President Donald Trump is tapping an Air Force fighter pilot with extensive experience as a senior commander in the Middle East to be the next head of U.S. European Command.

Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, currently the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would also take over as the supreme allied commander Europe if his nomination is confirmed by the Senate. NATO’s North Atlantic Council in a statement Thursday said it approved Grynkewich’s nomination as SACEUR.

Hegseth backs Air Force three-star Grynkewich for top Europe job

The U.S. military’s presence in Europe is under scrutiny, as the Trump administration eyes cuts in the force even as the region continues to grapple with Russia’s war on Ukraine and the wider effects of the Israel-Hamas war.

U.S. warships have been persistently patrolling the Mediterranean Sea to be poised to support operations in support of Israel and the broader effort to secure the Red Sea corridor, where Houthi rebels have attacked commercial and military vessels.

There have been ongoing discussions in the Pentagon about slashing the number of U.S. troops across Europe. The Biden administration poured an additional 20,000 U.S. forces into the region — bringing the total to about 100,000 — to help calm escalating fears among NATO allies that they could be Russia’s next target.

Defense leaders have said there have been no final decisions. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have both made it clear they want NATO to do more to defend its own region and that the U.S. is turning to focus more on China and America’s own southern border.

In his current job, Grynkewich helps to develop guidance for the combatant commands and serves as a key aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on military operations around the world.

Most recently, Grynkewich served as commander of Air Forces in the Middle East, including air operations in support of the conflict in Israel, from 2022 to 2023. And prior to that he was director of operations for U.S. Central Command.

He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1993, has served as an instructor pilot and was a test pilot for the development of the F-16 and F-22 fighter jets. He has more than 2,300 flight hours.

A soldier at Joint Base Lewis-McChord fought off two masked men who attacked him with a hammer while stealing gear from the Ranger Compound on base Sunday night.

Authorities arrested Levi Austin Frakes and Charles Ethan Fields, both veterans, at their home in Lacey, Washington, on Monday night, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court.

FBI agents found an arsenal that included dozens of guns, explosives and body armor, along with Nazi paraphernalia at the home.

According to the complaint, a soldier entered a building at the Army Ranger compound at Joint Base Lewis-McChord on Sunday night and found two men wearing Ranger physical training clothing with a cluster of Army property around them. The soldier questioned them about what they were doing and told them to pull down their masks, which they did.

A fight ensued, and one of the men brandished a hammer and struck the soldier in the head. Despite losing a large amount of blood, the soldier continued to fight and managed to get control of the hammer — at which point, one of the men pulled a knife. The soldier then let them go, the complaint said.

The two veterans had attempted to steal about $14,000 worth of body armor, ballistic helmets and communications equipment, most of which they left behind when they dropped their rucksacks as they fled, the complaint said.

During the fight, one of the men dropped his hat. It said “Fields” on the inside. Using base entry logs and surveillance video, investigators determined that Fields and Frakes had entered Lewis-McChord together about an hour before the attack, investigators said.

Additionally, the wounded soldier, who required hospital treatment, told investigators he asked around his unit about the name Fields after finding it on the hat. The soldier learned that Fields had been assigned to the Ranger Battalion around 2021, and he was able to identify him as one of the attackers based on photos shown to him by others in his unit, the complaint said.

The men had access to the base because they were veterans, the probable cause statement filed in state court said.

“Charles E. Fields was a 11B (Infantrymen) in the Regular Army from February 2017 to July 2021,” An Army spokesperson told Army Times. “He deployed to Afghanistan twice from September 2018 to February 2019 and October 2019 to November 2019. He left the Army in the rank of Sergeant.”

Information was not immediately available regarding Frakes’ military service.

One of the defendants told investigators the pair had been stealing equipment from the base for the past two years to sell or trade, and agents found about $24,000 in cash at the home, wrote Special Agent Christopher J. Raguse of the Army Criminal Investigation Division.

Washington state business license records show Frakes and Fields own a company called Sovereign Solutions, which featured an “SS” logo with the letters separated by a lightning bolt, according to The Associated Press.

The company’s website advertises “Quality Training and Equipment for the Modern Warfighter,” including marksmanship classes, as well as a T-shirt with the company logo and the words “Professional War Crime Committer.”

The federal complaint charges Frakes and Fields with robbery, assault and theft of government property. The pair also face investigation on state charges of unlawful possession of incendiary devices, short-barreled rifles and a machine gun. Each was being held at the Thurston County Jail on $500,000 bail as of Thursday.

Agents found rifles staged at the upstairs windows, a probable cause affidavit filed in Thurston County Superior Court said. The federal complaint said agents “observed numerous Nazi/white supremacy memorabilia, murals, and literature in every bedroom and near several stockpiles of weapons and military equipment.”

Photos from inside the home included in court documents showed a wall decorated with a red Nazi flag emblazoned with a black swastika and a black SS flag — the letters shaped like lightning bolts — referencing the Schutzstaffel, the Nazi paramilitary led by Heinrich Himmler.

Agents seized about 35 firearms at the home, including short-barreled rifles and an MG42 machine gun — a type typically supported with a bipod and which was used by German troops during World War II.

Other seized gear included 3D-printed suppressors and Army-issued explosives, such as smoke grenades and blasting caps, ballistic plates and helmets and night-vision devices, authorities said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

President Donald Trump is nominating Vice Adm. Brad Cooper to take over as the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, the Pentagon said Wednesday. If he is confirmed, it would mark just the second time that a Navy admiral has held the job.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement that Trump also is nominating Air Force Lt. Gen. Dagvin Anderson to head U.S. Africa Command. Anderson would be the first Air Force general to lead the command, which was created in 2007.

Hegseth backs Air Force three-star Grynkewich for top Europe job

Cooper is currently deputy commander of U.S. Central Command and has extensive experience serving and leading troops in the Middle East. The current head of the command, Army Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, is slated to retire after more than three years in the post.

It is a crucial role as the region has been shaken by conflict, with the Trump administration pushing to broker a ceasefire deal after 20 months of war in Gaza and pressing for an agreement with Iran in negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

A 1989 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Cooper commanded naval forces in the Middle East for close to three years as the head of the Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain. He left in February 2024 to take over as deputy at Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and is based in Tampa.

Army and Marine generals have largely held the Middle East job since it was created in 1983. And two of the recent leaders — former Army Gen. Lloyd Austin and former Marine Gen. Jim Mattis — went on to serve as defense secretary. Central Command covers 21 countries across central and south Asia and northeast Africa and has overseen the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Syria and Yemen.

The only Navy officer to ever lead Central Command was Adm. William Fallon, who resigned after a year and retired. At the time, Fallon said he was stepping down due to press reports that suggested he was opposed to then-President George W. Bush’s Iran policies. He said the reports were wrong but the perception had become a distraction.

Cooper is a surface warfare officer and served on guided-missile cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships. He commanded a destroyer and a cruiser.

During his time leading the 5th Fleet, Cooper set up the Navy’s first unmanned and artificial intelligence task force, and he led naval operations against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. He also oversaw the Navy’s role in Operation Prosperity Guardian, the U.S.-led coalition created in late 2023 to counter Houthi attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

He previously served as commander of Naval Surface Force Atlantic and commander of U.S. Naval Forces Korea. Cooper is the son of a career Army officer and got his master’s degree in strategic intelligence from the National Intelligence University.

Anderson, nominated to lead operations in Africa, is a pilot who has flown the KC-135 tanker, the C-130 transport aircraft and the U-28A surveillance aircraft used largely by special operations forces. He has flown more than 3,400 flight hours, including 738 in combat.

He is currently serving as the director of joint force development on the Joint Staff.

According to the Air Force, he commanded a special operations squadron, an expeditionary squadron, an operations group and a special operations wing. He also led the task force that coordinated the repositioning of U.S. forces from Somalia and headed Special Operations Command, Africa, from 2019 to 2021.

Africa Command is the newest of the Pentagon’s geographic commands and covers the bulk of the African continent. Much of the U.S. military’s efforts there have focused on combatting extremist groups and training local forces.

Anderson would be the seventh general to head Africa Command. To date, four of the previous leaders were Army generals and two were Marines.

Anderson is from Ypsilanti, Michigan, and graduated from the ROTC program at Washington University in St. Louis.

The aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, the flagship of the Harry S. Truman carrier strike group, returned this past weekend to Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, after an eventful 251-day deployment that saw the vessel fire over 1.1. million pounds of ordnance and deliver the largest carrier-launched airstrike in history.

The Truman’s arrival in its home port Sunday followed months of almost ceaseless action in the Middle East against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels as part of Operation Rough Rider, launched by U.S. Central Command on March 15.

During the operation, which targeted Houthi infrastructure such as command centers, training camps and weapons manufacturing sites, the Truman saw continuous action for over 50 days, conducting precision airstrikes and launching Tomahawk missiles while under constant fire from Houthi militants seeking to hamstring global shipping.

The Truman launched 11,000 sorties and expended over 1.1 million pounds of ordnance during its deployment, and on Feb. 1 launched the largest-ever airstrike against Islamic State terrorists in Somalia. Launched from the Truman, 27 F/A-18 Super Hornets of Carrier Air Wing 1 struck ISIS militants based in cave complexes, dropping 124,000 pounds of ordnance within less than two minutes and killing 14 terrorists, including ISIS recruiter Ahmed Maeleninine.

During its grueling deployment, which was extended numerous times, the Truman underwent several hardships, including a collision with a civilian merchant vessel in the Mediterranean in February, an abrupt change in command and the loss of three F/A-18 fighter jets.

“These warrior Sailors demonstrated superb grit for more than eight months. Even in the face of significant challenges, they persevered, never giving up when their nation needed them,” said Capt. Chris “Chowdah” Hill, commanding officer of the Truman, in a release. “It’s been an honor to serve alongside such dedicated professionals and to take them home to their families.”

Other vessels in the strike group accompanying the Truman included the Ticonderoga-class cruiser Gettysburg and two Arleigh-Burke class destroyers, the Jason Dunham and the Stout. Altogether, the vessels sailed over 240,000 nautical miles during the lengthy deployment.

Mold-infested walls, exposed electrical wiring and other subpar living conditions at Andersen Air Force Base’s military barracks in Guam prompted a recent Navy-wide review of all unaccompanied housing, according to a new investigative report from an independent government watchdog.

After Navy Secretary John Phelan saw Andersen’s Palau Hall barracks during a May 2 visit, he immediately ordered sailors and Marines to be moved out within 10 days, according to a report published by the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, last week.

Photos of Palau Hall barracks obtained by POGO show exposed wires, walls with mold that had been painted over and damaged plumbing.

“I actually thought the buildings were condemned,” Phelan told POGO. “When we pulled up to them and saw what shape they’re in, I was shocked.”

By May 22, three weeks after Phelan’s visit, 25 Marines and 48 sailors had left the barracks.

About 21,000 people affiliated with the U.S. military live in Guam, a U.S. territory that houses Andersen Air Force Base, Naval Base Guam and Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz.

The report claims Phelan’s move to open new barracks at Camp Blaz ahead of schedule last month was, in part, a response to the lackluster conditions he witnessed at Andersen.

After Phelan’s visit, Vice Adm. Scott Gray, commander of Navy Installations Command, sent a scathing email to Navy leaders May 5, describing “clearly unacceptable living conditions” at the barracks, according to an email obtained by POGO.

Gray’s email ordered inspections of all barracks housing sailors to be conducted no later than May 27 and demanded service members be moved to more livable quarters if their barracks were found to be poorly maintained.

In the email, Gray instructed inspectors to use the “Washington Post” test, in which those looking at living conditions should ask themselves whether they could defend the state of the barracks if a report in the legacy paper were published, according to the report.

In an interview with POGO, Gray acknowledged some Navy barracks could be classified as being in poor condition and pledged a “colossal effort” to improve sailors’ quality of life.

“I’m not going to let up until we get to where we need to be,” Gray told POGO. “Where I can say I am proud of every barracks that we have.”

Conditions in other barracks at Andersen were not markedly different from those of Palau Hall, according to an Air Force spokesperson who spoke to POGO.

There are five permanent party dormitory facilities at the Guam base, according to the Air Force.

When reached for comment, the Air Force reiterated its commitment to providing safe and adequate living conditions for airmen.

Barracks 2030 isn’t a ‘fix it and forget it’ effort, USMC leaders say

“We prioritize permanent party unaccompanied housing requirements with dedicated facility sustainment, restoration, and modernization funds in accordance with our 4-year Dorm Master Plan,” an Air Force spokesperson told Military Times in an emailed statement.

Dorm leaders inspect facilities daily, and if degraded conditions are observed, immediate repairs, as well as long-term investments, are provided, according to the spokesperson.

The spokesperson identified damage from Typhoon Mawar in May 2023 as a contributing factor to barracks conditions and said the service was prioritizing funds for renovating dorms and providing alternate housing options to service members.

The Navy also pledged its unwavering dedication to service members.

“Sailors’ well-being is a priority for the Navy and it’s critical to their wellness to have a safe, comfortable place to call home, whether they’re staying on a Navy base or in barracks belonging to another Service, such as with Andersen Air Force Base,” said Destiny Sibert, a Navy spokesperson.

POGO interviewed a Naval officer, who spoke under the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, about their experience being stationed on the island.

“Anybody that’s been to Guam can tell you … if you’re living on base, you’re going to be in crappy quarters,” the officer told POGO, according to the report.

Subpar living conditions in military barracks have long been a problem for many junior service members, and the services have taken steps in recent years to address them. The Marine Corps has pledged nearly $11 billion to overhaul its barracks as part of a massive housing renovation effort dubbed Barracks 2030. The program, which Marine Corps leaders said won’t officially start until 2026, will add new furniture to housing and repair rooms.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s recently introduced “Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed the House on May 22 and is awaiting confirmation in the Senate, includes $1 billion in barracks maintenance for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force, the report said.

The report’s author, René Kladzyk, told Military Times over the phone that she was still receiving anonymous tips regarding the Guam base’s poor conditions after the report’s publication.

While sailors and Marines had been moved out of the barracks, 430 airmen and soldiers remained, according to Kladzyk.

“I think that it’s important to emphasize that although we saw a pretty sweeping response from Navy officials to learning about these conditions at Andersen Air Force Base, we didn’t see the same response from Air Force officials who I reached out to over email,” Kladzyk said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename the replenishment oiler Harvey Milk, a highly rare move that will strip the ship of the moniker of a slain gay rights activist who served as a sailor during the Korean War.

U.S. officials say Navy Secretary John Phelan put together a small team to rename the replenishment oiler and that a new name is expected this month. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the next name had not yet been chosen.

The change was laid out in an internal memo that officials said defended the action as a move to align with President Donald Trump and Hegseth’s objectives to “re-establish the warrior culture.”

Navy launches ship named for gay rights leader Harvey Milk

It marks the latest move by Hegseth and the wider Trump administration to purge all programs, policies, books and social media mentions of references to diversity, equity and inclusion. And it comes during Pride Month — the same timing as the Pentagon’s campaign to force transgender troops out of the U.S. military.

“Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos,” Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement on the renaming. “Any potential renaming(s) will be announced after internal reviews are complete.”

The decision was first reported by Military.com. Phelan’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The oiler Harvey Milk was named in 2016 by then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who said at the time that the John Lewis-class of oilers would be named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights.

Milk, who was portrayed by Sean Penn in an Oscar-winning 2008 movie, served for four years in the Navy before he was forced out for being gay. He later became one of the first openly gay candidates elected to public office. Milk served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and had sponsored a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing and employment. It passed, and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone signed it into law.

On Nov. 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk’s bill.

The ship was christened in 2021, and during the ceremony, then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said he wanted to be at the event “not just to amend the wrongs of the past, but to give inspiration to all of our LGBTQ community leaders who served in the Navy, in uniform today and in the civilian workforce as well, too, and to tell them that we’re committed to them in the future.”

The ship is operated by Military Sealift Command with a crew of about 125 civilian mariners. The Navy says it conducted its first resupply mission at sea in fall 2024 while operating in the Virginia Capes. It continued to resupply Navy ships at sea off the East Coast until it began scheduled maintenance at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, earlier this year.

While the renaming is rare, the Biden administration also changed the names of two Navy ships in 2023 as part of the effort to remove Confederate names from U.S. military installations.

The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser Chancellorsville — named for the Civil War battle — was renamed the Robert Smalls after a sailor and former enslaved person. And the Maury, an oceanographic survey ship originally named after a Confederate sailor, was renamed the Marie Tharp after a geologist and oceanographic cartographer who created the first scientific maps of the Atlantic Ocean floor.

Maritime lore hints as to why renaming ships is so unusual, suggesting that changing a name is bad luck and tempts retribution from the sea gods.

Military Times editor Beth Sullivan contributed to this report.

An Army major charged with sexually assaulting or raping more than a dozen women over a four-year period in the Washington, D.C., area began this week at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Maj. Jonathan Batt faces 63 accusations, which include 10 specifications of rape and 15 sexual assault charges against 17 women, according to the Army’s Office of Special Trial Counsel. Batt also faces charges of aggravated assault, battery, obstruction of justice and abusive sexual contact.

Batt has pleaded not guilty to all charges, his civilian attorney Nathan Freeburg told Stars and Stripes.

The major was charged in October with 76 violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice against 20 women. Some of the charges were dropped prior to trial because some of the victims declined to participate in the proceedings, Michelle McCaskill, spokeswoman for the Office of Special Trial Counsel, told Stars and Stripes.

Army officer faces rape, sexual assault charges involving 20 victims

Court documents show that Batt is accused of a variety of sexual and aggravated assaults on women in Arlington, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., between 2019 and 2023, Stripes reported. Some women allege Batt choked them until they were unconscious before he raped them.

Other women allege he used sex toys on the women against their will and bit and slapped them without consent.

His obstruction of justice charge stems from an allegation that he told one person not to speak with “someone posing as a police officer” about “sexual allegations that some women are making against me,” Stripes reported.

Batt graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York in 2007. He was commissioned as an infantry officer and has served with the 82nd Airborne Division, 5th Ranger Training Brigade, the 3rd Infantry Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Batt served four combat tours in Afghanistan and was previously assigned to the Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center in Crystal City, Virginia.

The trial is expected to last until June 27, McCaskill told Stripes.

Two foundational government pathways for the resettlement of Afghan allies and refugees would be terminated under executive branch plans shared with Congress last week.

The U.S. State Department informed Congress in a May 29 congressional notification letter that it will close the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts office, which handles planning and logistics for the relocation of Afghans who qualify for Special Immigrant Visas, Immigrant Visas and the United States Refugee Assistant Program, or USRAP.

“The Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts (CARE) Office will be eliminated and its functions will be realigned to the Afghanistan Affairs Office,” the letter read.

The move, which will see the office shut its doors by July 1, comes amid a plan to restructure the State Department.

The White House’s proposed 2026 budget, shared May 30, dealt another blow to relocation efforts by recommending to strike down Operation Enduring Welcome, a program facilitated by CARE that relocates Afghan nationals who are endangered because of their involvement with U.S. war efforts in the region.

“The Department will shut down the Enduring Welcome program by the end of FY 2025,” the fiscal year 2026 budget appendix states. “Consequently, the Budget includes no funding for the Enduring Welcome Administrative Expenses account.”

Under the proposal, Operation Enduring Welcome would end Sept. 30, 2025, at the conclusion of the 2025 fiscal year.

AfghanEvac, an organization dedicated to relocation efforts for Afghan allies, lambasted the news.

“The CARE Office was established to fix the failures of the U.S. withdrawal. Eliminating it — without public explanation, transition planning or reaffirmation of mission — is a profound betrayal of American values and promises,” AfghanEvac said in a public statement.

US troops, Afghan allies say executive orders endanger their families

The organization said the abolishing of CARE defies the CARE Authorization Act of 2024 — included in section 7810 on page 1,804 of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act — which specifically calls for the Secretary of State to appoint a coordinator for the program through Dec. 2027.

The move is the latest in a series of developments thwarting the resettlement of Afghan refugees.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced in early May the end of temporary protected status, or TPS, for Afghanistan, stating that the region’s safety had improved and no longer posed a threat to the well-being of those returning.

The status, ending July 14, offered protection from deportation to individuals who would otherwise face harm if they returned to their origin country.

DHS ends deportation protections for Afghans

But Afghans and U.S. service members with relatives stuck in Afghanistan told Military Times in February that their families constantly feared for their lives with the threat of the Taliban hanging over their heads.

Shawn VanDiver, CEO of AfghanEvac, estimated the end of TPS would impact more than 11,000 individuals from Afghanistan living in the U.S.

Speaking on a Zoom call last week after the news of CARE’s end, VanDiver estimated the closure of Operation Enduring Welcome would affect nearly 300,000 Afghans in need of assistance.

About 212,000 of those individuals live in Afghanistan, while 3,000 are relatives of active duty U.S. military personnel, VanDiver and AfghanEvac estimated.

If both programs dissolved, VanDiver said it would remove implicit U.S. protection, leaving the fate of military allies in Afghanistan up to the Taliban.

“The United States is saying, ‘Do what you want with these people. We don’t care,’” VanDiver said in a phone call with Military Times.

The Army is offering a $10,000 reward for credible information leading to an arrest and conviction in the death of a lieutenant in Honduras.

The Army Criminal Investigation Division posted the reward with details regarding the death of 1st Lt. Marciano Angelo Parisano, who was last seen on camera footage May 3 at 3:20 a.m. outside Club Santos in Comayagua, Honduras. He was off base on a liberty pass at the time.

Individuals with credible information regarding this incident are encouraged to contact the Army CID MacDill Resident Unit at (912) 547-4626 or via WhatsApp at (571) 656-7842. They can also submit an anonymous tip online at www.cid.army.mil/tips.

Parisano, 25, served as a UH-60 Black Hawk pilot with 1st Battalion, 228 Aviation Regiment at Soto Cano Air Base near Comayagua, a city in west-central Honduras. He is a 2023 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

The lieutenant was found dead near the Chiquito River on May 3, according to a Joint Task Force-Bravo release. Police do not suspect robbery as a motive in his death.

Army Black Hawk pilot found dead in Honduras

Joint Task Force-Bravo, Parisano’s unit parent command headquartered out of Soto Cano Air Base, posted on social media May 9 with a statement from his parents, Tom and Jessie Parisano.

The couple said they are “committed to seeking justice for Marco.”

“We trust the authorities will do everything in their power to ensure that accountability prevails,” they said in the statement. “No family should have to endure this kind of loss, and we hope that Marco’s story will serve as a reminder that God’s timing is unknown, and we must always be prepared.”

Tom and Jessie Parisano shared additional comments about their son and their loss.

“No words can truly capture the depth of our grief, nor the pain of waking up each day without him,” they said in the statement. “Marco was more than just our child — he was a bright light in our lives, a source of joy, kindness, and unwavering love. His presence was a gift, touching the hearts of everyone who crossed his path.”

A Marine Attack Squadron has flown its final Harrier flight and is set for official deactivation in September at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina.

The Marine Attack Squadron VMA 231, known as the “Ace of Spades,” flew its final AV-8B Harrier II flight May 29, according to a Marine release.

“Today is not a sad day,” Lt. Col. Paul Truog, current commanding officer of VMA-231, said in the release. “This is a momentous day for Marine aviation. It’s a day that we’re going to celebrate.”

The squadron will transition to the F-35B Lightning II aircraft, a fifth generation fighter jet.

“Everybody knows that VMA-231 is transitioning to F-35s. The Wing, the [Marine Aircraft Group], and the squadron are going to be more capable of responding to any crisis,” Truog said in his remarks. “But that capability is not just because it’s our most technically advanced weapons system. That capability is because of the Marines and the pilots that, in record amounts, raise their hands saying, ‘I want to continue on, I want to keep moving forward.’”

What Marine Corps aviation has in store over the next five years

The Corps expects to have a full-fifth generation fleet in their tactical aircraft by 2030.

The Harrier is one of two jets that the F-35 is replacing. It is slated to fly until 2027. The other aircraft is the F/A-18 Hornet, which is expected to fly until 2030, when all F-35s are expected to be operational.

Marine Fighter Attack Squadron, VMFA 542, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, also at Cherry Point, received its first F-35B in May 2023 and reached initial operational capability with the aircraft in February 2024.

Once the unit reaches full operational capability, it will contain six squadrons with 10 planes per squadron. But that number could increase, depending on future mission requirements, basing and funding.

The F-35B is a short-takeoff and vertical-landing variant of the aircraft. The F-35C is a long-range jet.

Marine Fighter Attack Squadron, VMFA 314, Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3rd Marine Air Wing at Miramar, California, reached full operational capability with its F-35C in July 2021 — the first unit to do so among all military branches.

The squadron deployed aboard ship the following year, supporting all 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and West Coast MEU deployments.

In 2022, the Corps set procurement goals of 353 F-35B and 67 F-35C for a total of 420 aircraft at a rate of roughly 20 per year.

Those aircraft will eventually fill out a planned 18 active component squadrons across the Corps.

He couldn’t recall how he had gotten there — all Douglas Hegdahl could remember was leaving behind his glasses in his bunk and going up to the top deck of the cruiser Canberra to watch the ship firing its guns off the Gulf of Tonkin.

“I can’t tell you how I fell from my ship,” Hegdahl said after his release in 1969. “All I know is, I walked up on the deck. It was dark and they were firing, and the next thing I recall I was in the water.”

Picked up by a North Vietnamese fishing boat after treading water for hours, and handed over to the Viet Cong before being brought to Hỏa Lò Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.

It was there that the 20-year-old sailor from Clark, South Dakota, began one of the greatest non-combatant cons of the war.

Deemed a low-value prisoner due to his low rank, Hegdahl began to exploit this perception.

“I had probably the most embarrassing capture in the entire Vietnam War,” Hegdahl said in a 1997 interview with author and veteran Marc Leepson. “I found that my defense posture was just to play dumb. Let’s face it, when you fall off your boat, you have a lot to work with.”

Pretending to be illiterate and suffering from a cognitive disability, Hegdahl’s ruse eventually led to his captors giving the American prisoner of war more leeway within the harsh confines of the prison, which often included regular use of severe torture and harsh interrogation.

Unlike many prisoners who were not allowed to interact with one another, Hegdahl was given more freedom to interact with POWs — which he used to his advantage.

After his initial capture in 1967, Hegdahl quietly began to collect vital information, covertly communicating with fellow POWs, memorizing the names, capture dates and personal details of approximately 256 other American prisoners, according to the Veterans Breakfast Club.

He developed mnemonic devices, including the nursery rhyme “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” and repeated the information constantly to ensure he would not forget it. He also managed to glean the exact location of the infamous camp.

Dubbed “The Incredibly Stupid One” by North Vietnamese guards, Hegdahl frequently frustrated their attempts to use him for propaganda purposes. Feigning compliance, Hegdahl would read out statements criticizing the U.S., but they were so laced with errors and the performance so flat that they were rendered unusable by his captors.

“I was so mad about their propaganda that it became a personal war to think how I could mess it up,” Hegdahl recalled in a 1972 interview.

Despite most of the American officers having a “No Go Home Early” pact, Hegdahl was released in 1969 with the support of imprisoned senior officers in order to bring back valuable intelligence to the U.S. government.

His meticulous recall of names provided a comprehensive list of POWs held in Vietnam, including the reclassification of 63 service members previously listed as missing in action to POW.

After his release from the Army, Hegdahl moved to San Diego, but never stopped serving his country. He began working as an instructor in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, school in San Diego Bay. One of his students, William J. Dougherty, a CIA officer, was among the 52 hostages held in the U.S. Embassy during the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis. Dougherty credits Hegdahl’s lectures with helping him keep his “sanity, dignity and secrets intact.”

According to Leepson, Hegdahl’s quick thinking and coolness under immense strain should be recognized.

“I think it was one of the most heroic acts not in combat during the Vietnam War,” Leepson told The Independent. “And I think that’s something that people should know.”

A woman attempting to visit her military husband in Hawaii was detained and eventually deported after the Department of Homeland Security said it flagged her for dubious behavior.

Nicolle Saroukos, of Australia, landed at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Oahu, Hawaii, on May 18, to visit her husband Matt, a U.S. Army lieutenant stationed in the area, according to Hawaii News Now.

She was then selected for secondary screening by Customs and Border Protection officers, who pulled her aside after becoming suspicious of “recent long-term trips to the United States and suspicious luggage,” a DHS senior official told Military Times in an emailed statement.

“Officers determined that she was traveling for more than just tourism,” the statement read. “She was unable to remember her wedding date just four months prior.”

Saroukos met her husband during a trip on Dec. 13, 2024, the same day her ex-partner left her, according to the official.

The statement did not specify the location of that trip, but provided further details of her romantic life, stating that Saroukos and her husband spent eight days together before she returned to Australia on Dec. 21.

“Saroukos then got married on January 24, 2025, after only knowing her husband for just over a month,” the statement said.

Homeland Security eyes new $50M jet for Noem, Coast Guard officials

Saroukos told Hawaii News Now that it was her third visit to see her husband in Oahu, and that she’d never experienced problems until the day she was detained.

She was reportedly taken to a holding room, along with her mother, who accompanied her on the flight. There, Saroukos’ bags and phone were searched, according to local reports, and she was questioned about her work as a former police officer and whether her tattoos were gang-affiliated.

Officers told her she had too many clothes in her suitcase, which they suspected indicated an attempt to stay in the U.S. longer than her VISA allowed, Hawaii News Now reported.

Afterward, DHS took fingerprints and DNA swabs of Saroukos’ mouth, conducted a body cavity search and escorted her to the Federal Detention Center, Honolulu, the report stated. Her mother was allowed to leave.

DHS told Military Times that concerns over her cell phone were also partly to blame for her detention.

“During screening, CBP noted there was unusual activity on her phone, including 1,000 deleted text messages from her husband because she claimed they caused her ‘anxiety,’” a DHS senior official said. “Saroukos even claimed that her husband was going to leave the U.S. military, despite him telling CBP he was adding her to his military documents.”

Saroukos told local media that she was strip-searched at the detention center, before being denied dinner and spending the night there.

Her husband told Hawaii News Now that he waited at the airport for several hours, asking officials the status of his wife’s arrival. He said no one would answer his questions initially. When he was finally told that his wife was at a detention center, he was not permitted to call or see her, the report said.

A U.S. Army spokesperson told Military Times that the husband’s unit and its leaders were providing support to the service member.

Saroukos is now back in Sydney, according to Hawaii News Now. Her husband is reportedly on leave visiting her.

“If you attempt to enter the United States under false pretenses, there are consequences,” the DHS senior official told Military Times.

Military members should be moving less frequently for greater stability — and to save taxpayers’ dollars, according to defense officials who have set the process in motion for those reductions.

In a memo announced Wednesday, Pentagon officials ordered the military service branches to cut in half the amount of money they spend on permanent change-of-station, or PCS, moves by fiscal 2030. DOD spends about $5 billion a year on these moves, which include the physical moves of household goods as well as allowances and other entitlements related to moving.

The services are required to develop plans within four months to reduce the moves, so it’s not yet clear how many actual moves will be cut to achieve those savings.

Officials will target “discretionary moves,” such as PCS moves within the United States, overseas and individual service member training travel. The services are directed to reduce these discretionary move budgets by 10% in fiscal year 2027, 30% in fiscal 2028, 40% in fiscal 2029 and 50% by fiscal 2030. The reductions will be based on the fiscal 2026 budget, adjusted for inflation.

“Lower-priority PCS moves should be reduced for service members and their families seeking greater geographic stability,” wrote Jules W. Hurst II, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, in the memo.

The services must determine which PCS moves “are most critical to support operational requirements and key professional development,” he wrote.

About 80% of DOD PCS moves are in the discretionary category and 20% in the mandatory category, said Tim Dill, acting deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, in a briefing to reporters.

Reducing the frequency of moves will improve the quality of life for service members and their families, Dill said.

Military families often face challenges related to making PCS moves every few years, ranging from issues with shipping their household goods to securing housing. Families also navigate disruptions in military spouses’ employment, difficulty finding child care, children’s school transitions and finding new providers for special needs family members.

Do military families really need to move so much?

Military advocates, including the nonprofit Military Family Advisory Network, have argued that the frequency of military moves must be evaluated.

“We have seen the intersection between the frequency of moves and key quality-of-life concerns ranging from food insecurity to loneliness,” said Shannon Razsadin, CEO of the nonprofit Military Family Advisory Network.

“We’re encouraged by the immediate changes outlined by Secretary Hegseth,” Razsadin said, including the Pentagon’s separate effort to temporarily increase the reimbursement rates for families moving themselves amid problems with the new Global Household Goods Contract.

At times, Congress members have expressed interest in reducing the number of PCS moves. Various efforts within DOD have been made to study the issue, but no large-scale actions have been taken. Military officials have argued that the frequency of PCS moves is necessary to meet operational requirements and fill empty jobs.

Hurst’s memo also directs service officials to propose various career path changes for officers and noncommissioned officers in ways that promote geographic stability. The services are tasked with proposing changes that could allow some officers and NCOs “to specialize in lieu of gaining generalized experience across a range of functions,” according to the memo.

The services will consider how they can provide “broadening opportunities and continuing leadership opportunities without the need for a PCS move,” Dill said. DOD isn’t dictating to the services the way they should accomplish the changes, he said, and there will be room for discussion about whether the budget cuts are feasible during the time frame.

“We want them to come back and tell us if that seems like the right number for them,” Dill said. “On top of being efficient from a fiscal perspective, the other goal of this policy … is to ensure that this works well for service members and their families.”

The effort is not exclusive to service members with dependents, Dill said, and will not increase the burden on single service members.

“We understand that PCS moves affect everyone and so this is not a policy where we just think we need to take the moves away from the families and put it on someone else,” he said.

The Pentagon is proposing to terminate 14 different defense advisory groups following a 45-day review, with the cut list including the 74-year-old Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, Military Times has learned.

An email sent earlier this month by Pentagon Deputy Director of Washington Services Bob Salesses and reviewed by Military Times asks members of the Senior Executive Service to review recommendations ahead of a sign-off by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“The Department took a hard look during the review to ensure boards and commissions provide value and meet the priorities of the president and secretary of defense,” Salesses, who briefly served as acting defense secretary earlier this year, wrote. “The results of this review recommended retention and elimination of particular boards or commissions. … If the secretary of defense supports this review’s recommendation to terminate a board or commission that is required by statute, that board or commission will remain non-operational and depopulated while the department pursues legislative change with Congress.”

The 14 committees and boards recommended for termination represent about one-third of all Defense Department advisory boards. They include:

• Department of Defense Board of Actuaries 
• Department of Defense Medicare-Eligible Retiree Health Care Board of Actuaries 
• Defense Advisory Committee on Military Personnel Testing 
• Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services 
• Tribal and Economically Disadvantaged Communities Advisory Committee 
• Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program Advisory Board  
• Non-Federal Interest Advisory Committee 
• Board on Coastal Engineering Research 
• U.S. Strategic Command Strategic Advisory Group 
• Board of Visitors for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation 
• Table Rock Lake Oversight Committee 
• National Reconnaissance Office Advisory Board  
• Advisory Board for National Geospatial Intelligence Agency 
• National Security Agency Emerging Technologies Board 

Eleven of those committees were established by statute and will require legislative change to terminate, the email notes. Additionally, two committees were recommended for merger: the Defense Advisory Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct and the Defense Advisory Committee on the Investigation Prosecution and Defense of Sexual Assault in the Armed Forces.

Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough declined to confirm the authenticity of the email.

“As noted previously, the Department has been reviewing all DOD advisory committees and boards to ensure their efforts align with our most pressing strategic priorities and the president’s goals,” she said. “The results of the review are still being considered and we have nothing to announce at this time.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced his review of advisory committees March 7, pausing all committee operations and purging all members while a 45-day review was completed.

Prior to the review’s announcement, staff of committees were directed to turn in reports on operating costs, membership, arguments for retention and a one-page summary that demonstrated how the group benefited the Defense Department and its "warrior ethos."

The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, or DACOWITS, was established in 1951 and has run an aggressive quarterly meeting schedule while bringing together service leaders and personnel directors to address challenges ranging from ill-fitting uniforms and body armor to parental leave and childcare.

The move to subject the committee to review and potential closure raised alarm bells in Congress.

On May 13, a group of three U.S. Senators and three members of Congress, all women who’d served in the Armed Forces, wrote to Hegseth urging the retention of DACOWITS as well as the sexual assault prevention and prosecution boards. The letter-writers included Sens. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii; and Reps. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., Mikie Sherill, D-N.J., and Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H.

“Throughout its seventy-year history, approximately ninety-four percent (94%) of DACOWITS’ recommendations have either been fully or partially adopted by DOD,” the lawmakers wrote. “Most notably, we are concerned the disassembly of DACOWITS will exacerbate the gap in the collection of data regarding key policies to improve conditions for service women and reduce barriers to the recruitment and retention of women.”

A bipartisan group of female vets in Congress moved successfully to spare DACOWITS from the chopping block in 2021, amid then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s zero-based review of advisory committees.

Notably, that review had the opposite goals of the current advisory board purge. Austin was assessing whether committees sufficiently contributed to the goal of diversity, equity and inclusion within the Defense Department, while Hegseth has been a vocal opponent of DEI in all its forms inside the military.

Throughout the political reversals, however, those close to DACOWITS have maintained the committee exists not to serve any political agenda or special interest group, but to promote military readiness by shedding light on obstacles that otherwise would be overlooked.

Retired Rear Adm. Cari Thomas, who served on the committee from 2017 to 2021, said in an interview the issues she worked on — many of which, like childcare and family leave, also affect male service members — continue to be challenges for the Defense Department.

“The military can’t always do everything, because there’s not unlimited resources; there’s not unlimited time,” she said. “So, for me the loss of DACOWITS will impact the readiness of the military services, because these independent advisory committees won’t have the ability to then give the secretary of defense and the commandant of the Coast Guard outside opinions as to what they may wish to work on, in order to make sure that the unique needs of whatever population it is that these advisor committees are looking at are addressed, to make the military as ready as it could be.”

The second-oldest board on the list, the Army Corps of Engineers’ Board on Coastal Engineering Research, was established in 1963 and recently celebrated its 100th meeting.

Lewis Link, a senior engineer at the University of Maryland and member of the board until the recent purge, noted that the board, which had tackled challenges like flood modeling and nature-based infrastructure solutions, had until recently been working on tasking provided by Lt. Gen. William “Butch” Graham — now the chief of engineers — on problems like compound flooding, a potentially disastrous challenge illustrated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Link noted that the members of the board were volunteers and costs to maintain advisory committees, such as travel stipends, were minimal.

“There appears to be a tendency of not wanting outside advice,” Link said. “That’s my opinion, and nobody else’s necessarily, but it appears that the value of the external advisors is not considered important enough for the government.”

Early this year, the Pentagon issued a memo halting development of a new radar meant to protect Guam from high-end air and missile threats, according to a May 22 Government Accountability Office report on the effort to protect the strategic island in the Pacific.

“On January 7, 2025, the Deputy Secretary of Defense [Kathleen Hicks] directed the [Missile Defense Agency] to cease development of one of the elements, the AN/TPY-6 radar, but to retain the currently fielded panel as an experimental asset with potential to develop for operational use within the [Guam Defense System] in the future,” the report states.

While Hicks’ decision came at the end of her tenure under the Biden administration, GAO notes the changes are not binding on the new administration.

The Pentagon’s plan to develop an elaborate air-and-missile defense architecture is beginning to take shape and will be pieced together over the coming years in order to protect Guam from increasingly complex threats emerging in China and North Korea.

MDA had shipped its first AN/TPY-6 panel on a boat headed to the island last summer, planning to use it to track a threat launched from a C-17 plane in a first flight test of current capability coming together for the defense of Guam at the end of 2024.

The new radar uses technology from MDA’s Long-Range Discrimination Radar positioned in Alaska at Clear Space Force Base, which will have its own test next year ahead of declaring operational capability.

The Guam Defense System will also rely on a variety of systems still in development, mostly within the Army. The Navy will provide technology and capability from its Aegis weapons system. The land service plans to bring to Guam currently fielded capabilities, like the Patriot system and its Integrated Battle Command System, or IBCS, that connects any sensor and shooter together on the battlefield, as well as Mid-Range Capability missile launchers, which were first fielded at the end of 2023.

The Army will also incorporate Patriot’s radar replacement, the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, which was just approved for production, and its Indirect Fire Protection Capability launchers, which are reaching the end of the prototyping phase.

With the termination of AN/TPY-6, for now, Hicks directed the MDA prioritize remaining Aegis Guam systems development funds “toward delivering minimum viable Aegis C2 [command and control] and datalink capabilities to enable Standard Missile 6 (SM-6) engagements off remote track from AN/TPY-2 and LTAMDS over the JTMC [Joint Track Management Capability] bridge,” according to GAO’s report.

The Pentagon’s memo required upgrading the JTMC bridge to address all missile threats from China and achieve a Joint Tactical Integrated Fire Control capability — the future joint track architecture for Guam — “for coordinated battle management, combat identification and electronic protection,” the report states. Those upgrades should be completed no later than 2029.

The memo also directed MDA to accelerate key command-and-control integration work, including getting the Army-operated Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system to work within IBCS.

Guam is home to a permanent THAAD battery called Task Force Talon, which serves as the critical component for defending the island against ballistic missile threats.

Additionally, the Army and MDA “shall integrate AN/TPY-2 measurement data into IBCS no later than 2030 and achieve full integration by 2033,” the report details.

The MDA has long used AN/TPY-2 radars to track ballistic missiles, but Raytheon just delivered a new version to MDA with Gallium Nitride, or GaN, which gives it the ability to track more complex threats at greater ranges like hypersonic weapons.

The first new radar with GaN will go to the Army’s eight THAAD battery. The radars can be used in a forward-based mode, providing cuing data to systems like the Navy’s Aegis ballistic missile defense system or the Army’s Patriot. It serves as the primary radar for THAAD.

The Army’s new LTAMDS radar, also developed by Raytheon, has GaN technology as well.

Advanced stealth capabilities, new weapons and possibly even an unmanned piloting option could be in the works for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 as the company seeks to boost the jet with sixth-generation technology.

In a webcast of a Wednesday discussion at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York, Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet expressed confidence the company could have a “meaningful increase” of capabilities for the F-35 ready in two or three years.

Lockheed originally developed these technologies as part of its pitch to the Air Force for a Next-Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, fighter. But the Air Force ended up going with Boeing’s proposal, and President Donald Trump in March announced NGAD would be called the F-47.

Lockheed hopes to salvage its NGAD loss by making the F-35 more capable and attractive. Taiclet has claimed porting its NGAD technology into a “supercharged” F-35 will allow the company to deliver 80% of the capability of an NGAD fighter at half the cost.

In an April earnings call with investors, Taiclet said Lockheed would “take the [F-35’s] chassis and turn it into a Ferrari.”

That could include upgrading the F-35’s stealth coatings to help it evade infrared and radar signals and tweaking the fighter’s outer body shape, particularly its engine inlets and outlets, to make it stealthier, Taiclet said.

A fifth-generation-plus F-35 could also have better electronic warfare capabilities, networking and autonomy, which could be used to make the jet “pilot-optional,” Taiclet said.

Some weapons designed for a sixth-generation aircraft could also be folded into the F-35’s arsenal, he said.

Some of these capabilities could be ready for a first flight and integration into the F-35 in two or three years, Taiclet said, but he cautioned the technology development has to be rolled out in stages.

“You cannot introduce too much new equipment or too much new software at once, necessarily, without interrupting the production flow,” Taiclet said.

Lockheed Martin is also looking for ways the F-35 can better interface with other aircraft, including sixth-generation planes, drones such as collaborative combat aircraft and other technologies as part of the Air Force’s “family of systems” concept.

“This is the way to look at the air superiority program of the future,” Taiclet said. “It’s not just plane-to-plane, what’s faster, what turns tighter, what’s got the longest duration of flight, but how it interacts and can interact with a wider ecosystem to create air superiority.”

Taiclet also provided an update on the F-35’s Technology Refresh 3 upgrades and the effort to get the newest Joint Strike Fighters ready to fly in combat.

The upgrades, also known as TR3, include an improved core processor for the F-35, better memory and a more sophisticated display for pilots. The development of that hardware is done, Taiclet said, and it’s being produced at scale by L3Harris. He said the TR3 software integration to tie the new pieces of equipment into the jet is also done.

F-35s are now moving through production lines, primarily at Lockheed’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility, and are having TR3 hardware and software installed, he said.

Those new F-35s are also receiving a new distributed aperture system, which is six antennas positioned around the jet to boost its sensing capability. The distributed aperture system is the first piece of hardware needed for a more significant upgrade known as Block 4.

However, integrating that new sensor set and its own software with TR3 has presented a new challenge, and is now “a little bit behind schedule,” Taiclet said.

“Once that catches up, we think by the end of this year, then all those aircraft that have been delivered will be combat capable, and allowable to be at the front-line base for the services and for our allies,” Taiclet said.

As part of a flurry of presidential clemency this week, President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned a former Army officer convicted of disobeying COVID-19 safety measures in 2022.

Former 1st Lt. Mark Bashaw announced the pardon on social media, thanking Trump and all his supporters who “took a stand against tyranny.” He also posted a picture referencing conspiracy theories that the COVID-19 virus was a planned event by global elitists for unspecified, nefarious reasons.

Bashaw was convicted but given no prison sentence after refusing to obey orders designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

He had previously worked as an entomologist at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and commanded the headquarters company for the Army Public Health Center.

Army officer convicted in first known COVID court-martial

Military investigators said Bashaw refused to telework and traveled to his office without submitting evidence of a prior COVID-19 test. Both were required of soldiers at the facility in 2022 who were not vaccinated against the virus.

Bashaw was also found guilty of refusing to wear a mask in indoor areas, in violation of military protocols at the time. He was the first service member court-martialed for refusing to adhere to COVID mitigation protocols.

He was discharged from the Army in 2023.

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in recent months have worked to overturn a host of past punishments and dismissals for pandemic violations in the military, including offering reinstatement and back pay to some troops forced out for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

Although Bashaw did not have any prison time related to his conviction, Trump’s pardon erases his criminal record completely. White House officials did not release a statement on the reasoning behind the pardon.

More than 500,000 U.S. troops contracted COVID-19 during the pandemic from March 2020 to May 2023, but fewer than 100 died of complications related to the virus.

The Marine Corps is slated to hold a series of events as part of a new attack drone competition the service announced recently.

The May 25 Marine Administrative Message, or MARADMIN, outlines that the service is seeking drone teams from across the Corps to participate in the competition.

The first event will be held at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia in November, according to the MARADMIN.

Before then, the Marine Corps Attack Drone Team will participate in the U.S. Military Drone Crucible Championships. That event is hosted by the U.S. National Drone Association from June 30 to July 3 in Florida.

Marine Corps introduces attack drone team

The team, established in January, focuses on integrating first-person view drones — aerial vehicles that transmit live bird’s-eye view feeds to remote displays — across the Fleet Marine Force.

“Today’s battlefield is changing rapidly, and we must adapt just as quickly,” said Maj. Alejandro Tavizon, the Weapons Training Battalion Headquarters Company commander and officer in charge of MCADT. “The Marine Corps Attack Drone Team will ensure that our warfighters remain at the forefront of precision drone employment, providing a critical advantage in future conflicts.”

The attack drone group, which is based out of the Weapons Training Battalion at Quantico, will work to “develop and refine” armed first-person view drone training, speed up the timeline for the fielding the drones and provide instruction through live training events.

The competition, meanwhile, will consist of tactical inserts and mission parameters designed to use the “hunter-killer method” of employing small drones and FPV drones. Marines will then share lessons learned from the competition to inform updates that the Corps will use to rapidly field the most lethal capabilities across the service, according to the release.

At the same time, the team will finalize plans to provide intermediate and advanced armed FPV drone skills to the Fleet Marine Force and Total Force via the Competition-in-Arms Program, or CIAP, similar to the work done by the Marine Corps Shooting Team.

The drone outfit will then host regional competition events in Fiscal Year 2026 alongside the shooting team and the CIAP.

The Corps wants to use these events to recruit the best drone operators to the team, which will represent the Marines at various events and directly influence the service’s procurement and use of armed drones.

Units across the Corps must designate drone teams by Sept. 30 to participate in the regional competitions.

The final championship and selection event will be held at Quantico in April 2026, in conjunction with the Marine Corps Championships marksmanship event.

The Defense Department has yet to develop a clear strategy to guide the construction, deployment and long-term management of the missile defense architecture it is building on Guam, the Government Accountability Office has determined.

The office is concerned that without such a plan, the effort risks cost and schedule overruns and an infrastructure unready to accommodate the additional personnel required to operate the defensive shield.

In a report released May 22, the government watchdog notes that while the Pentagon has set up organizations to manage the Guam Defense System and has now designated lead services for sustaining and operating it, there is no strategy to transfer responsibilities from the Missile Defense Agency to the various service leads.

“As a result, DOD risks schedule delays for the deployment of GDS [Guam Defense System] elements and incomplete plans for organization, training, personnel levels, and facilities, among other things,” the report states.

The Army, which is leading the effort to establish the system on the strategic island in the Pacific, also faces hurdles to advocate for construction and installation support from the other military services well-established on Guam.

And the Defense Department has yet to come up with firm numbers for personnel required to operate and sustain the system and estimates of when they might arrive, according to the report.

“Without clear personnel requirements or deployment schedules, the services will not be able to adequately plan for necessary support systems, which will reduce service personnel readiness and may exacerbate existing infrastructure,” the watchdog states.

At the end of 2023, the Pentagon pointed to 2024 as critical for establishing the planned missile defense architecture on Guam. As the threat from China continues to grow, DOD pledged to deliver a foundational capability to help stave off a potential attack directed at Guam by the end of 2024. That schedule is already slipping.

Guam is an island of nearly 170,000 people that sits in a vulnerable position — it is closer to Beijing than it is to Hawaii. The island plays host to a significant amount of U.S. combat power and would therefore be an attractive target for China in the event of a war in the Taiwan Strait.

The Missile Defense Agency and the Army sought a combined $1.5 billion in the fiscal 2024 budget to begin preparing the island by moving assets into place and integrating capabilities.

The Pentagon designated the Army in 2023 as the lead service overseeing the acquisition and execution plan for defending Guam.

Competing for resources

The current plan, according to the report, is to distribute elements of the architecture across 16 sites on the island and establish a Guam command center. The Pentagon is planning for its first deployment to begin in fiscal 2027, with final GDS elements coming in fiscal 2032.

The architecture is a tall order, considering the Army’s previous experience establishing a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system on Guam in 2013.

The THAAD battery, known as Task Force Talon, was first deployed as expeditionary but became permanently stationed in June 2016 to defend against possible ballistic missile threats from North Korea.

Over a decade later, the report points out that the Army does not have sufficient installation support for the THAAD battery and has had trouble getting approvals from the Navy for construction to support the system. The Army’s status on the island leaves it without its own construction planners, forcing it to rely on other services.

For example, GAO reports that the THAAD unit did not receive approval to start environmental work until January 2024 to construct a temporary maintenance facility for equipment after a typhoon hit the island in May 2023.

The unit also has limited storage space for parts and has to leave some parts outside unprotected, resulting in continuous corrosion issues.

And austere conditions have resulted in “morale challenges,” GAO found. The THAAD unit had just installed a latrine with running water and an ice machine in 2023. There is still no drinkable water at the location.

The Army is going to require a much larger number of facilities to support the new missile defense architecture and wants to “make Guam a duty station of choice,” the report states.

The Army will continue to have to rely on installation support from the other services because it won’t be establishing its own base on the island, GAO said.

“The Army will likely face challenges in advocating for construction priorities and coordinating installation support across multiple locations.”

At the same time, the Pentagon is looking to move personnel to the island for the missile defense system. The Marine Corps is also relocating 1,700 Marines from Okinawa, Japan, to Guam. The plan is to move them all by 2029, the report notes.

The agency previously reported Guam’s limited housing is a concern as the Marines build up a presence there, and the Air Force and Navy both have construction priorities for their own bases that could compete for resources needed for the missile defense system’s establishment.

The Pentagon also struggled to determine which service would be responsible for operating and sustaining which elements of the Guam architecture. GAO indicated there were some internal disputes over the division of responsibilities for various aspects of the system.

Determining density

Despite the deputy secretary of defense directing the Army in June 2023 to determine how many personnel would be required for GDS within 120 days, the service did not complete the task and still had not produced a number by August 2024, according to the report.

The Army told GAO it was waiting for the Pentagon to decide the lead organizations for operations and sustainment before determining personnel levels, facility needs and training plans.

The Pentagon has also not established a timeline for transferring responsibility, according to the report.

“DOD has proposed multiple military services to manage GDS, which makes developing a plan for operating and sustaining GDS particularly challenging,” the report states. “Specifically, DOD officials told us that this missile defense program will be the department’s largest and most complicated, presenting communication and planning challenges among the various DOD stakeholders.”

Without some prediction of personnel that will flow onto the island over what timeline, the Pentagon faces the prospect of “deploying personnel to Guam without adequate facilities or installation support services in place, including security of sites, fire protection and emergency management at bases operated by three different military services in Guam,” according to the report.

Some estimates state there will be a need for roughly 913 Army personnel in Guam by fiscal 2028, while another calculates a possible growth of 4,464 personnel by the same year.

Overall, the island’s population is estimated to grow from 17,917 personnel and dependents to 26,605 by fiscal 2034.

In its report, GAO recommends that the Pentagon develop a strategy with a timeline for transferring responsibilities to lead organizations and services for the various elements of the architecture.

The Army should also develop a “long-term strategy” for its organization as a supported command on the island.

And the defense secretary should determine personnel requirements needed for the architecture “to allow sufficient time for completing construction of necessary support facilities on Guam,” the report states.

It was supposed to be a routine mission.

On April 10, 1944, Maj. Donald K. Willis, flying with the 55th Fighter Squadron, 20th Fighter Group, was tasked with escorting an Allied bombing run on a Nazi aerodrome in Gütersloh, Germany.

What was expected to elicit a few hours of adrenaline, however, stretched into two months on the run.

While piloting his P-38 Lightning home from his mission, one of Willis’ engines was hit by enemy flak. Navigating the sputtering plane, Willis crash landed on the coast of German-occupied Holland — in the middle of a football field … with a match still in progress.

In the chaos, with nearly 500 spectators and players running amok, Willis managed to slip through the crowd and commandeer a fan’s bicycle as well as a long red coat to cover the pilot’s flying jacket and Army-issued green trousers.

German soldiers, Willis would later write in his Escape and Evasion Report #800, were kept “busy for the first few minutes trying to keep people away from the plane. … I pedalled beside a woman who kept watching me out of the corner of her eye but she never spoke.”

During the course of the Second World War, thousands of U.S. Army Air Forces pilots and crew crashed in Nazi territory and had to evade capture or managed to escape from German POW camps.

Willis’ saga in particular garnered interest from the higher ups within the U.S. Army, with a hand-written postscript attached to his file noting, “This brilliant evasion was made possible by the split second appraisal of the situation and immediate action.”

“It is [commonplace] of evasion that if a man can elude search parties for the first hour or two he is well on his way out,” the note continued. “Major Willis’s intelligent application of orthodox briefings is well worth study.”

An American Pilot in a Haystack

After following the Dutch woman into a small village, Willis silently parted ways down a side street and caught his breath in front of the town’s church.

There, he watched as a car full of Nazi soldiers unloaded in front of the American, with scent dogs bounding into the nearby fields to search.

From a distance Willis followed the path of the Germans before seeking safety in a recently searched barn. The refuge was brief, however, as its owner, a woman toting a baby on her hip, shooed out the American almost immediately but promised that she would not alert the Germans of his presence — unless they came back to question her.

Crawling through a drainage ditch to a field of high grass, Willis hid until nightfall before setting out along the many dikes and fences toward neutral territory.

For several days Willis continued this cadence, dodging German soldiers and once guided by a young Dutch boy, until he approached the outskirts of Antwerp, Belgium.

It was here that Willis’ luck almost ran out.

As he tried to pass around the city he chanced on one direction and hit water. While retracing his steps the pilot mistakenly walked straight into a German anti-aircraft battery.

To Willis’ astonishment, however, the sentry barely glanced. Believing the disheveled red coat-wearing stranger to be a Belgian civilian, the guard motioned for Willis to be on his way.

Beer Me, Barkeep

Perhaps it was the days on end sleeping in hay stacks and living off of Army rationed chocolate, but as a fatigued Willis reached the southern end of the city he became intrigued by the sight of a cafe advertising “Bock” beer.

Emboldened, he entered the cafe and said one single word, “Bock.”

“The few people in the cafe paid no attention to me,” Willis later wrote. “But the Belgian who gave me the beer guessed my identity.”

The barkeep gestured Willis into the back room and, without a word, gave the American some eggs and bread.

As Willis was leaving, “the Belgian brushed off some straw that was clinging to the back of my coast and smiled while doing it.”

Continuing on foot, Willis attempted to follow a set of train tracks that would lead him on to Brussels. However, he soon realized they were the wrong tracks.

With a growing sense of desperation Willis stopped at a small train station and tried to buy a ticket to the capital. The porter, surmising that the pilot was no local, gave him food and told him he’d like to help.

Those efforts were quickly dashed when the pair received word that the police had been informed and were on their way. Dashing out of the back of the platform, Willis managed to slip out without being seen and once again set out on the run.

By mid-afternoon that day Willis arrived in the small Belgian town of Boom but was soon stymied by Nazi sentries who controlled the road bridge and were checking the identification papers of civilians and laborers alike.

In his after-action report Willis explained that, after watching the bridge for 24 hours, his “opportunity came when two women stopped to talk to the guards.”

“While their attention was diverted I went up to one of the labor groups and hitched onto the pole they were carrying,” he noted. “The men looked at me but said nothing.”

Yet his safety was far from secured. Upon reaching the other side, Willis discovered that the laborers to whom he had attached himself were being guarded by an armed Nazi.

In a bizarre stroke of luck, a man peddling ice cream provided the distraction Willis needed. As the group converged on the seller, Willis managed to slip off while the guard had his back turned.

That afternoon, Willis’ second-chance encounter while attempting to purchase another beer happened to be more fortuitous. Followed out of the cafe, Willis was approached by a man who offered to arrange for his travels to Brussels and a guide to help him safely into Spain.

Buried within Willis’ escape and evasion account, meanwhile, is the tale of another soldier who may have escaped the clutches of the Nazis, according to the National Archives.

“During my evasion while I was living in a large Belgian city I watched a … B-17 catch fire and leave formation," Willis recalled. “Soon after that several parachutes opened above the city and one floated down into the section of town where I was. I had a good view of it and watched this parachutist land in the walled-in garden of a house.

“Just as he touched the ground a German motorcyclist stopped in front of the house and ran around to clamber over the garden wall at the back. When the German got into the garden the American burst through the front door of the house and hopped on the German’s motorcycle and tore off down the street blowing his horn as loud as he could and cheered on by the Belgian people.”

Willis’ after-action report ends with the pilot regretfully stating that he never “learned how he made out, nor did I find out who he was.”

On June 5, 1944, Willis arrived safely in neutral Spain. He was reunited with his squadron in England on June 28, over two months after being shot down.

Willis survived the war and remained with the Air Force until 1953, receiving a Distinguished Flying Cross, an Air Medal with oak leaf cluster and a World War II Victory Medal.

Marine Corps and Army missile systems are set to deploy to a key chokepoint in the Philippine Island chains for anti-ship drills during the military exercise known as KAMANDAG.

The unmanned, anti-ship Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, or NMESIS, and the Army’s High Mobility Rocket Artillery System will feature prominently in the exercise with their emplacement between Luzon and Taiwan, U.S. Naval Institute reported.

The 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment’s NMESIS is heading to Batanes, the northernmost portion of Philippine territory. The platform first reached the island of Basco and Batan for Balikatan 2025, a maritime security exercise.

This unit will be the next to field the ship-killing missile system

That was the first time the Marines deployed the anti-ship missile to the Luzon Strait.

“The insertion of the NMESIS on Batan during Exercise Balikatan 25’s MKTSO was an achievement of a major milestone not just for 3rd MLR, but for the entire U.S. Marine Corps enterprise, signifying advancements in the service’s equipment fielding to employment timelines,” said Col. John G. Lehane, commanding officer of the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment.

“In a matter of months, the NMESIS went from an experimental asset undergoing the rigorous initial operational testing and evaluation spearheaded by Marine Corps Systems Command and the program office, to a fully fielded weapon system capable of neutralizing the threat of adversarial vessels in contested littoral zones.”

Marine Rotational Force-Darwin will conduct corps-level command and control. The 3rd MLR will deploy their missile battery to Batanes using KC-130J transport aircraft, USNI reported.

“KAMANDAG 9 is a clear demonstration of the strength of the U.S.-Philippine alliance and our ironclad commitment to regional security and combined readiness,” said Col. Jason C. Armas, commanding officer of the MRF-D 25.3 MAGTF. “Training shoulder to shoulder with our Philippine Marine Corps partners isn’t just about building interoperability — it’s about forging trust in the crucible of shared hardship and preparing together to respond with speed and precision to any crisis, anywhere, anytime.”

The exercise is scheduled to run from May 26 to June 6 and will take place across the Philippine archipelago, including Luzon, Batanes, Tawi-Tawi and Palawan, according to a release.

Training events include maritime key terrain security operations, defensive counter-landing live-fire drills, littoral maneuver, amphibious operations and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, according to the release.

Japanese and Korean forces are scheduled to conduct amphibious drills in the province of Palawan, which faces the South China Sea, a key area of control for any potential conflict with Beijing.

The Army HIMARs will be transported by the Armed Forces of the Philippines alongside the Marine anti-ship systems. The service deployed the launchers during Balikatan 2024.

The missile units will rehearse maritime strikes in the Luzon Strait. Those systems can cover the 250-kilometer-wide strait through fires and sensors, USNI reported.

The 3rd MLR used a network of ground-based sensors and drones across Batanes and the Babuyan Islands during previous exercises.

Those operations included the Philippine territory of Mavulis, less than 90 miles from Taiwan.

The U.S. Navy’s Carrier Air Wing 1 engaged in the largest maritime strike in Navy aviation history in terms of bomb tonnage earlier this year, a defense official confirmed to Military Times.

On Feb. 1, the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman launched 27 F/A-18 Super Hornets as part of a coordinated airstrike against Islamic State operatives in Somalia in collaboration with the federal government of Somalia, a defense official with knowledge of the strike said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.

Sixteen aircraft dropped 124,000 pounds of ordnance on targets in less than two minutes.

“The joint airstrikes targeted senior ISIS-Somalia leadership in a series of cave complexes approximately 50 miles southeast of Bosaso,” U.S. Africa Command said in a Feb. 11 statement. “The command’s current assessment is that approximately 14 ISIS-Somalia operatives were killed and no civilians were harmed.”

Navy relieves CO of USS Harry S. Truman following collision

Among those killed was Ahmed Maeleninine, an ISIS recruiter and operations leader who led efforts to deploy jihadists into the U.S. and Europe, according to the statement.

Past large-scale U.S. airstrikes, like those conducted during Operation Desert Storm, involved multiple aircraft carriers and air wings, which would fly joint missions, said the defense official.

But the Feb. 1 strike was unique in that it was conducted by a single air wing.

The Truman arrived in the Red Sea on Dec. 14, 2024, to provide combat support against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who’ve conducted missile and drone strikes against shipping and military vessels in the region since November 2023.

While there, Carrier Air Wing 1, composed of eight embarked squadrons aboard the Truman, took part in operations striking over 1,100 targets, the defense official said. The strikes killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and multiple senior Houthi officials, according to the official.

Specifically, Carrier Air Wing 1 flew over 13,000 sorties and used over 770 weapons and 1.1 million pounds of ordnance.

The Truman left the Red Sea earlier this month for its homeport of Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, according to reports, several weeks after President Donald Trump called off a nearly two-month-long airstrike campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Still, the carrier was marred by several mishaps during its deployment in the Red Sea, including the loss of three F/A-18 Super Hornets, which cost at least $67.4 million each, according to Naval Air Systems Command. One jet was shot down by friendly fire from the guided missile cruiser Gettysburg in December. Two jets fell overboard, one in April while being towed in the carrier’s hangar bay and the other less than two weeks later after a failed landing.

The carrier also collided Feb. 13 with a civilian merchant vessel in the Mediterranean Sea near Port Said, Egypt. The Navy, as a result, relieved the commanding officer of his duties.

Defense Department officials on Tuesday announced plans to replace the military’s top senior enlisted adviser, marking the latest leadership shake-up at the Pentagon.

Navy Master Chief David Isom, who currently serves as command senior enlisted leader for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, will replace Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Troy Black as the senior enlisted adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, department leaders said.

The senior enlisted adviser role is designed to advocate for enlisted personnel in command discussions among senior Pentagon leaders. The role also requires a significant amount of travel and public forums with military families, making it one of the more visible leadership posts in the armed forces.

Black’s departure comes amid a significant shake-up of leadership posts within the military since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, including the dismissals of Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Air Force Vice Chief Gen. James Slife.

Top enlisted leader talks pay, priorities and 1980s fashion

Black has served in the post since November 2023. Last month, senior defense leaders said that new Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force Gen. Dan Caine would not renew Black’s assignment for a second two-year term, and that his replacement would take over sometime this summer.

Isom previously served in several special forces roles, including command senior enlisted leader of Special Operations Command Pacific and command senior enlisted leader of Special Operations Command North.

During his time with the Navy SEALs, he deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa.

Isom will be the sixth person and the first sailor to serve in the senior enlisted adviser role. The position could play an outsized role in Pentagon policy moves, given Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s past emphasis on issues affecting rank-and-file troops.

Defense News reporter Noah Robertson contributed to this story.

A bill recently introduced in Congress would upgrade a Silver Star Medal to a Medal of Honor for a recon Marine who fought through severe injuries while under attack on a mission in the jungles of Vietnam in 1967.

Retired Maj. Jim Capers received the Silver Star in 2010 for those actions, but supporters believe his valor deserves the nation’s highest military honor.

House Resolution 3377, sponsored by Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., was filed — and coupled with a letter to President Donald Trump — on May 13 and remains in the House Armed Services Committee as of Monday.

The letter, signed in February by six U.S. senators and 41 representatives, details Capers’ actions and asks the president to review the award for the purpose of an upgrade.

In late March 1967, Marine 2nd Lt. Jim Capers stepped off on a four-day patrol into the jungles near Phú Lộc, South Vietnam.

Capers, recently promoted via a battlefield commission to second lieutenant, led nine 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company Marines alongside a dog named “King.”

The mission was to observe a North Vietnamese Army regiment and protect the flank of Company M, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines.

On the final day of their mission, enemy claymore mines exploded, triggering an attack on his team. Capers received multiple wounds from both the explosion and the “dense barrages of direct and indirect enemy fire” that followed.

Suffering two broken legs and heavy bleeding, Capers continued fighting and directed his team in the counterattack. He coordinated supporting fire and moved his team to the helicopter extraction, which saved their lives.

“While struggling to maintain consciousness and still under attack, Major Capers demanded continuous situation and status reports from his Marines and ensured the entire team was evacuated before himself,” his award citation reads. “Barely able to stand, Major Capers finally boarded the helicopter and was evacuated.”

Capers twice got off of an evacuation helicopter so it could take off with the other wounded. When he did finally board a helo for extraction, the aircraft crashed. The wreck resulted in another man losing his leg and another individual losing a kidney.

Retired Marine Lt. Col. David “Bull” Gurfein, CEO of United American Patriots, has compared Capers’ story to that of another reconnaissance Marine who did receive the Medal of Honor.

Nearly a year after Capers heroics, 2nd Lt. Terrence Graves, also with 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company, was on a deep jungle patrol in the jungles of Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam, where he led an eight-Marine recon team behind enemy lines.

Once his team made contact with a large NVA force, Graves exposed himself to repeated enemy fire to lead assaults, attend to wounded and command the element — all while suffering from a gunshot wound to his thigh.

Shortly after boarding a medevac helicopter, Graves and another Marine got back off to search for another Marine until a second helicopter could arrive to retrieve the three of them. The helicopter that eventually picked up the three Marines was shot down. Graves died in the crash.

Graves received the Medal of Honor for his actions. Capers’ award, meanwhile, was initially a Bronze Star Medal that was later upgraded to a Silver Star Medal.

The U.S. military is backing off its usual talk of good governance and countering insurgencies’ underlying causes, instead leaning into a message that its fragile allies in Africa must be ready to stand more on their own.

At African Lion, its largest joint training exercise on the continent, that shift was clear.

“We need to be able to get our partners to the level of independent operations,” Gen. Michael Langley said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“There needs to be some burden sharing,” Langley, the U.S. military’s top official in Africa, said on Friday, the final day of the exercise.

For four weeks, troops from more than 40 countries rehearsed how to confront threats by air, land and sea. They flew drones, simulated close-quarters combat and launched satellite-guided rockets in the desert.

Maneuvers mirrored previous editions of African Lion, now in its 21st year. But mostly gone now is language that emphasizes ideas the U.S. once argued set it apart from Russia and China.

Messaging about the interwoven work of defense, diplomacy and development once formed the core of Washington’s security pitch. In their place now are calls for helping allies to build capacity manage their own security, which Langley said was a priority for President Donald Trump’s Defense Department.

“We have our set priorities now — protecting the homeland. And we’re also looking for other countries to contribute to some of these global instability areas,” he said, referencing U.S. support for Sudan.

The shift comes as the U.S. military makes moves to “build a leaner, more lethal force,” including potentially cutting military leadership positions in places like Africa, where America’s rivals continue to deepen their influence.

China has launched its own expansive training program for African militaries. Russian mercenaries are recalibrating and cementing their role as security partner of choice throughout North, West and Central Africa.

In an interview a year ago, Langley emphasized what U.S. military officials have long called a “whole of government approach” to countering insurgency. Even amid setbacks, he defended the U.S. approach and said force alone couldn’t stabilize weak states and protect U.S. interests against the risk of violence spilling out.

“I’ve always professed that AFRICOM is not just a military organization,” Langley said last year. He called good governance an “enduring solution to a number of layered threats — whether it be desertification, whether it be crop failure from changing environments, or whether it be from violent extremist organizations.”

The “whole of government approach” no longer occupies the same place at the center of U.S. messaging, though Langley said holistic efforts have worked in places like Ivory Coast, where development coupled with defense had reduced attacks by jihadi groups near its volatile northern border.

But such successes aren’t a pattern.

“I’ve seen progression and I’ve seen regression,” said Langley, who is scheduled to exit his post later this year.

As the US steps back, insurgencies gain ground

The U.S. military’s new posture comes even though many African armies remain ill-equipped and insurgent groups expand.

“We see Africa as the epicenter for both al-Qaida and Islamic State,” a senior U.S. defense official said earlier this month, noting both groups had growing regional affiliates and the Islamic State group had shifted command and control to Africa. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Africa has rarely ranked high on the Pentagon’s list of priorities, but the U.S. has still spent hundreds of millions of dollars on security assistance and has roughly 6,500 Africa Command personnel on the continent.

In some regions, the U.S. faces direct competition from Russia and China. In others, regional affiliates of al-Qaida and the IS still require direct military action, Langley said.

The messaging shift from “whole of government” to more burden-sharing comes as fears grow that rising violence could spread beyond hotspots where insurgents have expanded influence and found vacuums in which they can consolidate power.

Parts of of both East and West Africa have emerged as epicenters of violence. In 2024, more than half of the world’s terrorism victims were killed across West Africa’s Sahel, a vast desert territory ruled by military juntas, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The group, which compiles yearly terrorism statistics, also found Somalia accounted for 6% of all terrorism-related deaths, making it the deadliest for terrorism in Africa outside the Sahel.

Since Trump took office, the U.S. military has escalated airstrikes in Somalia, targeting IS and al-Shabab operatives. But despite air support, Somalia’s army remains far from being able to maintain security on the ground, Langley acknowledged.

“The Somali National Army is trying to find their way,” Langley said, adding that they had regained some footing after years of setbacks. “There are some things they still need on the battlefield to be very effective.”

Similarly in West Africa, the notion that states could soon have the capacity to counter such threats is a distant prospect, said Beverly Ochieng, an analyst at Control Risks, a security consulting firm.

Even before Western influence began to wane in the Sahel, needed military support was limited, threats remained active and local militaries were left without the tools to confront them.

Western powers with a presence in the Sahel have gradually scaled back their engagement, either by choice or after being pushed out by increasingly hostile governments.

“Many of them do not have very strong air forces and are not able to monitor the movement of militants, especially in areas where roads are very difficult to traverse, the infrastructure is extremely poor,” said Ochieng, who specializes in the Sahel and Great Power competition in Africa.