Current updates, policies, operations, and force-wide developments.
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21 hours, 24 minutes ago
VA eliminates gender-identity initiatives, reclassifies LGBTQ+ care coordinators
The VA is eliminating all activity geared toward veterans’ gender identities and reclassifying its LGBTQ+ care coordinators, an internal memo says.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is eliminating activity geared toward veterans’ gender identities and reclassifying its LGBTQ+ care coordinators, according to an internal memo made public this week.
Undersecretary for Health John Bartrum sent the directive to all Veterans Health Administration senior leaders, as well as directors of the 18 Veterans Integrated Service Networks and VA medical center directors.
“VA must ensure all veterans are treated based on their clinical needs and without discrimination,” Bartrum wrote in the memo. “This guidance ensures VHS will do just that.”
No VA funds, official time, facilities nor other resources should be used for meetings, trainings, working groups or activities “promoting gender-ideology or gender-identity,” Bartrum’s memo reads.
The memo also directs all of the VA’s LGTBQ+ care coordinators to be redesignated simply as “care coordinators,” who will be “dedicated to facilitating VA health care and benefits for all veterans, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, sex or sexual orientation.”
The VA employs at least one LGBTQ+ care coordinator for each of its 142 health care systems, according to the department. They’re responsible for creating a safe and respectful environment throughout each medical facility, spreading knowledge about LGBTQ+ services and educating and training staff.
“VA staff play a critical role in ensuring that LGBTQ+ veterans receive the care they need and have earned in service to our country,” the VA’s website still read Thursday. “LGBTQ+ veterans have faced bias and discrimination, which can affect health. At Veterans Health Administration, we aim to make sure that LGBTQ+ veterans know that they are welcome.”
VA leaders were given until June 26 to confirm the noncompliant activities had ended.
The memo was first obtained by The Advocate, a news outlet dedicated to covering the LGBTQ+ community. The publication spoke to VA medical center providers who were concerned the new guidance could end PRIDE in All Who Served, a support group for LGTBQ+ veterans, as well as CBT-PRISM, a style of therapy designed to meet the effects of stigma and discrimination on LGBTQ+ veterans.
In addition to the other changes, the memo says that employees’ uniforms must be in compliance with the two executive orders. The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing more than 300,000 VA employees, said the guidance “orders employees to adhere to uniform and attire standards that may not align with their identities.”
Overall, the changes set forth in the memo will result in LGBTQ+ veterans avoiding treatment, Tiffany McPherson, the union’s PRIDE chair, argued in a statement.
“Some will avoid treatment — especially mental health services — out of fear of being misgendered, stigmatized, or treated with disrespect," McPherson said. “For a community already facing higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide, those consequences aren’t hypothetical — they’re real, and the agency knows it.”
Last year, VA officials announced they would phase out all medical treatments for gender dysphoria, including hormone therapy and any surgical options for transgender veterans.
1 day ago
Vietnam War hero of Dong Ha Bridge to be awarded the Medal of Honor
President Donald Trump is set to posthumously award Marine Col. John Ripley the Medal of Honor on June 18 in a White House ceremony.
“Jesus, Mary, get me there. Get me there.”
More than 50 years after then-Capt. John Ripley rhythmically chanted that prayer for three hours as he swung back and forth under a North Vietnamese bridge to rig 500 pounds of explosives, the Marine is set to posthumously be awarded the Medal of Honor.
But for the Ripley family, June 18th is more than just the date of the White House ceremony.
“June 18, that’s the day my father’s brother, Mike Ripley, was killed,” Tom Ripley told Military Times.
After three 13-month tours in Vietnam Mike Ripley was back in the U.S. in 1971, when the new AV-8A Harrier jump jet he was test flying crashed into Chesapeake Bay, killing him instantly.
“Service is something that’s been a long tradition in our family,” noted Ripley. “I was a Marine, my brother was a Marine, obviously, my father was a Marine, my uncles, two of my nephews, my son is going into the Navy — he just graduated just a couple weeks ago from the Naval Academy. We love our country. We’re proud and honored to serve our country. It means the world to us to have the opportunity to stand ... with of these types of Americans.”
On April 2, 1972, Capt. Ripley, a senior advisor to the 3rd Vietnamese Marine Battalion, found himself on the south bank of the Cua Viet River in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam, as the North Vietnamese launched a three-pronged assault with some 30,000-40,000 North Vietnamese Army regulars streaming southward across the Demilitarized Zone.
The so-called Easter Offense was to be the largest attack of the war and the first major assault since the Tet Offensive in in 1968.
One bridge, the Dong Ha Bridge, was the only crossing in the Quang Tri Province capable of supporting heavy armored vehicles. Elements of the North Vietnamese 308th and 304th Divisions, supported by tanks from the 203rd Tank Regiment, soon amassed across the river. Dong Ha Bridge was the only impediment between the North Vietnamese and rolling south.
The situation grew more dire still when Ripley noticed that the South Vietnamese engineers had not properly set explosives on the bridge.
Then the order came down. “Hold and die.”
Ripley didn’t hesitate.
“The idea that I would be able even [to] finish the job before the enemy got me was ludicrous,” Ripley recalled in 2007 in an interview with the U.S. Naval Institute. “When you know you’re not going to make it, a wonderful thing happens: You stop being cluttered by the feeling that you’re going to save your butt.”
“Then I began kicking my way through the anti-sapper fence.”
The fence that protected the bridge’s undercarriage was laced with steel-tipped razor wire that sliced into Ripley’s legs and backside as he attempted to traverse the barrier.
His uniform, already sodden from perspiration from three days and nights of nonstop fighting, quickly became blood-soaked.
Hanging from the steel girders Ripley began to haul hundreds of pounds of explosives across the bridge, hand rigging them while “.30-caliber messages” were being sent Ripley’s way by the North Vietnamese.
After achingly placing all 500 pounds of explosives along the 600-foot steel structure, Ripley finished the job by attaching the blasting caps.
“He had to bite down on the blasting caps to attach them to the fuses,” retired Marine Col. John Grider Miller, author of The Bridge at Dong Ha, told The New York Times. “If he bit too low on the blasting cap, it could come loose; if he bit too high, it could blow his head apart.”
Ripley bit just right.
For his heroism, the Marine was awarded the Navy Cross, the highest medal for valor behind the Medal of Honor. The famed Marine passed away in 2008, but tomorrow his family will be on hand as President Donald Trump posthumously bestows the nation’s highest award for heroism to Ripley.
“I hope what people will take away is the importance of living a life of honor,” Ripley’s biographer, Norman J. Fulkerson, told Military Times.
“The key phrase in the Marine Corps hymn is ‘keep our honor clean,’ and what you have in Col. Ripley is the man who embodied that. He’s a man who lived a life of honor.”
1 day, 2 hours ago
Senate advances effort to investigate use of JAG officers as immigration judges
A new measure would require an investigation into how roughly 600 military lawyers were used as immigration judges and special assistant U.S. attorneys.
An effort is advancing in the Senate to demand a probe into how Judge Advocates General were used by the Justice Department last year to serve as immigration judges and special assistant U.S. attorneys.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduced a proposal mandating the U.S. Comptroller General to carry out an investigation into how JAGs were reassigned to civilian jobs. The measure was adopted with bipartisan support by the Senate Armed Services Committee for its 2027 defense package.
JAGs are trained to administer impartial legal counsel and administer and try courts-martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. However, starting in September 2025, around 600 military lawyers were authorized to act as immigration judges to help address a national backlog of immigration court cases.
Then in January, JAGs were put to work as special assistant U.S. attorneys “in cities across the country at greater numbers than before and in cases with no direct connection to the military,” reads the Senate Armed Services Committee report on its fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.
“Judge Advocates, I suppose, looked like a resource that [the administration] could tap into, that couldn’t quit if they were being asked to do things that they didn’t want to do,” Steve Lepper, a retired Air Force major general and JAG, told Military Times.
Lepper belongs to the Former JAG Working Group, created last year after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replaced the top lawyers for the military services. The group’s stated purpose is to communicate the effects of that decision on the rule of law in the military.
“That’s actually one of the reasons why I and my colleagues believe that it is so detrimental to the rule of law in this country to use judge advocates in those roles — they can’t say no,“ Lepper continued. ”They have to follow the lawful orders that are given to them, and they can’t simply walk away from the job if they don’t like, for any reason, what they’ve been asked to do.”
Warren’s proposal does not appear in the text of the Senate version of the NDAA, which the Senate Armed Services Committee debated in a closed session last week and was released to the public Tuesday. Instead, the measure appears in a committee report of the bill, which means it isn’t subject to debate either in committee nor on the Senate floor once the legislation comes up for a vote, Warren’s staff explained.
Under the proposal, the Government Accountability Office is expected to uncover the criteria under which the JAGs in question were selected; the extent of their training for their civilian roles; to what extent the DoD keeps information about the JAGs in question, including their related experience in their military roles and how long their civilian service is anticipated to last; and other issues related to JAG capacity within the DoD and the impact of the civilian mobilization on military justice and readiness.
The GAO must share the results of the investigation with committee members by April 16, 2027, the report states.
“Pete Hegseth is treating our independent military lawyers like pawns in [President Donald] Trump’s cruel immigration agenda, and it’s hurting our military readiness and morale,” Warren said in an emailed statement to Military Times. “This independent investigation is an important step to support our service members and hold this administration accountable.”
The probe doesn’t go as far as an amendment — proposed by Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., an attorney and former Army Ranger — to restrict JAGs from being assigned to roles “in cases without a direct military nexus.”
Crow’s proposal was struck down earlier this month during the House Armed Services Committee debate of that chamber’s version of the 2027 defense package.
“I think the GAO study is a half measure,” Lepper said. “What I and the group that I’m part of prefer is what we proposed at the beginning of the NDAA process, which was an outright prohibition.”
1 day, 22 hours ago
Has the military been miscalculating spouse unemployment?
A recent report suggests that the Pentagon has overstated spouse unemployment rates and obscured factors unique to a military lifestyle.
For decades, military spouse employment policy has revolved around a single, stubborn statistic: unemployment.
It’s the standard that leaders cite, programs are built around and progress is measured against. But a recently published report reveals that the Department of Defense has been calculating unemployment differently from typical benchmarks, overstating unemployment rates and obscuring how many military spouses may have stopped looking for work entirely.
A March 2026 report revealed that the DoD calculates unemployment differently than the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, counting some spouses as unemployed who would typically be seen as out of the workforce.
The Pentagon attributes these differences to unique military lifestyle factors. However, according to economist and professor Amy Burnett Cross, this difference in calculation “makes these measures not comparable.”
In fact, if the Pentagon mirrored federal standards, the military spouse unemployment rate would drop from roughly 20% to 14% — still significantly higher than the national average, but lower than the figure cited for years in congressional testimony, policy discussions and news coverage.
Cross believes this “structurally inflates” military spouse unemployment while simultaneously reducing the number of spouses categorized as no longer participating in the workforce, a group rarely highlighted in DoD programming efforts and reports.
“I remember penny pinching so, so much in those days,” recalled Army spouse Elizabeth Mays of her husband’s first duty station in Fort Huachuca, Arizona. “I ended up taking a job making minimum wage at Sears in the shoe department, just to help us make ends meet.”
This was the first of many times Mays worked outside her field to remain employed. Subsequent duty stations yielded similar employment choices.
“Between commuting and then the workday, you’re spending 13 hours a day away from your newborn baby, and your husband is deployed and not even there at all. It’s just me,” said Mays.
She did the math and realized that after child care and transportation costs, her income wouldn’t cover her expenses. In fact, remaining in the workforce would “cost” her family $50 a week. “Those decisions did not make sense, and that was the point where I chose family.”
“Anecdotally, I would say that we have a pretty large percentage of spouses that have removed themselves from the workforce,” said Eddy Mentzer, who oversaw child care family programs and spouse employment for the DoD. “They’re not captured in any way whatsoever.”
The lack of information on military spouses who have stopped looking for work may undercut the programs designed to help them.
Patricia Barron served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Military Community and Family Policy under President Biden from 2021 to 2025. Her office oversaw military spouse employment programming and collaborated with the Pentagon’s Office of People Analytics to survey military spouses.
“A question that I have always had to our researchers at DoD ... ‘Are we asking the right questions?’” said Barron.
The answer she often received was that changing survey questions would hamper the department’s ability to track trends over time.
“There’s always, I would say, good reasoning for the pushback [to update surveys], but it keeps us stuck where we are,” she said. “There’s got to be a new way to think about the [spouse survey], and maybe it’s time to blow it up.”
For many military spouses, cycling in and out of the workforce is expected, even if it isn’t clearly documented or understood.
Upon discovering she was pregnant with their first child, Navy spouse Melinda Estrada made a plan to navigate her budding career in tech. She would work on her graduate degree while staying home with her new baby.
“And then once that’s done, then I’ll jump from my graduate degree, hopefully, to a full-time position,” said Estrada.
Because her husband’s assignment to attend school in Monterey, California, was only supposed to last 18 months, she didn’t see a point in looking for a job only to have to step away without the accrued work time required to be entitled to maternity leave.
A second child and increasing demands from her husband’s job delayed her graduate degree further, extending her time out of the workforce.
Mays, too, struggled to reenter the workforce.
“In Germany, I tried to go back to work,” said Mays, whose husband received overseas orders in 2014, moving her and her two children, ages two and four, far from family and friends.
Because there were limited jobs available overseas, she applied for a job outside her field, at a bank on the installation.
“They told me that they chose another candidate because they were going to be there longer than me,” she said.
Undeterred, she applied to work in merchandising at the Army Exchange and was hired after having to wait 15 months for her daughter to be old enough to be eligible for a spot in daycare.
“I came back from my first day on the job with training, and my husband said, ‘So, I have news.’ Our favorite phrase,” Mays recalled. “‘I have been selected for a job in D.C., and we have to move in 90 days.’”
Mays wanted to work, but resigned the following day, exiting the workforce.
Historically, DoD surveys have asked spouses if they “wanted to work.” As of 2019, the vast majority of those spouses, 85%, responded yes, but only 43% were employed.
This question was not included in the 2021 or 2024 surveys. However, recent DoD surveys have asked why spouses are not looking for work, allowing them to select only one answer. The Number 1 answer (30%) cited child care responsibilities.
Child care scarcity is a reality for all Americans, and military child care is no different.
According to a 2025 report by RAND, military child care programs are not keeping up with demand, leaving tens of thousands of military families without care.
The availability of affordable child care has a significant impact on military spouses’ participation in the workforce. According to a 2016 Health and Human Services report, a 10% reduction in the price of child care could increase maternal employment as high as 11%.
Despite the documented need for improved child care access, most military spouse employment solutions have focused on reducing unemployment through personal development and employment partnerships.
“The DoD has thrown money at trying to find employers who are willing to hire military spouses because people don’t want to hire people who are moving all the time,” said Maria Donnelly, the co-founder of the Military Family Foundation, a nonprofit that has helped military spouses navigate federal employment policies.
Donnelly was referring to one of the DoD’s employment solutions, the Military Spouse Employment Partnership, or MSEP, a membership-based program that encourages civilian employers to hire military spouses.
Since MSEP was launched in 2011, “more than 220,000 military spouses” have been hired. While the initiative requires its partners to document those they hire and retain, this data has not yet been publicly reported.
Both Estrada and Mays reported taking advantage of DoD-sponsored career development programs and internships. Neither walked away with jobs as a direct result of participating, but both formed networking connections that ultimately led to employment. For Estrada, another workforce departure followed.
If experts are correct that the military is measuring unemployment differently than the rest of the country, it raises questions about whether current policies are targeting the right problem.
“I try not to should myself,” said Mays, who is currently employed by a military spouse-owned business that offers flexible remote work, a job she is thankful to have. “But I have this feeling and that I could and should be like at a director level or a management level, given my level of experience.”
Estrada is still looking for work.
2 days, 1 hour ago
Pentagon demands human performance data from services in fitness overhaul
The Pentagon has quietly set in motion a yearlong strategy to unify the military services’ approach to achieving what it calls “Total Force Fitness.”
The Pentagon has quietly set in motion a yearlong strategy to unify the military services’ approach to boosting human performance and reaching “Total Force Fitness,” emphasizing a data-driven approach to achieving the desired results.
Two Pentagon memos released in May and obtained by Military Times offer a roadmap for “Warfighter Performance Optimization,” culminating next year in the rollout of new programming, professional military education and the launch of pilot programs aimed at closing performance gaps.
The first memo, signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on May 6, directs Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata to deliver a report within 60 days that reviews and assesses existing warfighter performance optimization initiatives across the services, with action points “to equip our service members and leaders with the tools, data and resources necessary to meet and exceed readiness standards and to maximize their lethality and effectiveness.”
The end result, according to the memo, is a department-wide performance optimization action plan.
Among Hegseth’s goals in advancing a unified “Warfighter Performance Optimization” approach is accelerating the fielding of technology that improves performance — including wearable devices and other data analytics tools — and elevating “cognitive performance as a key to readiness.”
“The Department will establish cognitive performance as a core occupational readiness competency, measuring and managing it with the same attention and discipline we apply to our physical standards,” the memo states. “We will mitigate brain health risks that erode cognitive performance and leverage tactics, techniques, and procedures to train and optimize Warfighter cognition.”
A seven-page memo for senior Pentagon leaders and commanders of the U.S. combatant commands lays out a timeline for achieving Hegseth’s directives. It includes a June deadline for component heads to deliver data on “human performance capabilities and programs.”
“Information will include overviews, definitions, resource data, best practices, collaborators, coordination with clinical care, utilization of digital health technologies (e.g., wearables, mobile sensors), research priorities, and data capabilities,” the memo states.
Following the rollout of a WPO strategic plan in September that institutes department-wide performance goals and metrics, the Pentagon will launch new “human performance program enhancement activities” by January that establish standards and data management methods “to ensure consistent development, implementation, and evaluation using best available scientific evidence and applied best practices.”
Other plans include creation of a comprehensive WPO dashboard to aggregate military performance data in a single location, and identification of training gaps that detract from performance.
At least three pilot projects, to be launched by next July, will feature “innovative capabilities designed to address mission gaps.”
The new directives underscore the varied and sometimes disjointed approach the military services have taken to achieving the shared goal of boosting warfighter performance.
The Army has touted the success of its Holistic Health and Fitness initiative, which began a slow rollout around 2020 and emphasizes cognitive performance, nutrition and spiritual health as performance contributors.
The Navy is in the process of rolling out its own variation, the Human Performance Optimization program, "designed to enhance an individual’s physical, mental, emotional, and nutritional capabilities in order to maximize effectiveness, productivity, and overall well-being."
The Air Force this year broke ground on a new HPO facility at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, intended to strengthen the resilience of Air Force Special Warfare personnel, while the Marine Corps has its own human performance branch, with resiliency-focused centers on major bases.
A former military human performance official who spoke with Military Times on background said what’s been missing is a way to look at all these efforts in concert and determine what’s best worth the services’ time and investment.
“Hopefully this effort will find out what the best practices are, so those which stand out and can be done at scale while being compliant with different cyber security mandates,” the former official said. “Wearables aren’t the answer to everything. They’re complementary to a lot of the other practices, but we’ll see what the yield is.”
2 days, 1 hour ago
Fair winds, INDOPACOM: Pentagon returns command name to US Pacific Command
U.S. Pacific Command was the formation's official name until 2018, when it was changed to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
Another Pentagon-led name change was unveiled Tuesday, when it was announced that the military’s U.S. Indo-Pacific Command would be dropping “Indo” from its name and reverting back to the long used U.S. Pacific Command, or USPACOM.
The move, according to a Pentagon release, “honors the command’s deep historical roots, fostering a sense of pride and collective spirit among all who serve in the Pacific.”
“From its critical role in establishing the post-WWII regional security architecture to its coordination of joint forces during the Korean War, the Vietnam War and countless humanitarian operations, the USPACOM namesake carries decades of military heritage and enduring regional partnerships,” the release states.
U.S. Pacific Command was the official name of the formation until May 2018, when, during the first term of President Donald Trump, it was changed to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command “in recognition of the increasing connectivity of the Indian and Pacific Oceans” and rising military and economic pressure emerging from Beijing, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said at the time.
The command’s top officer in 2018, Adm. Harry Harris, acknowledged then that the change reflected the return of great power competition as decades of combat in the Global War on Terror were winding down.
“I believe we are reaching an inflection point in history,” Harris said in 2018. “A geo-political competition between free and oppressive visions is taking place in the Indo-Pacific.”
The name change announced Tuesday, meanwhile, will have no impact on the command’s mission or areas of operational responsibility that were in place under INDOPACOM, according to the release.
The move is the latest in a series of rebranding initiatives launched by the Pentagon — from base names to the department itself — since Trump began his second term.
In recent weeks the House and Senate armed services committees voted to advance legislation that would ratify the rebrand of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
While the latter designation, which was the official department name from 1789-1947, has been used by Pentagon officials since September 2025, it has yet to be signed into law by Congress.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took to social media on June 5 to praise the recent votes, noting, “The Department of War will officially be restored soon.”
2 days, 17 hours ago
‘MUMS’ the word: Corps stands up first ever Marine unmanned maintenance squadron
The new detail is now the service's only aviation unit built specifically to bring unmanned aviation maintenance to forward deployed combat theaters.
The Marine Corps on Tuesday stood up the service’s first ever unmanned maintenance squadron in a ceremony aboard Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina.
A subordinate unit of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, Marine Unmanned Maintenance Squadron 14, or MUMS-14, is now the Corps’ only current aviation detail built specifically to bring unmanned aviation maintenance to forward deployed combat theaters, according to an announcement.
In that role, Marines will spearhead maintenance support for the service’s Group-5 unmanned aerial systems — namely, the MQ-9 Reaper — to enable multi-mission intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting across the Marine Air-Ground Task Force.
“Standing up this squadron marks a major step forward for Marine Corps aviation,” Lt. Col. Jeffrey F. Carben, commanding officer of MUMS-14, said in a service release. “Our unit ensures the Marine Corps will maintain a persistent, reliable, and expeditionary capability — one that directly strengthens deterrence and supports Marines operating forward.”
Carben assumed command of the squadron on Tuesday as part of the activation ceremony, with Sgt. Maj. Tavaris J. Douglas stepping in as the outfit’s first senior enlisted leader.
“The work done here will have global impact,” added Carben. “It takes disciplined, technically skilled Marines to keep these systems flying. Today’s activation is more than a ceremony — it’s the beginning of a new chapter of Marine Corps aviation. This squadron will help ensure Marines forward have the persistent eyes, ears and reach they need to compete and win.”
3 days, 2 hours ago
Navy officer, 67, becomes oldest on record to earn Fleet Marine Force pin
Watching his son graduate as a U.S. Navy officer inspired Westerberg in 2022 — at the age of 64 — to also pursue a commission in the sea service.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. David Westerberg knows how to grin and bear it.
After a successful 38-year career in dentistry in Southern California, Westerberg wasn’t quite ready to put down his scalers. Watching his son graduate as a U.S. Navy officer inspired Westerberg in 2022 — at the age of 64 — to also pursue a commission in the sea service.
Now, at the age of 67, the naval officer has become the oldest recipient on record to earn the Fleet Marine Force qualification insignia pin, according to a recent release.
Attainment of the FMFQO designation signifies that a Navy officer has achieved a level of excellence and proficiency in Marine Corps operations and indicates a fundamental understanding of a Marine Air Ground Task Force mission effectiveness and command survivability, according to the Marine Corps.
The officer dedicated months of early mornings and weekends to studying for the exams and working on the paperwork that the FMF pin requires, a workload Westerberg shouldered despite seemingly putting the final touches on a long career. The dentist is preparing to leave the Navy later this year.
“The FMF pin helped me see beyond the dental chair,” said Westerberg. “Where my Marines are going, what they’re preparing for ... that made me better.
“I would encourage anyone to better themselves and always strive to do a step up from what your comfort level is. Be uncomfortable and take that step.”
3 days, 17 hours ago
US won’t soften military posture in Middle East despite Iran agreement
Nearly 50,000 U.S. troops are positioned across the region, according to Adm. Brad Cooper, head of Central Command.
The United States will maintain its current military posture in the Middle East despite the electronic signing of a peace agreement between Washington and Tehran, a senior U.S. official said on Monday, indicating that any drawdown remains off the table for now.
“The plan is to keep to the current force posture during the succeeding negotiations,” the official said on a call with reporters. “We hope to draw them down, but we’re not doing that yet.”
“We want to see, again, that the Iranians do what they promised they’re going to tell us that they’re going to do,” the official added.
Although the text of the memorandum of understanding has not been made public, officials conceded that several major points of contention — including the future of Iran’s nuclear program — have been deferred. The hope is that those issues will be resolved during subsequent negotiations scheduled to take place over the next 60 days.
In the meantime, the framework’s opening phase extends a ceasefire between the two sides, reopens the Strait of Hormuz and lifts the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports.
Nearly 50,000 U.S. troops are positioned across the region, according to Adm. Brad Cooper, the chief of Central Command. Two aircraft carriers — USS Abraham Lincoln and USS George H.W. Bush — anchor the deployment.
The Trump administration’s decision to preserve its military posture sends the message that a return to war is a possibility and underscores the provisional nature of the diplomatic breakthrough. Any retrenchment of American forces, officials said, would be contingent on a satisfactory final deal and Iran’s verifiable compliance with its terms.
3 days, 22 hours ago
F/A-18 Hornet crashes in Washington state, wildfire subsequently reported
The pilot ejected and was taken to the hospital for treatment of minor injuries.
A pilot safely ejected from an F/A-18 Hornet on Saturday after experiencing an aviation mishap 55 miles southeast of Seattle, Washington, according to the U.S. Marine Corps.
The jet, assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, was conducting a routine training exercise when it crashed, the service confirmed.
“The cause of the mishap is currently under investigation,” the Marine Corps said.
The Yakima County Sheriff’s Office received calls around 12:15 p.m. involving a military plane that crashed into a mountain in the area of Rimrock Lake.
A law enforcement officer responded to the scene and helped transport a pilot who’d ejected from the jet to a hospital, where he recovered from minor injuries.
A wildfire was reported in the area shortly after, requiring intervention from the Naches Fire Department, which deployed a helicopter in tandem with the U.S. Forest Service in Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest to subdue the flames.
Local enforcement evacuated campers in the area after the fire broke out.
The 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing would not confirm that the aviation mishap was the cause of the fire.
The Defense Department released data in November 2025 that showed a sizable uptick in aviation mishaps.
The rate of significant accidents per 100,000 flight hours rose 55% in fiscal 2024 in comparison with the four years that preceded it.
Two years ago, Washington state was the site of another tragic military mishap.
In October 2024, two Navy pilots died when their EA-18G Growler crashed east of Mount Rainier.
6 days, 17 hours ago
Only 1 in 4 F-35s is fully mission capable, GAO finds
The F-35’s readiness rates continued to decline through fiscal 2025, with the fleet’s full mission capable rate falling to 25%, according to a GAO report.
The mission capable rate, which measures the percentage of time aircraft can perform at least one of their tasked missions, dropped from 67% in fiscal 2021 to 44% in fiscal 2025, GAO found.
The full mission capable rate, the share of time aircraft can perform all assigned missions, slid from 38% to 25% over the same period.
Air Force officials attributed part of the fiscal 2025 drop to new jets that couldn’t perform their missions because of software delays, along with scarce parts and corrosion problems, according to the report.
“The F-35 is DOD’s most costly weapon system, but it hasn’t met performance goals and costs to sustain the aircraft continue to increase,” GAO wrote in a summary accompanying the report.
The F-35 Joint Program Office’s answer to the decline in readiness is what the office officially calls the Global Support Solution Reset. The strategy, launched in June 2025, aims for an 80% mission capable rate and a 65% full mission capable rate by 2030.
Getting there won’t come cheap: JPO estimates it will take $13.7 billion more than previously planned through fiscal 2031, money the services must request in their annual budgets.
The GSS Reset addresses concerns GAO has flagged for years, including spare parts shortages, maintenance problems and heavy contractor reliance, among other long-running issues.
Only about $2.2 billion of that total is for the GSS Reset, according to the report. The other roughly $11.5 billion covers the gap between what the services had budgeted and what F-35 sustainment actually requires.
JPO officials told GAO that readiness will likely worsen before it improves, and program documentation suggests improvements may not materialize until late 2026 or later.
GAO identified several risks that could keep the GSS Reset from succeeding.
“JPO will be reliant on the private sector to deliver more than $7 billion in additional parts and other material. But capacity constraints persist for key parts,” the report states.
A 2025 study by Lockheed Martin, which builds the F-35 and leads its sustainment alongside engine maker Pratt & Whitney, found 48 parts that the supplier base can’t produce enough of, including canopies, which GAO has previously identified as a top driver of grounded jets.
Costs keep climbing, too, threatening the services’ ability to pay for the Reset. By the mid-2030s, GAO projects the services will face a roughly $1.2 billion annual gap between what their F-35s cost to sustain and what they say they can afford.
Those estimates may understate the problem. GAO noted the fiscal 2027 projections were developed before Operation Epic Fury and may not capture the costs associated with additional flight hours.
From 2020 through 2023, the program office paid Lockheed more than $114 million of roughly $269 million in available incentive fees meant to improve full mission capable rates and parts supply, even as both metrics generally stagnated or worsened.
Lockheed’s incentive fees were tied to readiness thresholds. In 19 of 39 performance periods, the JPO and Lockheed adjusted the recorded full mission capable rate upward, citing factors outside the company’s control, such as service-caused delays, which qualified the contractor for higher payments. Had fees been paid on the raw rates alone, GAO estimated Lockheed would have earned roughly half as much.
Pratt & Whitney, the program’s other prime contractor, has met its engine sustainment targets since 2022 after fixing problems GAO flagged in earlier reviews, the report noted.
“Lockheed Martin continues to partner with the Joint Program Office and our industry partners to ensure we are delivering efficient and effective sustainment for the warfighter,” a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said in a statement to Defense News. “We have recently invested more than $2 billion in advanced funding to accelerate spare parts to increase readiness rates across the F-35 fleet.”
The F-35 Joint Program Office concurs with the report’s findings and fully supports its three recommendations, a spokesperson told Defense News.
“Through our Global Support Solution Reset initiative, the JPO remains focused on achieving our 2030 readiness goals and ensuring strict fiscal accountability for every sustainment dollar spent,” the spokesperson said.
GAO also found the F-35 JPO could not produce consistent records of its incentive fee payments. It calculated fees using a formula that differed from the contract without documenting the change, and over the course of GAO’s review, provided three different versions of its incentive fee spreadsheet.
JPO officials told GAO they abandoned the contracted formula because it overstated Lockheed’s performance, and the corrected formula they used paid the company an estimated $3.7 million less than the flawed one would have.
GAO found the incentive problems extend to the current contract, covering 2025 through 2028, which includes no incentives tied to full mission capable rates at all, instead rewarding parts supply metrics with targets GAO found fall below the program’s own goals.
“Until JPO ensures the future use of incentives better achieves desired performance, it risks rewarding contractor performance that does not help meet program goals,” GAO stated.
GAO wants the Pentagon to do three things: build risk mitigation plans for efforts like the GSS Reset, covering technical data access, industry capacity, affordability and alignment with service goals; rethink how it structures contract incentives, possibly including penalties for poor performance; and build a reliable system for tracking what it pays in incentive fees and why.
GAO has now made 46 recommendations on F-35 sustainment since 2014. As of March 2026, the Pentagon had implemented 14.
The Pentagon did not provide formal comments on the report but said in draft comments that it agreed with the recommendations, according to GAO.
Despite the program’s readiness troubles, the F-35 remains the backbone of America’s fighter fleet. The Pentagon operates more than 800 of the jets and plans to buy about 1,700 more by the mid-2040s, with lifetime U.S. sustainment costs estimated at $1.6 trillion as of 2024.
6 days, 19 hours ago
‘Sounds like a mutiny’: Secret recording exposes claims of toxic leadership after a Marine’s suicide
A War Horse investigation points to systemic failures before and after the death of Cpl. Drew Mobley, whose suicide was the unit's third in two years.
Editor’s note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter.
This report contains discussion of suicide. Troops, veterans and family members experiencing suicidal thoughts can call the 24-hour Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 and dial 1, text 838255 or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net.
“Who knows what was going on in Cpl. Mobley’s personal life?”
The question hung in the air.
“Who knows if he had a girlfriend, fiancée? Who knows if they were having relationship issues? Who knows if his parents were having relationship issues?”
First Sgt. Christopher Rushton fired off the list of“who knows”questions as members of the Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting unit at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia sat in stony silence.
“Who knows if his sister was having relationship issues? Who knows if his favorite dog died? Who knows if his favorite teacher just got in a car wreck and died?”
“Who the fuck knows that?” demanded Rushton, a drill instructor for more than a decade. “Do any of y’all? So how are you going to sit here and try to tell me, or tell the CO, that this environment caused [the death of] Cpl. Mobley?”
On April 7, 2025, one of their own—Cpl. Drew Mobley—had taken his own life.
During an internal investigation after Mobley’s death, a number of his fellow Marines complained about the command climate, accusing leadership of ignoring Mobley’s declining mental health and tormenting him after an injury sidelined him from regular duty.
Now, three days after Mobley’s memorial service, the rest of his unit—known as ARFF— was getting grilled. Rushton and Col. Scott Warman had gathered the Marines, collected their phones, and were taking turns berating them. The closed-door meeting lasted more than two hours.
Secret audio recordings, later shared with The War Horse, reveal what happened inside.
A War Horse investigation into the events surrounding Cpl. Mobley’s death points to systemic failures before and after his suicide and an alarming disregard for protocols spelled out in 98 pages of Marine Corps Suicide Prevention System Procedures. After inquiries from The War Horse, the Corps said it is investigating.
In the secret recording, Rushton is heard reading aloud and mocking individual Marines’ written concerns with command leaders: “Oh, master sergeant yelled at me. I’m sad. Boo-the-fuck-hoo. You really think ISIS cares?”
At one point later, he tells them: “Call CNN. Call Fox News. See how that works out for you.”
And he insisted Mobley’s fellow Marines had no idea why he took his own life.
“He made a very personal decision,” Rushton sternly told the Marines, “to turn a temporary problem into a permanent solution. Very deliberate in what he did.”
“You can’t sit here and tell me that ARFF was the reason that he did what he did,” Rushton told them. “Do any of you have a suicide note from him?”
Again, silence.
“No, you don’t,” Rushton finally said. “You don’t know what was going through his head.”
‘Not Going the Way We Thought’
For years, the military has been struggling to come to grips with an alarming number of suicides among service members. Suicide rates have climbed in the military since 2011, but, in a glimmer of hope, declined in 2024, according to the most recent Defense Department report. Still, there were 471 suicides—more than one a day—in the U.S. military in 2024. And the Marine Corps has among the military’s highest rates. Studies and the Marines’ prevention protocols warn that exposure to suicide can lead to a higher risk for similar behavior.
In a social media post in February, Sgt. Maj. Carlos A. Ruiz, the Corps’ highest-ranking enlisted member, encouraged Marines to speak up if they are struggling with their mental health.
“This tribe demands that when you need help, you ask for help,” he said. “We bend together, and we don’t break together.”
Despite its ‘suck-it-up’ image, veterans interviewed for this story say the Corps has made strides in looking out for troubled Marines in recent years. But what happened at Quantico last April provides a rare and unvarnished look into a culture that critics say can persist on the inside when unit-level commanders think nobody else is listening.
Over four months, The War Horse spoke to six Marines who worked in ARFF with Mobley. In interviews, they described working long hours for an understaffed unit, missing time with their families, and toxic leaders who dismissed their mental health concerns. The Marines who spoke with The War Horse also noted that Mobley’s death was the third suicide in the Marine Corps Air Facility, which includes ARFF, in less than two years.
The Marines who spoke out had hoped their feedback would hold ARFF’s leadership accountable for their perceived role in Mobley’s death, which Michael Snell, a former ARFF unit member, calls “horribly preventable.”
“The maltreatment had been going on forever and was getting ignored, and by literally everyone in the command,” Snell said in an interview with The War Horse. “And we basically all got told that we’re committing acts of mutiny.”
“We kind of all knew the moment they said, ‘Everybody put your phones outside’—we were like, ‘Oh, this is not going the way we thought it was going to go,’” said Malakai Standifer, another former ARFF Marine.
The War Horse reached out multiple times over a two-month period to four members of ARFF leadership—Warman, Rushton, Master Sgt. Jerry Chapman III, and Gunnery Sgt. Brian Tabares. Rushton and Warman directed inquiries to the Quantico communication office. The others did not respond.
After The War Horse submitted more than a dozen questions, detailing the allegations and sharing a number of Rushton’s and Warman’s comments from the closed-door meeting, Capt. Michael Kennedy, a Marine spokesman responded: “This incident is currently under investigation and no details regarding the investigation can be provided at this time.”
Rob Bracknell, a retired Marine officer and judge advocate, reviewed the recordings of the meeting at the request of The War Horse. He was not involved in the investigation.
“Berating Marines weeks after the third suicide in two years—that just sounds like the worst possible way to handle this,” Bracknell said. “Your first instinct should be, pull those guys into your arms and go, ‘Hey, let’s take care of you.’”
‘Be a Marine and Protect Earth’
When Drew Mobley ended his life at 22, he was working at what was supposed to be his dream job.
He’d known it since he was just a third grader. At Wallace Elementary in North Carolina, an hour’s drive west of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, he wrote an essay on what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“I am going to be a Marine and protect [E]arth,” he wrote. “No one is stopping me until I die or end the war.”
His essay won a contest for the Duplin County School District.
More than a decade later, Mobley was at Quantico on a Sunday afternoon. He updated his life insurance policy in the ARFF rec room. He played basketball for a bit with a few of his fellow Marines. He went to a sporting goods store, where he purchased a gun, and another store to purchase hollow-point bullets.
Then, he drove his Hyundai Sonata to the parking lot of the C.F. Phelps Wildlife Management Area. Around 6:30 p.m., he messaged some of his friends on Discord, a social app he liked to use, telling them he’d be offline for a while. His internet search history shows he was on his phone until after midnight.
Then, sometime in the early morning hours, he shot himself.
A few Marines who were sent to check on him discovered his body after friends tracked his location on Snapchat.
His mother later pieced together the last hours of Drew’s life from his phone log, receipts, and accounts from other Marines. In the months leading up to his death, Mobley was struggling, fellow Marines say, but they didn’t know how bad it was. He started isolating himself. His hair appeared unwashed. He arrived late to his shifts. He stopped wearing cologne.
“The boy loved cologne,” said his mother, April Mobley. “And always wore it.”
They checked in regularly on the phone, but he never told her how much he was suffering.
“My son was not a complainer,” she said. “He didn’t share his feelings.”
She remembers him telling her, after two other Marines’ suicides, that he didn’t understand why they would take their own lives. On their last phone call, he told her he was worried about his friend Cole McEachern, another ARFF Marine who was struggling.
Drew Mobley felt like he’d lost his purpose on base, Standifer said. At first, he’d enjoyed his job, April Mobley said. He made friends and had earned a nickname, Horse, because he’d “kinda just roam and graze and do [his] own thing,” said Snell.
It was random, but stuck. When Mobley left work, the other Marines would joke that they were “letting Horse out of the stable.” Later, Snell got a tattoo of a horse and the date of Mobley’s death on his shoulder.
In Sept. 2023, a year and a half out of boot camp, Mobley broke his leg and tore his ACL while playing football during physical training. In Feb. 2024, he had surgery to repair his ACL, but his leg didn’t heal as expected. He was eventually placed on limited duty.
It kept him from the airfield, where Marines trained for and responded to aircraft emergencies. Quantico is also home to Marine One, the president’s helicopter.
He was assigned to dispatch duty, and around Christmastime 2024 he was sent up to the “tower.” The shifts were punishing—12 hours, sometimes longer—and indeed, Mobley felt punished, he told his mom. Typically, dispatch shifts rotated among unit members, maybe up to six shifts a month, Standifer said. Mobley had been left on them full-time for three months.
Standifer said he witnessed Chapman, the master sergeant who was named 2024’s USMC Executive Fire Officer of the Year, berating and belittling Mobley on a regular basis.
He’d get flak for attending medical appointments that took him away from work, Snell said. Toward the end, the abuse got worse, he said.
“Basically, he was in Master Sgt. Chapman’s office, like, every day, just getting torn down, berated, basically getting told that he was garbage because he couldn’t work normally, like everybody else could,” Snell said.
McEachern, another former ARFF member, was also on dispatch duty because of an injury, alternating 12-hour shifts with Mobley. “They treated our injuries like we chose to get them and treated dispatch as a punishment,” he said.
“You’re a guy all alone, separated from your friends and family,” Standifer said. “Then you get injured. You can no longer do the job you’re passionate about. The people above you are now reminding you every single day that … you’re a piece of shit, and you know they don’t want you there.”
“Why didn’t they just kick him out?” April Mobley asked. “Why keep doing that to him every day?”
‘Felt I Had Let Him Down’
Months before Mobley’s death, ARFF unit members filled out what’s known as a Defense Organizational Climate Survey. Congress mandated the annual surveys across the military to service members to provide what is supposed to be confidential feedback about their command. The War Horse submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on March 31 for ARFF’s surveys but is still waiting for a response.
In the survey, Mobley explained that he felt he was being treated unfairly and said his shifts were isolating, according to a friend and fellow Marine who read over his submission. Mobley wanted “to ensure it would be taken seriously by the command,” the friend told The War Horse. He asked not to be identified because he is still serving in the Marines and feared retribution for speaking to a reporter.
Marines who spoke to The War Horse said many of their concerns about leadership were glossed over.
“We all felt completely unheard,” said the Marine who advised Mobley. When nothing changed, Mobley, in particular, took it hard. “I felt I had let him down by saying that the command would take everything seriously.”
Within a few months, Mobley was dead.
His death rattled his family.
April Mobley wasn’t one to coddle her kids, she said. “I am the toughest mama that you can find.” But Drew was such a good boy, she said. An easy, likable kid. Always the first person to ask how you were doing, always the last person to complain about his own problems. The chaplain at Quantico told her that Drew would often stop by and ask how he was doing. Nobody else ever did that, the chaplain said. (The chaplain didn’t respond to a LinkedIn message from The War Horse.)
“To see how they just pulled the life out of him, the happiness,” she said, her voice quaking.
At Drew’s memorial, Gunnery Sgt. Brian Tabares approached his mother and told her they knew Drew was struggling, she said.
“They knew,” April Mobley said. But she was too grief-stricken to ask Tabares: Why didn’t anyone do anything to help him?
“I just, I can’t understand that,” she said.
‘Maybe Your Feelings Need to Be Hurt’
Unprofessional. Lacking values. A disgrace to the uniform.
These are among the insults Rushton and Warman hurled at ARFF just weeks after Mobley’s death. When the doors shut, and the meeting started, Warman, a first-generation Marine with two combat deployments, made it clear not everyone was on notice.
Some of you will do “great things,” he told the group. “There’s a great deal of you who have such amazing future potential, not just in the Marine Corps, but in life.”
His focus quickly shifted.
“Some of you are selfish. You’re entitled. And you’re the most disloyal people I’ve ever met.”
After Mobley’s death, several Marines had specifically called out Chapman, the master sergeant.
Chapman had a “tendency to pick certain individuals he deemed not to his liking,” Standifer wrote in a statement he provided to investigators and later shared with The War Horse. “No matter the skills or actual work the individual does, they will always be bottom-tier low-lives to MSgt [Master Sergeant].” Drew was one of these, Standifer wrote.
“Cpl. Mobley was verbally and publicly ridiculed for his inability to work shift due to a major leg injury,” Standifer wrote. This “caused him to get put in dispatch over and over, locked in a hole with only the occasional visits from shift members to keep him sane until he was pushed too far and ended his life.”
Another Marine was “constantly accused of using his mental health appointments to get out of work,” Standifer wrote.
These statements were supposed to be kept confidential, Marines said—they were told they’d only be shared with Warman and other officers involved in the investigation. But now, here they were. Less than three weeks after Mobley’s suicide, Warman and Rushton were sitting in front of the entire unit, reading snippets from those same statements.
Marines had complained about limited time with family. Some hadn’t seen their families in weeks, they said. In response, Rushton reprimanded them for not being team players.
“You don’t want to switch shifts, because, ‘Oh, my wife’s schedule won’t allow it,’” he said. “Nobody gives a fuck about your wife’s schedule. Sorry if it hurts your feelings—maybe your feelings need to be hurt.”
Some Marines complained that leaders discouraged them from attending medical appointments—including mental health appointments—during work hours. Rushton insisted these appointments needed to happen on personal time.
As for those who didn’t agree with him, Rushton said: “They’re being fucking lazy. … That’s you being fucking selfish.”
“How many of you’ve ever deployed to a combat zone?” asked Rushton, who shared he had been three times. “Do you really think ISIS gives a fuck about your feelings?”
Rushton scolded the unit for blaming Mobley’s death on leadership. “Stop blaming the chain of command over your own personal problems.”
One after another, he read aloud and rejected the criticism.
“The work climate at ARFF, and I quote, ‘Will not improve if Master Sgt. Chapman remains in charge. I respectfully and tactfully request a review of Master Sgt. Chapman’s leadership and its effect on the unit.’”
Rushton was having none of it: “Know what that sounds like to me? There’s a naval term that that falls under. … What term am I referring to? Mutiny. It’s a fucking mutiny.”
‘Every Marine Feels Supported’
Capt. Michael P. Kennedy struck a different tone in the Marines’ official response to The War Horse about the unit’s claims and the closed-door meeting.
“The loss of even one Marine to suicide is one too many,” he wrote in an email. “Our prevention and postvention efforts are applied with equal commitment and seriousness across Marine Corps Base Quantico. At Marine Corps Base Quantico, we are dedicated to fostering a community where every Marine feels supported and knows that help is always available.”
But an examination of the Marines’ official suicide prevention procedures calls into question the response before and after Mobley’s death.
The latest version of the document from the Commandant of the Marine Corps—coincidentally issued four days before Rushton and Warman’s meeting with ARFF—lays out procedures, from suicide prevention training requirements to dispelling the stigma of mental health care.
“Command climate is a critical aspect of suicide prevention in the Marine Corps,” it reads.
Leaders should be “involved with every aspect of Marines’ lives in the unit” and they should “facilitate the discussion of life stressors between Marines and leadership without judgment or stigma.” It lays out potential warning signs that might urge a commander to order a mental health evaluation for a subordinate Marine, including “significant changes in performance” and “behavior changes that appear to be unmanageable by the Marine.”
It also offers guidance for how to respond in the aftermath of a suicide. Those left behind might experience guilt, anger, shame, and betrayal after a suicide, it says. It’s common for those left behind to “seek answers and assign blame,” the document says. Leaders can help by “fostering hope” and avoiding framing that causes shame or guilt. Trust in leadership is key, the document instructs. “Ask other Marines how they are and actively listen.”
Leaders should “foster a positive, safe command climate that promotes healthy stress responses.”
After a suicide, other Marines can be “at high risk.” These efforts help survivors cope with grief and prevent future suicides.
Bracknell, the former Marine judge advocate who is now an adjunct professor at William & Mary Law School, said Rushton and Warman’s response to ARFF does not align with these guidelines.
“First Sgt. Rushton’s comments seeking to shift blame off the unit and pointing fingers at their ‘unprofessionalism’ in the wake of a suicide—that’s not the ‘positive, safe command climate’ the Commandant expected when he approved that guidance,” Bracknell said. “Instinctively, their reactions are the opposite of what any professional, caring, thoughtful, engaged leader would do in that instance.”
Retired Marine Col. Don Wogaman, who was not involved in the investigation, appeared visibly troubled after he reviewed—at The War Horse’s request—how command leaders rebuked the Marines for raising concerns after Mobley’s suicide.
The subject is painful for him. Wogaman remembers how a fellow Marine who served in the Gulf War took his own life while Wogaman was responding to his Facebook post. It “tears me up,” he said. He called Rushton and Warman’s response to the ARFF Marines “horrible leadership.”
In the Marines, Bracknell said, leaders often “fail to discern the difference between tough and cruel.” The skills hardened military commanders rely on to lead a unit are not the same ones needed to help them cope after a fellow service member’s suicide, he said.
But at times during the closed-door meeting, Warman softened his tone, sharing lessons on leadership, and living and dying as a team.
At one point, he became contemplative over the suicides: “If anybody’s responsible, it’s me,” he told the Marines. “And I accept responsibility for that, because I’m the commander, and it’s happened under my watch. I own that, and those are the things I have to live with the rest of my life—that I had three, three Marines take their lives under my watch.
“Never once in my 23-year career have I ever seen that. Ever.”
The Third Suicide
Mobley’s death was the third suicide in the Marine Corps Air Facility, or MCAF, in under two years. A senior enlisted Marine in the MCAF command died by suicide in August 2023, and an ARFF Marine took his own life about three months later. While The War Horse was reporting this story, another former ARFF member took his own life in Feb. 2026.
The War Horse was unable to contact family connected to the most recent suicide, but did reach the spouses of the first two Marines who died. In a Facebook message, one of the women said her husband “never had any issues with higher-ups or colleagues” and that command leaders were there for her after his death, “especially MSGT Chapman,” the master sergeant whom Mobley’s unit members criticized.
The other said in a phone interview that her husband had a largely positive experience in MCAF at Quantico. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which stemmed from personal childhood trauma as well as his experiences in Fallujah. MCAF was one of the most supportive units he was in, his wife said.
He took his own life a little over a week after receiving an official PTSD diagnosis, she said.
“He knew that [seeking mental health treatment] would be career-changing,” she said. He reached out to a counselor during his time at MCAF, but the counselor told him she would have to notify his command if he came to her for help, which scared him off.
Military culture dissuades people from seeking help, she said. “It’s kind of like—you should get help, and then just know that your career might be over.”
The Suicide That Didn’t Happen
In the weeks around Mobley’s death, there was almost another suicide.
The story of Sgt. Cole McEachern’s is similar to Mobley’s in many ways. During an aircraft emergency, he sustained a labral tear in his shoulder. Like Mobley, he was put on limited duty and 12-hour dispatch shifts. He and Mobley would alternate shifts, and sometimes spend extra time in the tower to keep each other company.
Unlike Mobley, McEachern wasn’t new to the military and had seen some violent things. On 12-hour dispatch shifts, he had “nothing but time” to think about these memories, he said. When he sought treatment for his nightmares and post-traumatic stress at the Quantico mental health clinic, he was told he had insomnia, and they couldn’t do anything for him, McEachern said.
That’s when he began self-medicating with cocaine.
The drugs fought off the nightmares. He’d stay awake for so long, that when he crashed, his sleep was dreamless.
Some days, McEachern would be driving to the ARFF station from the barracks, and he’d turn around, filled with dread at the thought of another day-long shift spent in solitude. Then, he said he’d think of Mobley—I can’t leave him there alone, he remembers thinking. He’d turn around again and make it to work, where he’d sit in his car, trying to psych himself up to go inside.
Around shift changes, when both he and Mobley were present, he remembers that Chapman would regularly show up to chew them out. They were the “trouble kids” because they were injured, McEachern said.
He talked to his dad Ryan McEachern on the phone nearly every day, and his father said he had noticed a shift in Cole’s demeanor. Cole was always frustrated, his father said, and he’d become more negative, more withdrawn.
“When he would call, he just kind of had this depressed vibe about him,” Ryan McEachern said. He remembers one call where Cole said a member of leadership had told him he was “a piece of shit” and that “they didn’t really want [him] around anybody else” because he was a bad influence. Cole took a lot of pride in his work, Ryan McEachern said, so that hurt.
“There’s just a meanness in people that do that, even in the Marine Corps,” said the father, a Marine Corps veteran himself.
Around Jan. 2025, Cole’s calls home became sparser, and Ryan McEachern could see on the “Find My Friends” app that Cole was keeping erratic hours, sometimes out as late as 4 a.m.
Then on April 1, 2025, Ryan McEachern received a call he’ll never forget.
“I fucked up, I’m a piece of shit, everyone’s going to f-ing hate me,” McEachern remembers his son saying. Cole confessed he’d done drugs the night before. “He spiraled into this, just, whole conversation about how horrible he was.”
“I’m panicking,” Ryan McEachern said. “I was like, ‘Dude, where are you right this second?’”
Cole told him he was on base in his truck.
“I need you to drive to the mental health clinic,” Ryan McEachern told his son.
Cole resisted—the mental health clinic on base hadn’t been helpful in the past, so why would he go back there?
“I said, ‘Do not hang up your phone,’” Ryan McEachern said, his voice shaking as he retold the story. He stayed on the phone as Cole walked into the clinic and approached the front desk. From the phone, Ryan shouted a message to the receptionist. “Before he can say a word, I’m like, ‘Don’t let this guy leave!’”
As the clinic staff started to handle the situation, the gravity of what had almost happened hit hard. “I was like, holy shit,” Ryan McEachern said. “I think my kid was about to kill himself.”
On April 11, Cole McEachern was eventually admitted into a month-long inpatient mental health program, just days after his friend Drew Mobley died. Cole missed the memorial service.
Ryan McEachern said he wished Drew would have made a similar phone call.
“I think about that constantly. That phone call sucked, but I was sure lucky to get it.”
‘Feel Like I Owe Them’
Drew has been gone a year, but for his mother April, the pain is still fresh. Her voice is still raw with anger and sadness. Sometimes, she trails off mid sentence, choked by tears.
Drew, who as a third grader wanted everyone to “pray to God for the Marines that protected us and were willing to die,” is still with her. Once, after she visited Drew’s grave, she got in the car. The clock had changed to military time. “Never done that before,” she said.
April stays in touch with other Marines. She feels responsible for them, she said. She calls them on holidays, invites them to her home for dinners, sends their kids Christmas and birthday presents.
“Every boy that calls me, I feel like I owe it to them,” she said.
“I prayed to God. Like, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to have a purpose in all of this?” she implores. “What is my path?
“I truly feel like at this point, it’s to make all of these boys feel heard. To make them feel like what they went through was wrong and [for] somebody to acknowledge that.”
On the first anniversary of Drew’s death, April took a trip to the Grand Canyon with her family. On the way there, they stopped at a convenience store. April wanted to buy a Coke, Drew’s favorite drink. She didn’t know why, she just felt like she needed to. At the rim of the canyon, as they took in the view, she placed the glass bottle down on a post.
On the post, she spotted a sticker, left behind by another traveler. Its message astonished her: “Drew’s Crew.”
This War Horse investigation was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Video and audio editing by LiPo Ching.
1 week ago
Trump vows to seize Iran’s Kharg Island
Kharg Island, the linchpin of Iran’s oil industry, has once more come under focus amid a fraying ceasefire.
President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to seize Kharg Island — the linchpin of Iran’s oil industry — as he escalated pressure on Tehran amid a fraying ceasefire.
In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote the United States would be hitting Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” adding that “at some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets.”
Kharg Island, located in the Persian Gulf, typically handles roughly 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. It has been central to the economic survival of the Islamic Republic for decades. A 1984 declassified CIA document called its facilities “the most vital in Iran’s oil system, and their continued operation is essential to Iran’s economic well-being.”
But Trump’s saber-rattling was quickly tempered by a note of caution. Speaking to the hosts of “Fox & Friends” shortly after his social media post, the president questioned whether America “has the stomach” for a larger military operation to take the island.
“I’m not sure the country has the appetite for it, as good as it is,” Trump said. “I think they’d like to see us come home.”
The White House told Military Times that all military options remain available to the president, including scenarios involving a significant number of ground forces occupying Kharg Island. On Thursday, however, Trump appeared to rule out that possibility.
“I don’t want to have boots on the ground. But if I wanted to, we could put a small group of soldiers and take over the whole place,” the commander in chief said, punctuating his remarks on Iran with “They’re finished.”
Trump’s political coalition has been riven with tensions since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Foreign policy hawks who insist Iran must be curbed are on one side, and isolationist-leaning, “America-First” voices are on the other. The latter group is vigorously opposed to the use of ground troops, fearing that such a deployment would pave the way for the U.S. getting sucked into a long and costly conflict, similar to those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The proposal to seize the island and establish control over Iran’s oil sector also diverges from the four objectives that bolstered Operation Epic Fury in the first place. The Trump administration’s stated war aims were to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, inflict serious damage on its Navy and Air Force, prevent nuclear development and curtail its support for proxy groups in the region, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
This all comes as hostilities between American and Iranian forces in the Middle East are on the rise, despite a ceasefire signed in April.
U.S. Central Command said that Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy assets conducted strikes Wednesday evening against Iranian military surveillance capabilities, communication systems and air defense sites.
Trump, during his interview with Fox News, claimed the U.S. “dropped $250 million worth of bombs on them last night.”
Tehran — which asserts it has launched a series of retaliatory strikes against American bases in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait — cast the nearly two-month ceasefire as “practically meaningless.”
“The illegal and criminal attacks perpetrated by the United States in recent hours not only constitute a flagrant violation... but also render the ceasefire practically meaningless,” Iran’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “Responsibility for the extremely serious consequences of the criminal act lies with the leaders of the United States.”
1 week ago
Air Force cites DEI ban in cancellation of wreath-laying honoring women vets
An Air Force spokesperson acknowledged that the service “declined participation in compliance with Executive Orders … and DoW guidance.”
A 28th annual wreath-laying ceremony honoring women troops at a memorial outside Arlington National Cemetery was canceled earlier this month after organizers got word that multiple military services would not participate, with one citing Pentagon and White House guidance prohibiting “events related to cultural awareness months” and DEI programs.
The cancellation, first reported by Task and Purpose, was announced Wednesday by leaders of the Bipartisan Women’s Caucus in a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol.
Multiple Democratic lawmakers decried the circumstances, saying it was more evidence of attempts by the administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to minimize the service of female veterans.
“In plain terms, the very women the ceremony was created to honor were pushed out of it,” Rep. Emilia Sykes, D-Ohio, the caucus co-chair and vice chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said. “Honoring veterans should not be controversial. Recognizing the service and sacrifice of women who wore our nation’s uniform should be one of the easiest things for us to come together around. Yet, because of the decisions made by this administration, we are defending the basic act of honoring women veterans.”
A staffer for the Democratic Women’s Caucus told Military Times that the wreath-laying had been canceled June 10 after officials with the Department of the Air Force said they could not attend due to anti-DEI mandates published in January 2025, immediately after President Donald Trump took office.
An Air Force spokeswoman, Ann Stefanek, confirmed to Military Times via email that “The Department of the Air Force declined participation in compliance with Executive Orders … and DoW guidance.”
Officials with the Army and Navy declined to comment. But military sources with knowledge of planning indicated that the services were not coordinated in their response.
Sources claimed the Navy had been unaware of the event and their invitation to attend, while the Army faced scheduling conflicts related to Army birthday events following a rescheduling of the initial wreath-laying date. The Marine Corps did not respond to a query.
The caucus staff member confirmed the event had been rescheduled to June 10 from an earlier May date due to a conflict with votes. They also acknowledged that the Army had citing scheduling issues, but said Army birthday events had never been a problem in the past.
“The executive order and the DoD guidance, it’s for all the branches, so that’s ultimately why this event couldn’t happen,” the staffer said.
At Wednesday’s press conference, multiple speakers cited other recent moves they cast as diminishing the service of military women.
Kayla Williams, an Army veteran and former Department of Veterans Affairs official representing the Vet Voice Foundation, recalled Pentagon-driven directives that resulted in the services pulling down web pages honoring the achievements of women in uniform.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., a former Air Force officer, noted that her grandparents were buried in Arlington National Cemetery, which made the cancellation of the wreath-laying “so painful.”
“I keep coming back to a simple question for President Trump and for Secretary Hegseth and my Republican colleagues,” she said. “Which is, when did saying thank you to women who served their country become a controversial statement?
“Women have answered ... every call this nation has asked of them,” Houlahan continued. “They have flown combat missions, they have commanded troops, they’ve cared for the wounded, they’ve gathered intelligence and they’ve deployed into harm’s way alongside their fellow service members. They didn’t ask for special treatment, they earned our respect. And honoring their service should never be viewed as a political statement.”
1 week, 1 day ago
Veterans face higher hurdles in military sexual trauma claims, report finds
Veterans filing disability claims for military sexual assault or harassment face barriers to receiving compensation for their service-connected conditions.
Veterans who apply for disability compensation related to sexual assault in the military face higher standards for proving related injuries, resulting in lower approval ratings and increased risk of retraumatization, according to a new National Academies of Sciences report.
In a study examining the Department of Veterans Affairs’ handling of disability claims filed for military sexual assault, a panel of experts found that the agency’s dual standards for related disability claims — which allow evidence such as behavior changes and outside observation for post-traumatic stress disorder claims but require proof of the experience for other disabilities — “results in inconsistent decision-making” during adjudication.
According to the report, disability claims related to sexual assault or chronic harassment were approved at lower rates than combat claims, with an 18.2% approval compared to 27.6% across a five-year period. Approval rates were also significantly lower for men and Black veteran.
Under the VA system, veterans who file a claim for conditions stemming from sexual trauma have separate burdens of proof depending on their disability. Those who file for related post-traumatic stress disorder may provide observational evidence but those seeking compensation for other mental or physical conditions connected to the assault must provide proof of the event.
Given that “elements of the military context pressure service members not to disclose” such assaults, showing evidence remains a “major barrier” to substantiating such claims, the report noted.
In 2024, the VA received 39,711 claims related to military sexual trauma. Nearly two-thirds were approved with the average disability rating of 80%. According to the report, the average monthly compensation rate was roughly $2,500 a month.
Roughly 1 in 3 women and 1 in 50 men report having experienced sexual assault or harassment during their service in the military.
The panel, made up of academics, think tank analysts and VA researchers, recommended that the department consider allowing lay evidence and behavioral observation to support PTSD and non-PTSD related claims.
“Congress should enact legislation directing the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to accept evidence from lay persons or other sources as sufficient proof of service connection of any condition claimed to have incurred or aggravated by experiencing MST, regardless of whether there is an official service record of the MST experience or an associated condition,” said Dr. Harold Kudler, who is a retired VA psychiatrist and panel member now with Duke University, during a briefing Wednesday on the report.
The VA’s process itself for handling sexual assault related claims is problematic, the experts said, because claimants must fill out disability questionnaires and attend compensation and pension exams that often are conducted by people who lack trauma-informed training. The panel said the process — including the possibility of having a claim denied — can be traumatic.
They recommended reducing the number of compensation and pension exams veterans must attend, creating a more supportive exam environment and making sure the examiners were trained in handling trauma-related cases.
They also recommended that the VA develop a specific disability questionnaire for sex-related trauma claims.
“We hope that our recommendations will reduce harms to veterans and improve their experience when making [military sexual trauma]-related claims, modernize and strengthen training, and improve accuracy and fairness in the disability compensation process,” Committee Chairwoman Hortensia Amaro, a community health professor at Florida International University, said in a statement.
The National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine was directed to conduct the study by Congress in 2023.
1 week, 1 day ago
First look at the Global War on Terrorism Memorial design in Washington
If the design is approved, the foundation is aiming for a 2027 groundbreaking and a project completion date of late 2028.
The foundation overseeing the design of the future Global War on Terrorism Memorial on the National Mall in Washington has unveiled the first renderings of what the site will look like.
Crafted by architect Kengo Kuma in partnership with the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, the memorial’s design is the culmination of eight years of input from 20,000 Americans, including veterans from every branch of service and every conflict since World War II, according to a foundation release.
According to the memorial’s description, visitors will first encounter steel and stone relics recovered from the 9/11 attacks at each of the site’s three entrances, “marking where the journey began,” the release states.
In a primary section coined “the embrace,” a classically inspired amphitheater rises over the path below and features an arch made of reclaimed steel from the era’s combat operations.
The arch, which will also be adorned with native vegetation, is designed to filter light and will be oriented to align with Section 60 in Arlington National Cemetery, the resting place of roughly 1,000 service members killed in the post-9/11 wars.
Below the arch, a predominantly marble “path of honor” includes embedded boot prints “that represent the weight of war and the varied experiences of those who served and their families,” the release says. The path will also connect to adjacent memorials on the National Mall.
Extending from the footprint paths are shallow reflecting pools in which visitors can dip their feet before stepping back onto the stone to leave footprints of their own, an “interactive component [that] offers visitors the chance to walk alongside a loved one once more,” the foundation says.
“This design was shaped by history and held sacred from the beginning — forged by sacrifice and informed by the voices of warriors and their families,” Michael “Rod” Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation and a retired U.S. Army Green Beret, said in the release.
“Throughout history, societies have built sacred places to welcome their warriors home, places where a grateful people can say, ‘We see you. We honor you. You are not forgotten.’” Rodriguez added. “The GWOT generations deserve that same enduring tribute. Today, we take one step closer to welcoming them home.”
In addition to input gathered since 2018, a 23-member advisory council comprising Gold Star family members, veterans and their families worked alongside designers to craft what the foundation has called a “living place ... that will illuminate at night and invite reflection, healing and unity for generations to come.”
As the site’s architect, Kuma’s work on the memorial resonated on a deeply personal level, he said in a recent interview. The artist lost his close friend Yoichi Sugiyama, who worked for Fuji Bank, in the Sept. 11 attack at the World Trade Center.
“This memorial is not an abstract commission for our team, it is a sacred responsibility,” Kuma said in the release. “Our role was not to impose a design, but to listen. The voices of those who served and the families who stood beside them became our source of inspiration. We wanted to create a place of reflection and connection, a living memorial where nature, light and the materials of this war come together as an embrace for a grateful nation.”
Foundation officials are slated to meet over the coming months with various city planning commissions to finalize design approval, according to the foundation’s proposed timeline.
With approval, the foundation is aiming for a 2027 groundbreaking and a project completion date of late 2028.
1 week, 1 day ago
Pentagon to launch ‘Cyber Mastery Incentive Pay’ program
The initative, dubbed Cyber Mastery Incentive Pay, is slated to begin in early October.
The Pentagon is establishing a multilayered cyber incentive pay program to boost cyber capabilities as part of the DoD’s Project Patriot Pipeline effort.
The Cyber Mastery Incentive Pay, or C-MIP, initiative is meant to modernize how the department encourages the Cyberspace Operations Forces, the military and civilian units responsible for cyberspace operations, according to a June 10 release.
“To incentivize our cyber forces and meet both Department of War and Defense Industrial Base needs, we need to shed legacy incentive models and invest directly in our people serving on the digital front lines. C-MIP does this,” Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata said in the release.
The C-MIP program drops the previous incentive models to a more flexible system that aligns pay with skillset mastery and performance of demanding tasks, the announcement says. The program was developed in 60 days by the CYBERCOM 2.0 unit.
The program will feature two layers: skill incentive pay and special duty pay.
Skill incentive pay, or SIP, is considered the foundational layer that rewards an individual for skill level, whether it’s basic, senior or master.
Special duty assignment pay, or SDAP, is a monthly incentive for members who perform duties CYBERCOM deems “exceptionally demanding” and scale their skills by serving in roles such as trainers or more advanced cyber positions.
“By breaking down the bureaucratic norms of government incentives, this framework enables increased lethality by driving the skills, roles and duties most vital to mission success,” Katie Sutton, assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, who will lead the execution of the program, said in the statement.
The pay incentive program is slated to begin Oct. 1, per the release. The announcement did not specify the pay incentive amount for either program level.
This initiative follows a recent push from some lawmakers to advance the creation of an independent Cyber Force military service.
A report from two D.C. think tanks examined how a proposed Cyber Force could take over the “service-like” responsibilities that CYBERCOM is currently expected to perform.
However, it would take at least one year and $10 billion to stand up the new force.
1 week, 1 day ago
‘They got very lucky,’ Trump says of downed Apache helicopter’s crew
After a U.S. Army Apache helicopter was downed by an Iranian drone, President Donald Trump said the rescued aviators “got very lucky.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said two U.S. Army aviators “got very lucky” after an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter was downed by Iran over the Strait of Hormuz, emphasizing that American retaliation for the incident is not over.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president declared, “We hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them hard again today.”
Trump initially claimed in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that Iran had shot down the aircraft, before revising his account a day later to say it was struck by an Iranian ordnance that failed to detonate on impact.
“That bomb was lodged in the helicopter, it didn’t explode. It was on fire but it didn’t explode,” Trump explained. “Those two guys, they knew how to fly, but they got very lucky.”
He then quipped: “You won’t believe the rescue, how cool it was.”
The crew members were retrieved by a remotely piloted Navy surface drone, in what Trump and military officials described as the first U.S. operation of its kind.
Still, the episode demonstrated one asymmetrical element of the conflict. U.S. officials said a low-cost Iranian Shahed-136 drone — estimated to cost roughly $20,000 — engaged the American attack helicopter valued at between $35 million and $40 million.
Describing the subsequent rescue, Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command, told Military Times that the unmanned surface vessel retrieved the downed aviators and ferried them to a rendezvous point at sea, where they were then hoisted aboard a helicopter for extraction.
“The surface drone that assisted in [Monday’s] rescue of the Apache crew off the coast of Oman was a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel operated by U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59,” he said. “The task force began fielding these drones in theater in late March.”
The 24-foot Corsair — built by Texas-based Saronic Technologies — can carry payloads of up to 1,000 pounds over a 1,000-nautical-mile range and reach speeds of up to 35 knots, according to the company’s website.
Soon after the U.S. began carrying out retaliatory strikes on Tuesday night, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in a social media post, wrote that “our powerful armed forces will leave no attack or threat unanswered.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps later announced, through a statement carried by Iranian state TV, that it had conducted 21 attacks on U.S. bases across the region, including in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.
But despite the fresh wave of attacks, Trump on Wednesday insisted that a peace agreement can be reached.
“We’ll see what happens with the deal. We were really close to a deal but they keep tapping us along, they keep playing us for suckers,” Trump said. “All they have to do is they have to start signing a paper, it’s fully negotiated.”
Given that negotiations are highly sensitive and secret, it’s unclear how close — or distant — the sides are from an agreement.
A delegation of Qatari officials arrived in Iran on Wednesday in an effort to broker a deal between Washington and Tehran, a source familiar with the discussions told Military Times, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matters publicly.
1 week, 1 day ago
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are retiring. How will new leaders inherit their lessons learned?
The retirement of the post-9/11 generation raises a question: What, exactly, is worth carrying forward into a new age of warfare?
The military is preparing for future conflicts that may look little like the wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, the generation that spent two decades fighting those wars is steadily leaving the force.
Across the branches, post-9/11 veterans are retiring, transitioning to civilian careers and stepping away from leadership and training positions. Their departures come as military leaders shift attention toward great-power competition, distributed operations and emerging technologies while preparing a force increasingly led by service members whose careers began after major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan ended.
For retired Marine Lt. Col. John Harman, the retirement of that generation raises a question that extends beyond doctrine or force structure: What, exactly, is worth carrying forward?
Some of the lessons forged during two decades of war remain relevant regardless of how future conflicts are fought, Harman said.
“Never take lightly the responsibility of sending others into danger,” he said, after a career that included nine deployments and six combat tours across Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader Middle East.
That lesson emerged during some of the most intense fighting of the post-9/11 era.
During the Battle of Fallujah, young and noncommissioned officers made life-or-death decisions under relentless pressure. The leaders who earned trust were not necessarily the most aggressive or outspoken, Harman said. They were the ones who remained disciplined, calm and committed to the service members under their charge.
“What separated exceptional leaders from average ones wasn’t bravado or chest-thumping rhetoric,” Harman said. “It was steady leadership under pressure.”
Military leaders have spent years adapting strategy and training for future conflict. Whether the next battle involves a near-peer adversary, proxy forces or a crisis no one has yet predicted, Harman said junior leaders will still face uncertainty, the weight of responsibility and the consequences of their decisions.
“Technology will evolve, but leadership fundamentals will not,” Harman said.
The Pentagon’s 2026 National Defense Strategy shifts the department’s focus toward deterring major powers, strengthening homeland defense and preparing for future conflict. Army University Press’s recent Lariat Advance report argues that future warfare will place greater demands on dispersed formations, decentralized decision-making and leaders operating with incomplete information.
Both describe operating environments that differ sharply from the counterinsurgency campaigns that shaped much generation that served after September 2001.
The topic of what gets passed on to future military leaders has surfaced across military education, training and force-development discussions as the services prepare for future conflict. Harman said he has seen that transition firsthand while working with younger Marines and officers after leaving active duty.
Many of the students entering today’s force are highly educated, technologically fluent and comfortable operating in environments shaped by artificial intelligence, unmanned systems and constant connectivity, he said. What they lack is not capability; it is the shared operational experience that defined their predecessors.
In his interactions with students, Harman said he occasionally finds himself sharing lessons that once required little explanation because entire units had lived through them together. Concepts such as trust, accountability and responsibility were reinforced by repeated deployments and combat experience.
For many younger service members, those lessons must now be taught in classrooms, training exercises and professional military education programs, rather than learned during wartime deployments.
“The challenge isn’t that this generation is unprepared,” Harman said. “The challenge is making sure they inherit the lessons that previous generations learned through experience without having to relearn them in combat.”
Leaders who attended SOF Week 2026 agreed.
This year, U.S. Special Operations Command leaders warned that training requirements continue to accumulate, even as demands on the force grow more complex. Leaders argued that future readiness will depend on both emerging technologies and preserving the adaptability, judgment and resilience needed to operate in uncertain environments.
The fundamentals of leadership
The discussion is unfolding as many members who served during the height of Global War on Terror reach retirement eligibility. Service members who entered the military in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are now approaching or surpassing 20 years of service — the benchmark for military retirement.
Many serve in senior enlisted, officer, instructor and training positions responsible for developing the next generation of leaders.
Retired Army Capt. Maxine Reyes, an Afghanistan veteran who served in leadership and command positions during her military career, said one of the most important lessons she carried from Afghanistan had little to do with tactics.
“Having the ability to build genuine relationships often mattered as much as tactical proficiency,” Reyes said. “We must never forget that every mission is ultimately about people.”
Technology, weapons and battlefield conditions will continue to evolve, she said, but the fundamentals of leadership remain remarkably consistent.
“The battlefield of the next conflict may look nothing like Afghanistan,” said Reyes. “But one thing remains constant: success and failure often hinge on human relationships, trust, and leadership.”
Future conflicts may involve artificial intelligence, cyber warfare and technologies that did not exist during much of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Reyes explained. Even so, leaders will still be required to make decisions under pressure, uncertainty and exhaustion.
“When conditions are at their worst, people rarely follow a rank; they follow a leader they trust,” she said.
For Harman, those qualities are directly connected to future conflict.
A fight involving a near-peer adversary could place greater responsibility on junior leaders operating with less oversight, degraded communications and fewer opportunities to seek guidance from higher-ups, he said. In those environments, leadership, judgment and trust become operational requirements.
Reese Rogers, a retired Marine officer who served in Marine reconnaissance and special operations units during deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, says gaining experience itself should be the goal.
“The first time is always the first time,” Rogers said. Training can prepare leaders for many situations, but some lessons are learned only when responsibility becomes real.
“We’ll always worry about how we should perform when it matters most, but you only learn by doing,” he said.
For retired Navy Senior Chief Stephanie Tankersly, who served in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom as a Fleet Marine Force corpsman, one of those lessons is judgment.
“Perfect information is a luxury leaders rarely have,” Tankersly said. “Most consequential decisions are made long before all the answers are available. Authentic leadership is the willingness to act amid uncertainty, guided by judgement, experience and a clear understanding of what is at stake.”
A new era
Military historian Erik Chapman said the retirement of the post-9/11 generation is influencing a broader discussion about what future leaders need to know.
As the military shifts from the wars that defined the last two decades to preparing for future conflict, Chapman said the challenge is not preserving Iraq and Afghanistan as case studies. It is determining which lessons remain relevant regardless of the battlefield.
“Every retirement represents more than a billet to be filled,” Chapman said. “It represents years of accumulated judgment, mentorship, and operational experience walking out the door.”
As military leaders redesign training, doctrine and force priorities for future conflict, Chapman said, “We can’t wait for the next conflict to rediscover what previous generations learned through hard experience.”
He continued, “The next generation doesn’t need to fight the last war, but they do need to understand the hard-earned lessons that war produced.”
Ensign Christopher Miller, a recent Naval Academy graduate, is part of the generation that will inherit those lessons and apply them to conflicts that may bear little resemblance to those fought after 2001.
“My generation may never fight the same wars our mentors fought,” Miller said.
The responsibilities that come with leadership, however, remain unchanged.
“We’ll face the same responsibility of making difficult decisions under pressure,” Miller said. “The technology will be different. The burden of leadership won’t be.”
1 week, 2 days ago
US launches new strikes on Iran after helicopter downed
The U.S. launched strikes against Iran on Tuesday after Trump said Tehran had shot down a U.S. Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz.
The United States on Tuesday launched strikes against Iran after President Donald Trump said Tehran had shot down a U.S. Apache helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz, deepening doubts about prospects for peace between the two countries.
“The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression,” U.S. Central Command said on X.
Trump earlier said the two U.S. pilots involved in the incident were uninjured but that the United States would respond to the attack.
The Apache was brought down by a one-way Iranian attack drone, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi did not directly address the incident, but said foreign forces in the region risked being involved in accidents or crossfire.
“To reduce risk, best solution is for them to leave,” he said on social media.
Iran’s state media later cited a military source as saying that no offensive air military operations have been conducted in the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours.
The source was also quoted as saying that there would be a decisive response in the event of renewed “hostility by the enemy” in response to the helicopter incident.
Trump told The Wall Street Journal during a phone call on Tuesday that the incident “wasn’t a big deal” and stressed that “the pilot is fine.”
However, the episode could well add further strain to efforts to broker a peace deal to end the wider Middle East war and reopen Hormuz, a vital conduit for petroleum and other commodities.
Trump has repeatedly said Iran and the United States are close to an agreement, though there have been few signs of progress since a tenuous ceasefire took effect in early April.
A U.S. Navy surface drone found and rescued the two crew, the U.S. military said, after the U.S. Army attack helicopter went down in waters near Oman’s coast while on patrol at around 3 a.m. on Tuesday.
U.S. Central Command gave no reason for the crash. It said the soldiers were rescued after two hours and said they were in stable condition — a more cautious assessment than Trump’s description.
1 week, 2 days ago
Marine Corps looks to equip armored vehicles with 360-degree cameras
The goal is to allow crews to operate their vehicles – and enjoy full situational awareness – even while buttoned up with the hatches closed.
The U.S. Marine Corps is looking for 360-degree camera systems to fit on the LAV-25 and other armored vehicles.
The goal is to allow crews to operate their vehicles – and enjoy full situational awareness – even while buttoned up with the hatches closed.
The service is looking for fully integrated, turnkey systems that provide “complete situational awareness” and enable crews to operate the vehicle from within the hull with all hatches and doors closed on land, according to the Request For Information published by the Program Manager Light Armored Vehicles. The deadline is June 18.
PM LAV envisions a system with a minimum of four cameras and a maximum of 10 that merge into a single video stream to provide a combined 360-degree view.
The system should include infrared or thermal imaging for low-light conditions, a zoom feature, high-resolution video, such as 1080p or 4K, and accurate capture of colors “for maneuvering, local security, and identification of personnel, obstructions, and obstacles.”
While the RFI specifically describes the project as a “survivability upgrade [that] is intended to significantly enhance LAV platform,” it also mentions amphibious platforms like the Amphibious Combat Vehicle, as well as the Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle. The ARV will replace the LAV-25, which was first deployed in the early 1980s.
The Marine Corps seems particularly concerned with allowing crews to close their hatches when their vehicles are in the water.
As the U.S. Navy’s Naval Safety Center noted with the Amphibious Assault Vehicle, “water will make its way into the vehicle, especially when operating with the top hatches opened. Reduce extra strain on the systems and prevent unnecessary water intake by ensuring everything that can be water-tight is.”
The RFI asks contractors to “describe how their 360SA systems support operations in maritime and littoral environments, including during swimming operations, ship-to-shore maneuvering, and low-visibility coastal conditions.”
This includes full situational awareness even while fully or partially submerged, and “optimized sensor layout for low-profile hulls and swimming posture.”
The camera system should also allow “detection and classification of surface vessels, navigation lights, and day shapes for collision avoidance.”
Crews must be able to use the cameras to “assess sea state, wave patterns, and visibility conditions that may affect swimming.” And, it should feature “real-time tracking and ranging of contacts in fog, surf, and low-light conditions.”
Companies are asked to provide evidence of prior deployment or testing in maritime or amphibious environments. The cost should be no greater than $160,000 per vehicle, including all cameras, displays, software and other components.
1 week, 2 days ago
Marines to have their own barracks bedrooms at Japan base
Marines stationed at Camp Hansen, Japan, will have new barracks with individual bedrooms.
The days of brotherly body odor and tossing and turning to the sound of a bunkmate’s late-night calls with his “one and only” may soon be over for junior enlisted service members stationed at Camp Hansen, Japan, as the installation prepares to move service members into new barracks with individual bedrooms.
Last week, U.S. Marine Corps and local leaders attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the three new six-story barracks buildings designed to house over 1,000 Marines and sailors near the shores of Kin Bay, according to a spokesperson from the service.
In July, the first new residents will begin moving in. Each service member will have an individual room connected to a shared bathroom, kitchenette and in-unit washer and dryer.
The buildings also have amenities, including a dedicated parking garage, bike racks, common areas and a 50-yard turf field outside. They also have a dedicated space for washing and drying military gear.
“This state-of-the-art facility will be replacing six other facilities on Camp Hansen,” said Maj. Gen. Brian N. Wolford, the commanding general of Marine Corps Installations Pacific, adding that the effort “is the first domino that is starting the rest of the construction on Camp Hansen.”
The Camp Hansen project’s ribbon-cutting comes as the Defense Department is seeking billions of dollars for new barracks construction and renovation across the services, with the Pentagon arguing that years of deferred maintenance have left many service members living in aging facilities.
According to photos released by the Marine Corps, the individual rooms include a raised bed with storage underneath, basic furniture and large, light-filled windows. In the shared kitchenette, at an angle, the stacked washer and dryer face a white refrigerator and chrome countertop set against a tiled, white backsplash.
The new construction, which began in 2022, is part of Camp Hansen’s consolidation plan and broader Okinawa base realignment efforts, replacing older facilities with new housing and infrastructure to improve service members’ quality of life.
“This gives Marines a place to come back to and be present, a place of their own,” said Joseph Scala, Camp Hansen’s director. “We are building what we need to have for the future.”
1 week, 2 days ago
‘Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War’ is the ultimate OODA Loop wargame
Flashpoint Campaigns is an OODA Loop-anchored computer wargame that depicts a hypothetical Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany in 1989.
Fifty years ago, a U.S. Air Force colonel named John Boyd offered a profound insight into why battles are won or lost.
His famous Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — or OODA — Loop described the mental cycle by which combatants, from fighter pilots to generals, assess and react to a constantly changing situation.
Those with a faster OODA Loop could exploit opportunities while their befuddled opponents struggled to understand what was going on.
Germany crushed France in 1940 largely because of a sluggish French command system that was always one OODA step behind the swift panzer divisions. More recently, OODA might explain why tactically rigid Russian tank columns were decimated by outnumbered but agile Ukrainian troops in 2022.
Had the Soviets invaded Western Europe during the Cold War, NATO would have relied on OODA — plus airpower and more advanced weapons technology — to stop the Soviet steamroller.
To the troops watching waves of Soviet tanks roll into the Fulda Gap or the North German Plain, OODA would have been just a buzzword. But NATO needed every advantage it could get to compensate for superior Soviet numbers and firepower.
Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War, published by Matrix Games, is a computer wargame that depicts a hypothetical Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany in 1989.
But it is more than just another World War III wargame. Flashpoint Campaigns is the OODA Loop gamified. In fact, the game comes in two versions: the regular game for armchair generals, and a professional edition for real soldiers.
Flashpoint Campaigns is a 2-D map game, with NATO platoons and Warsaw Pact companies waging battalion- to division-sized battles. Set in the twilight of the Cold War, much of the hardware — such as Abrams and T-72 tanks, and Bradley and BMP infantry fighting vehicles — are still around today.
Players issue orders to their troops, such as movement, direct fire, calling in artillery and airstrikes, combat engineering operations and resupply. For example, a tank platoon can be ordered to head to a crossroads via a series of designated waypoints along the route.
Units can be given standard operating procedures, or SOPs, such as determining at what range to open fire, when to change firing position and when to retreat. Enemy units are usually invisible until spotted. With Late Cold War weapons so devastating, combat is deadly and proper concealment and reconnaissance a must.
After a player finishes issuing commands, they can hit the start button. A game clock then appears and a certain number of minutes elapse, during which units try to fulfill orders.
It all sounds like a straightforward process — until OODA intervenes.
Unlike many wargames, players in Flashpoint Campaigns can’t give orders to their troops at will. Instead, only at certain intervals does the game clock pause and allow commanders to issue fresh orders. This reflects the time it takes for the command system to collect information, analyze it, reach a decision and pass a new order to subordinates.
Like an object in motion in Newtonian physics, units will try to execute their last set of orders until new instructions arrive. That tank platoon heading down the road toward a village will keep going toward that village until told otherwise, even if the tactical situation has changed.
This is where NATO’s OODA advantage kicks in. The NATO player might have to wait, say, for 14 minutes of game time to elapse before issuing fresh orders. For the Soviets, the delay might be 23 minutes, or about 50% longer.
This means that NATO will have more opportunities to give new orders than the Soviets do. In turn, this means NATO troops can more quickly react to new threats such as enemy forces on their flank, or exploit discovery of a gap in the enemy’s lines.
It also means that NATO can be more flexible in its planning, rather than having to anticipate the tactical situation far in advance.
“We all know what happens when plans make contact with the enemy,” Robert Crandall, president of On Target Simulations, which designed Flashpoint Campaigns, told Military Times. “NATO spent considerable efforts to train for what happens after that contact and to respond faster than their counterparts. This could let them operate inside the Warsaw Pact command loop and outmaneuver them.”
But even NATO has OODA problems in the game. The presence of electronic warfare, in which the Soviets invested heavily, lengthens the interval before a player can give orders. Units engaged in combat will require 50% more time to react to new orders.
And commanders who send too many orders to their troops will receive an unpleasant surprise: too much radio traffic reveals the location as a headquarters, marking it for an artillery or airstrike.
Indeed, some U.S. Army experts today worry American command posts are so chatty that they will be targeted in wartime.
As battles progress in Flashpoints Campaigns, and units takes losses and headquarters are disrupted, command delays will inevitably lengthen for both sides.
Clausewitz’s “friction of war” will become an impediment, though a bit less so for NATO. Commanders on both sides will have to grit their teeth and accept that they can’t control their troops as they would like to.
Would NATO’s tighter OODA Loop have been enough to defeat the Soviets?
“One of the nicest compliments the game received came from a former Warsaw Pact officer who said he played the game using strict Warsaw Pact doctrine and won,” Crandall recalled.
“If the Warsaw Pact player has figured things out correctly, his initial plan will not have needed much, if any, adjustment and just rolls along at maximum speed. His opponent will be wrong-footed and at the mercy of the OODA Loop to react in time. With the fast-moving, hyper-lethal forces of 1989, good luck with that.”
In some ways, Flashpoint Campaigns is a memorial to another era.
The year 1989 was the twilight of 20th Century mechanized warfare. With the threat of drones paralyzing battlefield maneuver in the Ukraine War, discussing OODA’s influence on tactics seem almost quaint.
And yet, there is a reason why there is a global arms race today to develop smarter AI, quicker kill chains between sensors and weapons, and tightly networked forces that can act faster than the enemy.
Every year, the OODA Loop seems to tighten, with less margin to fall behind. As OODA reminds us, time is too precious a commodity to squander.
1 week, 3 days ago
US soldiers rescued by drone after Apache helicopter goes down near the coast of Oman
U.S. Naval Forces Central Command's Task Force 59 and the Army's 82nd Airborne Division led the rescue, with Air Force assets assisting, as well.
Editor’s note: This is a developing story.
Two U.S. Army soldiers were brought to safety by a drone on Monday after their AH-64 Apache helicopter went down near the coast of Oman, in what may mark the services’ first unmanned vessel rescue.
“The surface drone that assisted in last night’s rescue of the Apache crew off the coast of Oman was a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel operated by U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59,” Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesperson, said in a statement Tuesday.
”The Task Force began fielding these drones in theater in late March,” he said.
The crew was rescued by American forces within two hours, at 7:33 p.m. Eastern Time, according to a separate release. Both service members are in stable condition.
The helicopter was “patrolling regional waters,” according to the command, and the cause of the incident is under investigation.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that Iran downed the helicopter while it flew over the Strait of Hormuz.
“The United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack,” Trump said in an afternoon post on Truth Social.
U.S. Navy assets from Naval Forces Central Command, including Task Force 59, and the 82nd Airborne Division led the rescue, with assistance from the Air Force.
Task Force 59 is the Navy’s Bahrain-based unit, responsible for integrating artificial intelligence and unmanned systems into maritime operations in the U.S.’s Fifth Fleet Area of Operations, which includes the Strait of Hormuz.
The Corsair is a 24-foot vessel that is capable of carrying more than 1,000 pounds over 1,000 nautical miles, according to Saronic, its manufacturer.
1 week, 3 days ago
Chokepoint busters: Marines seek toolkit to help aviators clear way for amphibs
The Marine Corps wants to learn how airpower might ensure passage through "critical chokepoints" while under threat in a new age of warfare.
The Marine Corps is searching for airpower methods that can be used to blast a path for amphibious groups to steam through chokepoints at sea.
A new Request for Information submitted by Naval Air Systems Command on behalf of the Corps asks for analytical tools that can help the Future Attack/Strike, or FASt, initiative fulfill the chokepoint-busting mission.
The effort comes as the service is beginning to retire aging platforms, such as the AV-8B, AH-1Z and the F/A-18. FASt aims to replace them with next-generation systems like long-range missiles, MQ-58 Valkyrie combat drones, electronic warfare and other non-kinetic effects, according to the 2026 Marine Aviation Plan.
The Marine Corps is looking for an answer on how it could integrate these new capabilities into the its amphibious assault mission, which inevitably will involve operating in dangerous littoral waters and chokepoints.
The U.S. is already grappling with that problem in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian missiles, drones and swarms of fast-attack boats would jeopardize operations, such as seizing Kharg Island.
The Marine Corps wants tools that are good at “modeling complex operational scenarios, identifying vulnerabilities and capability gaps, and assessing the potential impact of new technologies, tactics, techniques, and procedures,” according to the RFI, which was published by Naval Air Systems Command on behalf of the Marine Corps. The deadline to respond is July 23.
More specifically, the Corps’ goal is to assess how airpower and long-range fires can “secure key maritime terrain” and ensure “passage through critical chokepoints while under threat.”
This includes intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance over sea and land, escorting transport aircraft, offensive air support for troops ashore, safe passage for military and commercial shipping and “kinetic and non-kinetic strikes against difficult-to-locate, mobile, and hardened ground-based threats, such as anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) batteries and air defense systems.”
Analytical tools should also address gaps in the defense of Amphibious Ready Groups and Marine Expeditionary Units. This includes attacks by drone swarms, manned fast-attack boats and unmanned surface vessels and underwater craft.
Significantly, the Marine Corps is dealing with the possibility that it will have to project “power from land- or sea-based assets into a contested area where manned aviation is denied or severely restricted due to sophisticated Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS),” according to the RFI.
This means tools must be able to analyze and model “long-range, autonomous, and semi-autonomous kinetic and non-kinetic weapon systems.”
It should also look at “capabilities that enable the joint kill web, from target detection and identification to battle damage assessment.”
And, these tools should asses the logistics and command-and-control infrastructure “required to sustain such operations over extended periods.”
The Marine Corps says it is willing to work with “major [defense] primes, small businesses, and non-traditional vendors in the future to ensure diverse solution ideas.”
It is looking to complete the work by the end of fiscal 2027.
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