at improving how the military delivers logistical support to troops in distributed environments during a high-intensity conflict.
Airbus built a mockup of an uncrewed Lakota’s internal chassis, with all crew stations removed to make room for cargo throughout the body. Airbus tested it recently at Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina to make sure standard Marine cargo containers and other specialized cargo could be loaded and unloaded from it, Forsling said, though the company declined to say exactly when the demonstration took place.
“Integrating warfighter inputs early on in this phase of the contract helps ensure we’re hitting all the marks and gives us invaluable insights so we deliver the right capabilities to the U.S. Marine Corps,” Rob Geckle, chairman and chief executive of Airbus U.S. Space and Defense.
Airbus aims to have the UH-72 helicopter fly autonomously, Forsling said, and is working with the Marine Corps and other firms to develop the necessary technology. If the Marine Corps or another customer decides they want a piloted version in the future, the design could be adapted to accommodate a human pilot, according to Forsling.
Without the need for a cockpit, this UH-72 would use the space behind its nose for more cargo storage, Forsling said. The nose may open up like a clamshell or swing open to one side on a hinge, he said, but Airbus has not yet decided on the exact configuration.
The ability to front-load cargo into the UH-72 will make it possible to carry larger containers or equipment that would not fit in a normal Lakota’s side doors, according to Forsling. It will also allow users to load cargo into the helicopter with a forklift, he said, and load missiles for transport.
The Marine Corps isn’t currently requiring the UH-72 to fire ordnance, Forsling said. However, the helicopter could be adapted using open systems architecture should the Corps or another future customer decide it needed strike capability, he said.
Demonstrations will continue through the first phase of the middle tier of the acquisition program, which ends in late 2025, Forsling said, and the Marine Corps will then decide whether to move forward with the program and with who. The service aims to have a flying prototype for the Aerial Logistics Connector program in 2028 or 2029 and make a production decision by the end of 2029.
Near Earth Autonomy, Leonardo and Honeywell are also working as a team on the Aerial Logistics Connector program.
Airbus is now in the design phase of this program and doing risk reduction work, focusing on the helicopter itself, Forsling said. As it moves toward the next phase, Airbus is laying the groundwork for autonomous flight, he said.
Forsling said it’s too soon to say how much the UH-72 might cost or whether it would be more or less expensive than the standard Lakota. He declined to comment on whether Airbus has spoken to other services or foreign countries about the UH-72B, but said it would be applicable across the joint environment and with allies.
PrimerAI introduces ‘near-zero hallucination’ update to AI platform
An AI company says it's figured out a way to get its platform to make almost zero mistakes when assessing data.
An artificial intelligence company that contracts with the U.S. government says its AI system’s analysis of large data sets can produce nearly flawless results.
PrimerAI announced on Oct. 14 that an update to its AI platform can achieve a near-zero hallucination rate, a result that the company believes has broader implications for the Defense Department and defense industry as a whole.
The term “hallucinations” in AI parlance refers to models spitting out incorrect results.
“In high-stakes environments where precision and time lines are crucial, Primer’s enhanced platform emerges as a game changing solution,” the company’s press release said.
PrimerAI CEO Sean Moriarty explained what’s important about the change to the system in a phone interview with Military Times.
While many AI platforms experience a hallucination rate of 10%, Moriarty said, PrimerAI had whittled it down to .3%.
The biggest boon of the update was the ability to fact-check its own results.
This proprietary system, which the company says captures over 99% of errors before they reach users, is called the retrieval augmented generation verification system. Large language models, or LLMs, which are AI systems that can understand and process human language, already use retrieval augmented generation when given a prompt. ChatGPT is a prime example.
What makes PrimerAI’s system novel is that once it generates a response or summary, it generates a claim for the summary and corroborates that claim with the source data, according to Cindy Ma, senior product manager at PrimerAI.
This extra layer of revision leads to exponentially reduced mistakes, said Ma, who provided an in-person demonstration of the system at the Association of the United States Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14.
DOD must accelerate AI adoption amid growing threats: PrimerAI CEO
PrimerAI believes that for the Defense Department, providing a large buffer against inaccuracy is paramount because small hallucinations can trigger dramatic responses.
“Imagine a world where an LLM is saying an adversary has five times as many aircraft carriers as they actually have,” Moriarty said.
Moriarty acknowledged that there’s always room for error despite the aim for flawlessness. Even if high-quality reference data is the foundation of an AI system’s analysis, there are still pieces of the puzzle that get warped. Data itself can be tainted by human judgment.
“Our present world is not a zero-defect world, although we strive for zero defects,” Moriarty said.
US to send missile defense system and troops to Israel
That announcement comes as Iran has warned Washington to keep American military forces out of Israel.
The United States will send a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel, along with the troops needed to operate it, the Pentagon said Sunday, even as Iran warned Washington to keep American military forces out of Israel.
Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorized the deployment of the THAAD battery at the direction of President Joe Biden. He said the system will help bolster Israel’s air defenses following Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Israel in April and October.
The delivery of the sophisticated missile defense system risks further inflaming the conflict in the Middle East despite widespread diplomatic efforts to avoid an all-out war. The Iranian warning came in a post on the social platform X long associated with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who noted the earlier reports that the U.S. was considering the deployment.
Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have been clashing since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza. Late last month, Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon.
Israel is widely believed to be preparing a military response to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack when it fired roughly 180 missiles into Israel.
In a brief exchange with reporters before leaving Florida on Sunday, Biden said he agreed to deploy the THAAD battery “to defend Israel.” Biden spoke at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa after making a quick visit to see the damage caused by Hurricane Milton and meet with first responders, residents and local leaders.
Ryder, in his statement, said the deployment "underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran.”
It was not immediately clear where the THAAD battery was coming from or when it will arrive. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli army spokesman, declined to provide any timeline for its arrival, but thanked the U.S. for its support.
The U.S. deployed one of the batteries to the Middle East along with additional Patriot battalions to bolster protections for U.S. forces in the region late last year after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas militants. Ryder also said that the U.S. sent a THAAD battery to Israel in 2019 for training.
It is also not unusual for the U.S. to have a limited number of troops in Israel, which the U.S. considers a key regional ally. There have generally been a small number of forces there consistently as well as routine rotational deployments for training and exercises.
The THAAD will add another layer to Israel's already significant air defenses, which include separate systems designed to intercept long-range, medium-range and short-range threats. Israel recently retired its U.S.-made Patriot systems after decades of use.
According to an April report by the Congressional Research Service, the Army has seven THAAD batteries. Generally, each consists of six truck-mounted launchers, 48 interceptors, radio and radar equipment and requires 95 soldiers to operate.
The THAAD is considered a complementary system to the Patriot, but it can defend a wider area. It can hit targets at ranges of 150 to 200 kilometers (93 to 124 miles), and is used to destroy short-range, medium-range and limited intermediate-range ballistic missile threats that are either inside or outside the atmosphere.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is responsible for developing the system, but it is operated by the Army. An eighth system has been funded and ordered and is expected to be in the field sometime next year.
Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Aamer Madhani in Tampa, Florida, and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.