U.S. Navy counter-mine ships that replaced minesweepers last year in Bahrain have yet to demonstrate their reliability and effectiveness in the face of potential naval mine warfare, according to the Defense Department’s testing office and military experts.

The Pentagon was unable to determine the operational effectiveness or suitability of Independence-class littoral combat ships equipped with the mine countermeasures mission package due to insufficient data on its mine-hunting and mine-destroying technology, according to the Office of the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation’s fiscal 2025 annual report.

Several retired U.S. Navy captains who deployed on minesweepers and defense analysts also told Military Times that the LCS with the MCM mission package, which replaced four Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships in 2025, is not as effective as its predecessor due to a myriad of technological constraints and malfunctions.

“The Navy has not provided sufficient data from operational employment of [Airborne Mine Neutralization System] and [Airborne Laser Mine Detection System] to determine operational effectiveness of the Independence variant with MCM MP,” the March 13 DOT&E report stated.

Both of these counter-mine systems are deployed by MH-60S helicopters, which are attached to the littoral combat ship. They identify and destroys mines through sonar, lasers and deployed unmanned underwater vehicles.

The systems “demonstrated low reliability prior to fleet release,” according to a classified 2016 DOT&E report, the March 13 report said.

“The AMNS cannot neutralize most of the mines in the Navy’s threat scenarios,” a public version of the 2016 report said.

The 2025 DOT&E report also stated that the Unmanned Influence Sweep System, which is employed onboard the LCS and uses an unmanned surface vehicle to sweep mines with acoustic and electromagnetic generators, was “not operationally suitable.”

It cited a previous 2022 DOT&E report that said the system’s operational availability was 29%, “well below the Navy-defined minimum threshold,” and did “not support sustained mine sweeping operations.”

Despite ongoing concerns with the technology, the Navy declared the MCM mission package and AN/AQS-20 Sonar Mine Detection Sets operationally capable in 2023.

The Navy conducted no additional operational tests of the LCS with the MCM mission package in fiscal 2025, according to DOT&E’s report.

The service did not return Military Times’ request for comment by the time of this story’s publication.

An unproven system

“I’m a pessimist when it comes to our ability to deal with the mine warfare threat,” said retired Capt. Anthony Cowden.

Cowden spent one year assigned to a minesweeper during his 37-year career as a commissioned naval officer and said he didn’t believe that the LCS with the MCM mission package could prove as effective as the Avenger-class mine countermeasures ship.

The fact that it has never been proven in combat is a major concern for Cowden.

“The question is, it can reach [initial operation capability], but if it can only sweep 10% as effectively as the old capability, that doesn’t mean you’re not at IOC, it just means you’ve got a real problem,” Cowden said.

The Navy still has four Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships stationed in Sasebo, Japan, but decommissioned the four that were homeported in Bahrain in 2025 — USS Devastator, USS Dextrous, USS Gladiator and USS Sentry — each of which served for over 30 years.

The minesweepers have a proven track record of identifying and destroying naval mines, using their sonar, tethered remote operating systems and influence technology to sweep over 1,000 mines off the coast of Kuwait during the Gulf War.

The US Navy decommissioned Middle East minesweepers last year. Here’s what they did.

Three littoral combat ships with the MCM mission package arrived in the Middle East in 2025, including the USS Canberra, USS Santa Barbara and USS Tulsa.

The Canberra was stationed in the Indian Ocean as of March 16, and the Santa Barbara and Tulsa were conducting a port call in Singapore as of Thursday.

Minesweepers are made of wood and encased in fiberglass, which allows them to operate inside and near a mine-threat zone. The LCS with the MCM mission package, however, is made of aluminum and must sit outside the mine zone as it deploys helicopters and unmanned underwater and surface vehicles to mine hunt and minesweep.

This standoff distance, coupled with the littoral combat ship’s reliance on unproven autonomous systems to hunt and sweep mines, worries Cowden.

Capt. Sam Howard, who commanded the USS Raven minesweeper during his time in the Navy, said the point of the new MCM mission package was to keep service members outside of the mine field and protect them from danger.

But that doesn’t mean its efficacy rivals that of the Avenger-class minesweeper.

“They don’t have the endurance, nor has the automation arrived at the level of effectiveness that having manned systems historically has had,” Howard said.

A host of potential problems

Compared to its predecessor, the LCS with the MCM mission package has limited range.

The LCS mothership has to maintain line of sight with the unmanned surface vehicle or vessel it deploys to minesweep, which means its radius of operability is limited, since the LCS must remain outside the mine zone.

There has also been a host of other problems for the ship, which began its initial testing and evaluation in the fall of 2022 aboard the USS Cincinnati.

Ethan Connell, assistant director for George Mason University’s Taiwan Security Monitor, has written about America’s weaknesses when it comes to dealing with mine warfare for the Center of Maritime Strategy, a U.S. think tank focusing on national security in the sea domain.

He said that the MCM technology tasked with detecting mines had issues doing just that when it conducted testing off the coast of Southern California with clear water and no visibility hinderances.

The systems both detected more mines and less mines than were actually there, he said. The operability tests used threat-representative mine surrogates, which are devices meant to simulate mines.

If the ship was making these mistakes during ideal testing conditions, how would it fare in the murky waters of the Strait of Hormuz, he posited. The 2016 DTO&E report determined mine-hunting capabilities are limited in “other-than-benign environmental conditions.”

Further, the LCS with the MCM mission package has previously reported single points of failure, including: the platform lift that helps move the unmanned underwater vehicle from the mission bay to the hangar bay; the crane that places unmanned surface vehicles into the water; and the tow hook on the unmanned surface vehicles.

“There’s no backup,” Connell said.

If one of these elements were to go awry, the whole MCM mission package could not function, according to Connell, especially since sailors aboard the ship likely wouldn’t be able to fix the machinery and would need assistance from the manufacturer.

“Maintainers demonstrated limited capability to repair the [Unmanned Influence Sweep System] due to deficiencies in maintainer documentation for operational-level repairs and additional repairs that required subject matter expert intervention,” a nonpublic fiscal 2021 DOT&E report said, according to Breaking Defense.

These issues elongate the preparation time needed to deploy the autonomous aspects of the MCM mission package, Connell said. It takes four hours of premission maintenance followed by roughly 90 minutes to calibrate GPS and sonar to ensure the type of accuracy needed for MCM operations.

That’s nearly six hours that needs to be baked into planning before the mission can even begin.

“When you have a system where everything needs to be perfect in order for it to work, obviously, that is a really bad thing,” Connell said.

Even sailors tasked with the development of the technology have been candid about its status as a viable piece of technology.

Capt. Scott Hattaway, director of the Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center’s Mine Countermeasures Technical Division, hinted at its potential shortcomings in 2025.

“I’m not saying we got it right, I’m saying we’re first out of the gate,” Hattaway told Naval News.

The mine threat

The naval mine threat in the Middle East has long been noted.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy views the maritime weapon as a key tenet of its military doctrine, according to a 2017 Office of Naval Intelligence report.

Iran reportedly began laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz as of March 11 and the country’s military possesses nearly 6,000 mines in its weapons stockpile, a recent report from Congress said.

Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, said March 16 that U.S. forces destroyed storage bunkers for naval mines during a March 13 U.S. strike on military targets on Iran’s oil export hub, Kharg Island.

U.S. forces destroyed 16 Iranian minelayers on March 10, according to CENTCOM.

And as of Monday, the U.S. has damaged or destroyed over 140 Iranian vessels, according to a CENTCOM fact sheet.

But Iran’s military still has ways to lay mines, according to Seth Jones, president of the defense and security department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank specializing in national security.

“The Iranians don’t have a lot of major capabilities for mine laying, but what they do have is hundreds of ships that are capable of laying two to three mines a piece, in addition to some subsurface vessels,” Jones said.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said Thursday during a Pentagon briefing that A-10 Warthogs were targeting Iran’s fast-attack watercraft in the Strait of Hormuz.

If Iran proves able to use these means to deploy mines in the sea passage, Jones said the U.S. military could potentially face challenges with its current MCM capabilities in the region, including the LCS.

If the naval mine warfare threat comes to fruition in the sea passage, the U.S. military will likely need to forward deploy its four Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships from Japan to the Middle East or ask U.S. allies with their own counter-mine capabilities for assistance, according to Jones.

The possibility of success

Others who spoke with Military Times weren’t so quick to deride the LCS with the MCM mission package.

Retired Capt. Mike Sparks, a former minesweeper commander who operated in the Persian Gulf aboard the USS Dextrous, understood the reticence to embrace the new technology.

During his time in the Middle East, in the early 2000s, there were concerns as to whether or not the minesweeper’s efforts would be successful, he said, but he and other sailors proved the ship could do its job effectively. He sees this as a sign that the LCS could do the same.

“The systems that I operated in the rivers of Iraq, were not intended to be used in the rivers of Iraq,” Sparks said.

As the Navy began rolling out the MCM mission package, his belief in the system was low and his criticism high. But his skepticism has since morphed to embrace the technology as it has advanced.

“The things that we have out there now I believe have a great deal of capability and optimally they will function as they have been designed,” Sparks said. “I expect the technology they have out there is going to succeed.”

Less than 48 hours before the U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran began, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone to President Donald Trump about the reasons for launching the kind of complex, far-off war the American leader once had campaigned against.

Both Trump and Netanyahu knew from intelligence briefings earlier in the week that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his key lieutenants would soon meet at his compound in Tehran, making them vulnerable to a “decapitation strike” – an attack against a country’s top leaders often used by Israelis but traditionally less so by the United States.

But new intelligence suggested that the meeting had been moved forward to Saturday morning from Saturday night, according to three people briefed on the call.

The call has not been previously reported.

Netanyahu, determined to move forward with an operation he had urged for decades, argued that there might never be a better chance to kill Khamenei and to avenge previous Iranian efforts to assassinate Trump, these people said. Those included a murder-for-hire plot allegedly orchestrated by Iran in 2024, when Trump was a candidate.

The Justice ‌Department has accused a Pakistani man of trying to recruit people in the United States in the plan, meant as retaliation for Washington’s killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard ​Corps’ top commander, Qassem Soleimani.

By the time the call took place, Trump already had approved the idea of the United States carrying out a military operation against Iran but had not yet decided when or under what circumstances the United States would get involved, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

The U.S. military had for weeks built up a presence in the region, prompting many within the administration to conclude it was just a matter of when the president would decide to move forward. One possible date, just a few days earlier, had been scuttled because of bad weather.

Reuters was unable to determine how Netanyahu’s argument affected Trump as he contemplated issuing orders to strike, but the call amounted to the Israeli leader’s closing argument to his U.S. counterpart. The three sources briefed on the call said they believed it — along with the intelligence showing a closing window to kill Iran’s leader — was a catalyst for Trump’s final decision to order the military on February 27 to move ahead with Operation Epic Fury.

Trump could make history by helping eliminate an Iranian leadership long reviled by the West and by many Iranians, Netanyahu argued. Iranians might even take to the streets, he said, overthrowing a theocratic system that had governed the country since 1979 and been a leading source of global terrorism and instability ever since.

The first bombs struck on Saturday morning, February 28. Trump announced that evening that Khamenei was dead.

In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly did not directly address the call between Trump and Netanyahu but told Reuters the military operation was designed to “destroy the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile and production capacity, annihilate the Iranian regime’s Navy, end their ability to arm proxies, and guarantee that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon.”

Neither Netanyahu’s office nor Iran’s U.N. representative responded to comment requests.

Netanyahu in a news conference on Thursday dismissed as “fake news” claims that “Israel somehow dragged the U.S. into a conflict with Iran. Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on.”

Trump has said publicly that the decision to strike was his alone.

Reuters reporting, with officials and others close to both leaders speaking mostly on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of internal deliberations, does not suggest that Netanyahu forced Trump to go to war. But the reporting shows that the Israeli leader was an effective advocate and that his framing of the decision – including the opportunity to kill an Iranian leader who allegedly had overseen efforts to kill Trump – was persuasive to the president.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in early March suggested that revenge was at least one motive for the operation, telling reporters, “Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”

June attack targeted nuclear, missile sites

Trump ran his campaign in 2024 based on his first administration’s foreign policy of “America First” and said publicly that he wanted to avoid war with Iran, preferring to deal with Tehran diplomatically.

But as discussions over Iran’s nuclear program failed to produce a deal last spring, Trump began contemplating a strike, according to the three people familiar with White House deliberations.

A first attack came in June, when Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities and missile sites, and killed several Iranian leaders. U.S. forces later joined the attack, and when that joint operation ended after 12 days, Trump publicly reveled in the success, saying the U.S. had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Yet months later, talks began again between the U.S. and Israel about a second aerial attack aimed at hitting additional missile facilities and preventing Iran from gaining the ability to build a nuclear weapon.

The Israelis also wanted to kill Khamenei, a longtime, bitter geopolitical foe who had repeatedly fired missiles into Israel and supported heavily armed proxy forces encircling the nation. That included the Hamas militant group that launched the surprise attack on October 7, 2023, from Gaza, and Hezbollah, based in Lebanon.

The Israelis began to plan their attack on Iran under the assumption they would be acting alone, Defense Minister Israel Katz told Israel’s N12 News on March 5.

But during a December visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Netanyahu told Trump that he was not fully satisfied with the outcome of the joint operation in June, said two people familiar with the relationship between the two leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Trump indicated he was open to another bombing campaign, the people added, but he also wanted to try another round of diplomatic talks.

Two events pushed Trump toward attacking Iran again, according to several U.S. and Israeli officials and diplomats.

The U.S. operation on January 3 to capture Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas — which resulted in no American deaths while removing from power a longstanding U.S. foe — demonstrated the possibility that ambitious military operations could have few collateral consequences for U.S. forces.

Later that same month, massive anti-government protests erupted in Iran, prompting a vicious response by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, killing thousands. Trump vowed to help the protesters but did little immediately that was public.

Privately, however, cooperation intensified between the Israel Defense Forces and the U.S. military’s Middle East command, known as CENTCOM, with joint military planning conducted during secret meetings, according to two Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Not long after, during a February visit by Netanyahu to Washington, the Israeli leader briefed Trump on Iran’s growing ballistic missile program, pointing out specific sites of concern. He also laid out the dangers of the ballistic missile program, including the risk that Iran might eventually gain the ability to strike the American homeland, said three people familiar with the private conversations.

The White House did not respond to questions about Trump’s December and February meetings with Netanyahu.

Trump’s chance at history

By late February, many U.S. officials and regional diplomats considered a U.S. attack on Iran very likely to proceed, though the details remained uncertain, according to two other U.S. officials, one Israeli official and two additional officials familiar with the matter.

Trump was briefed by Pentagon and intelligence officials on the potential advantages to be gained from a successful attack, including the decimation of Iran’s missile program, according to two people familiar with those briefings.

Before the phone call between Netanyahu and Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a small group of top Congressional leaders on February 24 that Israel was likely to attack Iran, whether or not the U.S. participated, and Iran would then likely retaliate against U.S. targets, according to three people briefed on the meeting.

Behind Rubio’s warning was an assessment by American intelligence officials that such an attack would indeed provoke counterstrikes from Iran against U.S. diplomatic and military outposts and U.S. Gulf allies, said three sources familiar with U.S. intelligence reports.

This prediction proved accurate. The strikes have led to Iranian counterattacks on U.S. military assets, the deaths of more than 2,300 Iranian civilians and at least 13 U.S. service members, attacks on U.S. Gulf allies, the closure of one of the world’s most vital shipping routes and a historic spike in oil prices that is already being felt by consumers in the United States and beyond.

Trump had also been briefed that there was a chance, even if small, that the killing of Iran’s top leaders could usher in a government in Tehran that was more willing to negotiate with Washington, said two other people familiar with Rubio’s briefing.

The possibility of regime change was one of Netanyahu’s arguments in the call shortly before Trump gave final orders to attack Iran, said the people briefed on it.

That view was not held by the Central Intelligence Agency, which had assessed in the weeks prior that Khamenei would likely be replaced by an internal hardliner if he was killed, as Reuters previously reported.

The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump repeatedly called for an uprising after Khamenei was killed. With the war in its fourth week and the region engulfed in conflict, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards still patrol the nation’s streets. Millions of Iranians remain sheltered in their homes.

Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, considered even more harshly anti-American than his father, has been named the new supreme leader of Iran.

An American-operated Patriot air defense battery likely fired the interceptor missile involved in a pre-dawn explosion that injured dozens of civilians and tore through homes in U.S.-ally Bahrain 10 days into the war on Iran, according to an analysis by academic researchers examined by Reuters.

Both Bahrain and Washington have blamed an Iranian drone attack for the March 9 blast, which the Gulf kingdom said injured 32 people including children, some seriously. Commenting on the day of the attack, U.S. Central Command said on X that an Iranian drone struck a residential neighborhood in Bahrain.

In response to questions from Reuters, Bahrain on Saturday acknowledged for the first time that a Patriot missile was involved in the explosion over the Mahazza neighborhood on Sitra island, offshore from the capital Manama and also home to an oil refinery.

In a statement, a Bahraini government spokesperson said the missile successfully intercepted an Iranian drone mid-air, saving lives.

“The damage and injuries sustained were not a result of a direct impact to the ground of either the Patriot interceptor or the Iranian drone,” the spokesperson said.

Neither Bahrain or Washington has provided evidence that an Iranian drone was involved in the Mahazza incident.

The use of costly, advanced weaponry to defend against attacks by far cheaper drones has been a defining feature of the war. The incident points to the risks and limitations of this strategy: The blast from the powerful Patriot, whether or not it intercepted a drone, contributed to widespread damage and casualties, while Bahrain’s air defenses were unable to prevent strikes that night on the nearby oil refinery, which declared force majeure hours later.

When asked for comment, the Pentagon referred Reuters to Central Command, which did not immediately reply to questions.

In response to questions sent to the White House, a senior U.S. official said the United States was “crushing” Iran’s ability to shoot or produce drones and missiles. “We will continue to address these threats to our country and our allies,” the official said, adding that the U.S. military “never targets civilians.” The official did not answer specific questions about the Patriot attack.

On February 28, the first day of U.S. strikes on Iran, an Iranian girls school took a direct hit. Investigators at the U.S. Defense Department believe U.S. forces were likely responsible, Reuters first reported, possibly because of outdated targeting data, two U.S. sources previously told the news agency.

Video of the aftermath of the Mahazza blast in Bahrain verified by Reuters shows rubble around houses, a thick layer of dust in the streets, an injured man and screaming residents.

Both Bahrain and the United States operate U.S. Patriot air defense batteries in the kingdom, a close U.S. ally located on the Persian Gulf that hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet along with the regional U.S. naval command.

Bahrain plays a critical role in the security of the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas and has been almost entirely closed by Iran, causing unprecedented disruption to world oil supplies.

On the night of the explosion in Mahazza, the refinery on Sitra came under Iranian attack, according to Bahraini national oil company Bapco. Videos show smoke rising from the facility on the morning of March 9.

Reuters could not establish whether the cause of the explosion during a night of Iranian attacks on Sitra would have been immediately apparent to U.S. and Bahraini forces. Bahrain in its statement did not say why it had not mentioned the involvement of a Patriot at the time. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the incident.

Produced by Raytheon, part of RTX Corp. [RTX], the Patriot is the U.S. Army’s primary high-to-medium-range aircraft-and-missile interceptor system and forms the backbone of U.S. and allied air defenses. Raytheon didn’t respond to a request for comment about the incident.

Bahrain’s government declined to say whether the missile that detonated on March 9, was fired by its own forces or by the United States.

But research associates Sam Lair and Michael Duitsman and Professor Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey concluded with moderate-to-high confidence that the suspect missile was likely launched from a U.S. Patriot battery located about 4 miles (7 km) to the southwest of the Mahazza neighborhood.

The conclusions of the three American munitions and open-source intelligence researchers, reported here for the first time, were based on their review of open-source visuals and commercial satellite imagery.

Reuters showed the Middlebury analysis to two target-analysis experts and one Patriot system missile researcher, who found no reason to dispute its conclusion.

One of them, Wes Bryant, a former senior targeting advisor and policy analyst at the Pentagon, said Lair, Duitsman and Lewis’s conclusions were “pretty undeniable.”

Key to the Middlebury analysis was a video shot from an apartment building and shared on social media. The video shows the suspect Patriot roaring across the night sky at low altitude on a northeastern trajectory. It then angled downward and out of sight. A flash of light in the distance appeared to mark its detonation 1.3 seconds later.

Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley specializing in digital forensics, reviewed the video for Reuters to determine if it was generated by artificial intelligence. He found “no obvious evidence that the video is fake.”

Lair, Duitsman and Lewis geolocated the video to a neighborhood in Riffa, Bahrain’s second-largest city. Reuters confirmed the geolocation. The earliest post of the video Reuters could find online was at around 2 am local time on March 9.

“The Riffa site’s location and orientation are consistent with the trajectory” of that of the suspect Patriot, the analysis said.

Multiple videos posted to social media the morning of March 9 show damage to residences in Block 602 of the Mahazza neighborhood. The researchers first geolocated the visuals using landmarks that appeared to match commercial satellite imagery of the area and visible street addresses. Reuters independently verified the geolocation.

The researchers then traced the trajectory of the suspect missile from Block 602 straight back to what they assessed – based on commercial satellite imagery – was the U.S. Patriot battery based less than half a mile from where the video of the missile in flight was recorded in Riffa.

A battery consists of a radar unit, a command hub and up to eight launchers that are integrated to detect, track and intercept aircraft and missiles.

Using commercial satellite imagery, the researchers determined that five launchers were visible at the Riffa site two days before the March 9 incident.

The battery has been there since at least 2009, according to satellite imagery. The Bahraini Defense Force did not start operating its own Patriot systems until 2024, according to a Lockheed Martin press release.

The Riffa site has features that are both distinctive to U.S. Patriot batteries in the region and different from those of known Bahrain-operated batteries, the researchers said, including protective walls, unpaved roads and a lack of permanent buildings. Based on these elements, the researchers concluded that the battery is likely operated by the United States, which uses Patriots to defend its naval sites in Bahrain.

The researchers were unable to say with confidence what caused the Patriot to explode. But they added that based on the available evidence, including the pattern and spread of damage on the ground, it appeared to have detonated mid-flight.

They concluded that it was possible the Patriot was aimed at a low-flying drone and that the combined explosion of the missile and drone ignited the blast, the analysis said.

“If this was the case, this was an irresponsible intercept attempt as it endangered the lives and the homes of allied civilians in a residential area,” the analysis said

This scenario matches what Bahrain’s government spokesperson said happened: that the Patriot intercepted an Iranian drone and both detonated in the air.

However, the analysis said, the direction of the damage and the lack of available evidence of a drone over the neighborhood suggested another scenario, that “the explosion was the result of the detonation of the warhead and unexpended propellant of a Patriot interceptor.”

Despite the claim by Bahrain, the researchers said it was less likely the missile made contact with a drone. Reuters could not independently verify the presence or not of an Iranian drone during the incident.

The analysis said that videos taken after the attack and photographs released by Bahrani authorities show that the blast damage was concentrated along four streets of Mahazza.

A Bahrain television news broadcast on March 9 and a government press release showed an extensively damaged home about 400 feet (120 meters) from the center of the main blast area, with interior photos showing holes in a wall created by shrapnel, the analysis said.

When all the damage is considered together, the Middlebury analysis noted, it matches what one would expect if a Patriot missile exploded in the air over a road intersection in the neighborhood. Pieces of the missile then flew about 120 meters farther and hit another house, the analysis said.

Robert Maher, an audio specialist who reviewed the video at the request of Reuters, said his analysis supports the approximate location of the explosion over the damaged homes.

In the video, a flash is seen about eight seconds in, but an explosion is never heard before the clip ends 19 seconds later. That’s because light travels faster than sound. Based on how long the sound would take to reach the person who shot the video, the explosion had to be more than four miles away. The damaged homes were about 4.6 miles (7.4 km) away, which fits with the timing.

Maher said that in the audio from the video he heard no drones or other missiles, although their sounds would have been faint or inaudible if they were more than four miles away from where the video was taken.

“I don’t see anything that is inconsistent with my observations from the audio,” Maher said after reviewing the Middlebury analysis.

Defense and industry officials say Patriot misfires are rare, but they do happen, including an errant missile in 2007 that hit a farm in Qatar.

In an X post on March 9, U.S. Central Command denounced Iranian and Russian news reports that said the incident in Mahazza was the result of a failed Patriot, calling it a “LIE.” It said an Iranian drone struck a residential neighborhood.

Reuters and the Middlebury researchers were unable to obtain or review any visual evidence of missile or drone fragments. Reuters attempted to contact witnesses in Bahrain, but several people declined to speak, citing fear of reprisals. Human Rights Watch has documented arrests of people in Bahrain during the war for posting videos on social media of attacks.

In the video of the suspect missile in flight, the Patriot appears to pass a much steeper smoke trail that the researchers said likely belonged to a first interceptor fired moments earlier.

Patriots are often fired in pairs to increase the chances that one hits the target. Neither the researchers or Reuters could establish what happened to the first missile.

The low trajectory of the second missile and its deviation from the route of the earlier launch could be signs of a possible problem, the researchers said. But they could not rule out the possibility that it was shot in that direction on purpose.

Bahrain’s spokesperson said any suggestion of malfunction or misfiring of the Patriots in Bahrain “was factually incorrect.”

A Veterans Affairs social worker died after being shot Tuesday at a VA clinic in Jasper, Georgia.

Nicholas “Nic” Crews of Marietta, Georgia, died Wednesday as a result of injuries suffered in a shooting at the clinic. He was airlifted from the scene for advanced medical treatment but succumbed to his injuries, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

His assailant, Lawrence Charles Michels, 51, of Jasper, was shot and killed by law enforcement, the GBI said in a release Thursday.

Michels was in the clinic for a walk-in mental health consultation; Crews was the clinic’s social work case manager, according to the GBI.

“Rest in peace to a dedicated @DeptVetAffairs colleague, Nicholas Crews, who died as a result of this week’s tragic shooting at the Pickens County VA Clinic in Jasper, GA. We are making sure Nicholas’ family, coworkers and local Veterans have the support they need during this difficult time,” VA Secretary Doug Collins wrote Thursday on X.

Crews leaves behind a wife and young children. According to the Atlanta-based 11Alive WXIA, Crews’ wife, Alyssa, is expecting the couple’s third child and is due in two weeks. He celebrated his 34^th birthday on March 14.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation will be investigating the shooting along with the GBI. The VA’s Office of Inspector General is also assisting with the case, according to VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz.

Following the shooting, Michels left the clinic and encountered an armed civilian and police officers. Michaels, armed with a handgun, opened fire and was struck and killed.

According to the American College of Surgeons, health care workers are five times more likely to experience violence than other occupations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the rate of injuries among medical professionals from violence rose by 63% from 2011 to 2018 and has escalated significantly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Pickens County VA Clinic, part of the VA Atlanta Healthcare System, opened in 2020 and serves thousands of veterans in northern Georgia, providing primary care, mental health treatment, lab services and more.

The clinic remains closed through the remainder of the week. The VA has provided veterans and staff access to counseling and chaplain care, Kasperowicz said.

A family friend has set up a GoFundMe to help in the wake of Crews’ death.

“Our hearts are broken as we grieve the tragic loss of Nic Crews. He was deeply loved by so many and will be missed more than words can express,” wrote Amber Williams, a registered nurse from Cartersville, Georgia.

The United States military is deploying thousands of additional Marines and sailors to the Middle East, three U.S. officials told Reuters on Friday.

The deployments of the USS Boxer, along with its 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and accompanying warship, comes as Reuters reported that President Donald Trump’s administration was considering deploying thousands of U.S. troops to reinforce its operation in the Middle East.

Trump told reporters on Thursday that he was not putting troops “anywhere,” but that if was going to, he would not tell journalists.

The sources, who were speaking on the condition of anonymity, did not say what the role of the additional troops would be.

But one of the officials said the troops were departing the West Coast of the United States about 3 weeks ahead of schedule.

The White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The vehicles vying to replace the Marine Corps’ aging light armored vehicle fleet hit the water for the first time earlier this year, completing a series of tests to demonstrate safety and performance across a spectrum of sea conditions and highlighting some new features in the process.

The testing, which involved the variant of the future advanced reconnaissance vehicle, or ARV, equipped with a 30mm autocannon, took place in January and February at Camp Pendleton, California, according to a recent Marine Corps news release.

Prototypes by two designers, Textron Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems, underwent the water entry, swim and firing drills ahead of an upcoming competition period set to end with a down-select to one company around 2030.

In an exclusive interview with Military Times this month, Phil Skuta, GDLS’s director of Strategy and Business Development for the Marine Corps and Navy, described some of the challenges the new vehicle must overcome, including high-speed water entry and firing the autocannon on the water, both of which can involve weathering large and unpredictable waves.

He also described a new feature GDLS is asking the Marine Corps to evaluate: an “autotrim function” that would allow the ARV’s crew to outsource some of the work of driving the vessel in the water.

“You can set the course, the azimuth that you want to follow, and the vehicle will automatically stay on that course,” Skuta said. “So, we’re starting to build in a level of automation so that, while they’re doing, say, a long water-borne movement, that’s just one less thing the crew has to think about.

“They can think about the other activities involved in not only operating the vehicle but most importantly focusing on the enemy, so they don’t have to focus so much on, ‘Am I going in the correct direction? And is the vehicle being stable in the water?’”

Skuta said the function was somewhat similar to an aircraft autopilot function, but also like cruise control and automated lane-keeping in a ground vehicle.

“If you’re out of the lane, you might get a little buzz, so to speak,” he said. That’s more what this is right now — the first step.”

That’s particularly useful, from GDLS’ perspective, because the ARV’s swim system, separately from the ground automotive system, is piloted via a “small joystick” by a driver looking at internal screens, underscoring what a chore it is to do manual course corrections. The feature could also help the vehicle adapt to the increasingly automated future, Skuta said.

“We’re demonstrating by [incorporating] the automated trim course and azimuth function that we can eventually, in anticipation of future requirements, put more automation into the system, as well as robotic controls,” he said.

The ARV is expected to come in three variants: in addition to the ARV-30 autocannon platform there will be a Command, Control, Communications and Computers/Unmanned Aircraft Systems model, or C4/UAS, which has previously undergone testing; and a logistics variant, which will be featured in upcoming swim tests, Skuta said.

Textron and GDLS are both set to contract with the Marine Corps as soon as this fiscal quarter for 16 additional prototypes that will enable testing in coming years ahead of the final down-select.

Textron’s vehicle, which it calls the Cottonmouth, has six wheels compared to GDLS’ eight.

During the recent evolution, Skuta said, shoreside testing included a bilge pump demonstration, in which the ARV-30 was flooded with water, triggering safety sensors that automatically pump it out “like a water fountain.”

Water safety has been an increased focus since a July 2020 assault amphibious vehicle sinking off the coast of Pendleton, resulting in the deaths of nine service members. A malfunctioning bilge pump was found to have contributed to the tragedy.

Once in the water, the new vehicle was put through its paces on a five-kilometer swim course to test its maneuverability and stopping distance in calm conditions.

“You’re just kind of pivoting in the water to show the characteristics of how you can do very tight maneuvering in water spaces,” Skuta said. “And you know, that’s pretty important, because the Marines will find themselves crossing rivers and water obstacles while they’re in combat zones. And they need to have a good appreciation for how tight a turning radius the vehicle has in the water.”

Crews also practiced moving the turret around as if preparing for live fire on the water, which affects the vehicle’s center of gravity, he said.

“In a river-crossing scenario, [if the] enemy presents themselves on the far shoreline the Marines would fire from the vehicle in the water,” Skuta said. “So, that gives a good indication of how the turret and the fire control system will stabilize on a target while they’re in that water environment.”

Another tested skill, high-speed water entry, made for one of the “more fun” events to observe, he said.

The ARV-30 entered the water at progressively higher speeds, topping out at 25 miles per hour and sending a massive water plume into the air.

Notably, for all the testing with GDLS and Textron, Marines from the amphibious vehicles community were able to observe and monitor testing, Skuta said.

While the Marine Corps has not released any specific feedback from the demos, he said the onsite response from the Marines was encouraging.

“A lot of smiles, a lot of thumbs up from what they saw,” Skuta said.

A junior Marine’s 3D-printed fix for a fragile communications antenna is saving the Marine Corps hundreds of thousands of dollars and slashing months-long supply delays across the fleet.

Lance Cpl. Eirick Schule developed a low-cost replacement for a commonly broken antenna mast on a Mobile User Objective System, a fix now being used across multiple units to restore the critical communications gear.

The solution, detailed in a Marine Corps news release, highlights a broader shift as the service turns to 3D printing and in-house innovation to address persistent supply and maintenance gaps.

When Schule joined the Marine Corps in 2022 as an engineer equipment operator, he was assigned to be an armory custodian. But his superiors quickly realized he had untapped technical skills.

They learned he had previously worked as a computer numerically controlled, or CNC, machine operator at an industrial machining company and had an interest in 3D printing and design.

In April 2025, Schule attended a basic additive manufacturing course at the II Marine Expeditionary Force Innovation Campus, where he learned to reverse engineer and print replacement parts.

The campus, a 3D printing hub focused on solving equipment and supply challenges, recently received a Defense Department award for education and workforce development.

During his first week there, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Matthew Pine, the officer in charge, assigned Schule the antenna project, citing the simplicity of the design and the opportunity to evaluate his problem-solving approach.

Through trial and error, Schule refined the process and ultimately produced a replacement mast that passed durability testing and held up during a month-long field exercise.

The scale of the issue became clear that same month.

During a joint exercise, Pine observed antenna masts breaking across multiple units. Replacements cost more than $5,600 each and took over 220 days to arrive. He estimated more than $1 million in damaged equipment across the fleet.

Since then, the II MEF Innovation Campus has produced more than 100 replacement masts at roughly $10 a piece, saving an estimated $600,000 while eliminating years of cumulative supply delays.

For his part, Schule said that he’s “extremely happy” to see something that he made have such an impact.

“Now that I’m back in the (Fleet Marine Force), I’m very eager to see the product I designed be used,” he said. “Especially because I’m now in a communications battalion, so my likelihood of seeing it again is extremely high.”

A pair of U.S. Navy counter-mine vessels that are homeported in Bahrain arrived in Singapore this week, according to a U.S. Fifth Fleet spokesperson.

The Independence-class littoral combat ships USS Santa Barbara and USS Tulsa entered the U.S. Seventh Fleet area of responsibility earlier in the week, the spokesperson said, stopping first in Malaysia for a port call.

Each ship is equipped with a mine countermeasures mission package designed to detect and destroy naval mines.

“Tulsa and Santa Barbara are conducting scheduled maintenance and logistics stop in Singapore,” the spokesperson said.

The two nations, according to the spokesperson, have an agreement to allow littoral combat ships to operate primarily from Singapore as a logistics and maintenance hub.

As of Monday, the USS Canberra, the other Bahrain-based LCS with a mine countermeasures package, was in the Indian Ocean, parts of which are in the U.S. Fifth Fleet area of responsibility.

The US Navy decommissioned Middle East minesweepers last year. Here’s what they did.

The U.S. Navy previously deployed four Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships in the Middle East, but they were decommissioned in 2025 after each serving for over 30 years.

Those minesweepers are made of wood and fiberglass and possess a nonmagnetic signature and low acoustic footprint that allows them to operate inside and near a mine zone.

The vessels used acoustic devices, electromagnetic tools, cables and cutters to hunt, detonate and destroy over 1,000 mines off of Kuwait during the Gulf War.

Three Independence-class littoral combat ships with a mine countermeasures mission package replaced those vessels in 2025.

The LCS with the MCM package is made of aluminum and can only operate outside the mine threat zone.

These ships deploy unmanned surface and underwater vehicles, along with an attached Sikorsky MH-60S Seahawk helicopter, to identify and destroy mines.

The migration of the two littoral combat ships with the MCM package could be a strategic repositioning by the U.S. Navy, according to Dr. Steven Wills, a navalist for the Center for Maritime Strategy and a U.S. Navy veteran who served aboard a mine countermeasures ship.

“I think that was a desire to just reduce the number of targets,” Wills said.

The LCS has a 57mm MK-110 gun system and a SeaRAM self-defense system, but it isn’t as defensively capable as a destroyer, which wields a vertical launch system, according to Wills.

U.S. service members will now be granted religious exemptions from grooming standards only on “sincerely held religious beliefs,” according to a recent Pentagon memorandum.

Current service members and those applying for military service who request an exception for religious reasons must provide “a sworn written attestation affirming the requester’s belief is sincerely held and religious in nature,” according to the March 11 Department of Defense memorandum.

In their requests, service members must provide statements describing the specific religious beliefs that are held and explanations of how the current clean-shaven grooming standard conflicts with their exercise of religion, per the memo.

Troops must also provide evidence that their religious beliefs are “sincerely held,” such as personal testimonies or corroborating statements from religious leaders or community members.

False statements can be subject to disciplinary action under Article 107 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice or denial of ascension, the statement says.

The memo, signed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, first circulated on the unofficial U.S. Army Subreddit r/Army page Tuesday. Task & Purpose was the first to report on the memo. A Pentagon official confirmed the memo’s authenticity to Military Times on Thursday.

Previously, the military granted shaving waivers for facial hair for a variety of faiths, including Norse Pagan, Sikh and others, but following a September 2025 speech by Hegseth to military leaders, a slew of memos and a review on grooming and appearance standards surfaced.

This new guidance follows Hegseth’s newfound commitment to physical fitness and grooming standards for troops, calling for “no beardos” and leaving some religious groups worried about the department’s adherence to religious rights of service members.

“No more beards, long hair, superficial, individual expression. We’re going to cut our hair, shave our beards and adhere to standards,” Hegseth said in the September 2025 speech to military leaders.

This March memo states that unit commanders must provide a written assessment of the requester’s sincerity of religious belief and specific information regarding the requester’s current and anticipated work, like use of protective equipment or scheduled deployments, when forwarding requests to the “decision authority.”

The memo did not elaborate on who or what department is considered the authority on this matter.

“Decision authorities must review requests for accommodation on an individual basis, applying the ‘compelling government interest’ and ‘least restrictive means’ criteria,” the memo says.

The memo states that military departments are required to provide training on “applicable laws and procedures” to unit commanders and personnel involved in reviewing religious-based requests for exception from grooming standards for facial hair.

Religious accommodations related to grooming standards that have already been approved must be reevaluated within 90 days of these new guidelines, the memo reads.

“To prevent abuse and maintain military combat readiness, determining the sincerity of a religious belief in whether a military policy, practice or duty substantially burdens a service member’s exercise of religion is a critical component of the review process,” the memo states.

The memo says that decision authorities must consider any evidence that the request is based upon personal preference. They must get input from a first-line supervisor on the individual’s character, as well as from a military chaplain on the nature of the religious belief and from other sources at the unit commander’s discretion.

An attachment of the memo states that a legal advisor must give counsel to the deciding official to ensure compliance with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and other applicable policies. Service members whose applications are denied may voluntarily separate, according to the memo.

Implementation plans must be submitted to the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness within 30 days of the memo’s release date.

A U.S. F-35 fighter jet was forced to make an emergency landing after flying a combat mission over Iran, U.S. Central Command confirmed on Thursday.

The pilot, who was able to guide the aircraft to a U.S. air base in the region, is in stable condition, a command spokesperson said.

CNN first reported the incident, with sources telling the outlet the aircraft was struck by an Iranian munition.

“We are aware of reports that a U.S. F-35 aircraft conducted an emergency landing at a regional U.S airbase after flying a combat mission over Iran,” Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins said in an emailed statement.

The incident is under investigation.

Prior to Thursday’s incident, the U.S. had lost four manned aircraft across the month of March.

Six U.S. airmen were killed on March 12 when their KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq during combat operations.

On March 1, three U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets were shot down by a Kuwaiti F/A-18 in a friendly fire incident. All six F-15 crew members ejected and were safely recovered.

A total of 13 U.S. service members have been killed during combat actions against Iran and roughly 200 wounded.

While the majority of the wounded troops have since returned to duty, 10 are considered seriously injured, CENTCOM announced Monday.

President Donald Trump on Thursday drew a parallel between U.S. strikes on Iran and Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor decades ago, as he defended the war against Tehran at a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Washington.

“We wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?” Trump said when a journalist asked why he had not told allies about his war plans.

“You believe in surprise, I think much more so than us.”

Takaichi’s eyes widened, and she shifted in her chair as Trump, seated beside her in the Oval Office, evoked the moment that drew the U.S. into the Second World War.

The Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, killed 2,390 Americans, and the U.S. declared war on Japan the next day.

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “a date which will live in infamy.”

The U.S. defeated Japan in August 1945, days after U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Shigeaki Mori, an atomic bomb survivor who spent decades researching the forgotten American prisoners of war killed in the Hiroshima attack, has died at age 88.

The historian died on March 14 at a Hiroshima hospital, according to Japanese media reports.

Mori was just eight years old when the B-29 carrying the earth shattering “Little Boy” bomb dropped on the city. Less than a mile and a half from the center of the blast, Mori was thrown into a nearby stream that protected him from the firestorm that followed.

“I found myself inside the mushroom cloud,” Mori would later write. “It was so dark that when I held my hands up about 10 centimeters in front of my face, I couldn’t see them.”

In the ensuing days, Mori scavenged for food and water but only found piles of charred bodies instead. When he did find water, it was poisoned with radiation. Unknowingly, Mori drank it anyway.

As a young man, Mori worked at a brokerage house and, later, at a piano manufacturer. “But I’d always wanted to be a historian,” he told The New York Times in 2016.

And so the budding historian began spending his weekends researching the aftermath of the Aug. 6, 1945, bombing. Mori conducted his own interviews with survivors, double-checking official histories with contemporary newspaper reports.

“There were so many mistakes in the histories,” he told the Times.

One interview with a local university professor, however, set Mori on a decades-long quest. The professor had found a list of names in a government archive and, not sure what to do with them, handed them off to Mori.

The list contained the names of 12 American airmen who had been shot down over the area on July 28, 1945. They had been killed alongside the Japanese when their fellow Americans had dropped the bomb. Their deaths had gone unrecognized, with both governments keeping quiet about their presence in the city.

“When I first learned of the American victims, I realized that none of them had been officially recognized as a victim of the atomic bomb. It was shocking to me,” Mori told Stars and Stripes in 2015.

It took him three years before he found anyone connected to the Americans.

Eventually, in the 1970s, declassified American documents backed up his findings. His subsequent book, “A Secret History of U.S. Servicemembers Who Died in Atomic Bomb,” detailed the fate of the airmen.

Mori worked tirelessly to bring the death of the Americans to light — building a memorial for them at his own expense and advocating for their inclusion at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The name of the first airman was added to the peace memorial in 2004; the additional 11 were added in 2009.

In 2016, Mori was recognized by former President Barack Obama, who was the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima. The pair’s subsequent embrace at the memorial grounds gained international attention.

“My ultimate hope is to send out a message that war deprives people of everything,” Mori told Stars and Stripes in 2008. “We should never repeat the mistake.”

The Pentagon on Thursday said it is seeking roughly $200 billion to sustain its war in Iran, as senior military officials acknowledge that the Islamic Republic retains “some capability” to attack American assets and allies in the Middle East.

Asked about the figure during a press briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “that number could move,” before adding in a blunt aside: “It takes money to kill bad guys.”

“We’re going back to Congress and our folks there to ensure that we are properly funded,” Hegseth said.

He asserted that the request would help fund the ongoing mission, accelerate replenishment of weapons systems that have been expended in the fight, and rebuild depleted stockpiles to prepare for future deployments.

The White House on Sunday said the United States’ military campaign against Iran — dubbed Operation Epic Fury — had cost American taxpayers $12 billion as of that day. The opening salvo of the war was carried out by U.S. and Israeli forces on Feb. 28.

Now nineteen days in, Hegseth declined to outline how or when the war could end, aside from underscoring that the U.S. was “very much on track.”

“It will be at [President Donald Trump’s] choosing ultimately, where we say, ‘Hey, we’ve achieved what we need to on behalf of the American people to ensure our security,’” Hegseth said. “No time set on that, but we’re very much on track.”

Hegseth billed Thursday’s rounds of strikes as the “largest strike package yet” in the U.S. offensive against Iran, “just like yesterday was.”

“We’re hunting, we’re striking, death and destruction from above,” the defense secretary said. “To date, we’ve struck over 7,000 targets across Iran and its military infrastructure. That is not incremental. That is overwhelming force applied with precision.”

Gen. Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recognized the scale of Iran’s arsenal.

“They came into this fight with a lot of weapons,” he said in the Thursday press briefing, emphasizing that U.S. forces continue to be “aggressive and assertive” in targeting missile stockpiles and drone launch sites.

Caine noted that the military dropped 5,000-pound bunker-buster bombs into Iran’s underground storage facilities, which held a cache of coastal-defense cruise weapons and other support equipment.

“These weapons are bespokely designed to get through concrete and or rocks, and function after penetrating those barriers,” he said.

WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) — President Donald Trump’s administration is considering deploying thousands of U.S. troops to reinforce its operation in the Middle East, as the U.S. military prepares for possible next steps in its campaign against Iran, said a U.S. official and three people familiar with the matter.

The deployments could help provide Trump with additional options as he weighs expanding U.S. operations, with the Iran war well into its third week.

Those options include securing safe passage for oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, a mission that would be accomplished primarily through air and naval forces, the sources said. But securing the Strait could also mean deploying U.S. troops to Iran’s shoreline, said four sources, including two U.S. officials.

Reuters granted the sources anonymity to speak about military planning.

The Trump administration has also discussed options to send ground forces to Iran’s Kharg Island, the hub for 90% of Iran’s ​oil exports, the three people familiar with the matter and three U.S. officials said. One of the officials said such an operation would be very risky. Iran has the ability to reach the island with missiles and drones.

The United States carried out strikes against military targets on the island on March 13 and Trump has threatened to also strike its critical oil infrastructure. However, given its vital role in Iran’s economy, controlling the island would likely be viewed as a better option than destroying it, military experts say.

Any use of U.S. ground troops — even for a limited mission — could pose significant political risks for Trump, given low support among the American public for the Iran campaign and Trump’s own campaign promises to avoid entangling the U.S. in new Middle East conflicts.

Trump administration officials have also discussed the possibility of deploying U.S. forces to secure Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

The sources did not believe a deployment of ground forces anywhere in Iran was imminent but declined to discuss specifics of U.S. operational planning. Experts say the task of securing Iran’s uranium stockpiles would be highly complex and risky, even for U.S. special operations forces.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “There has been no decision to send ground troops at this time, but President Trump wisely keeps all options at his disposal.

“The president is focused on achieving all of the defined objectives of Operation Epic Fury: destroy Iran’s ballistic missile capacity, annihilate their navy, ensure their terrorist proxies cannot destabilize the region, and guarantee that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon.”

The Pentagon declined to comment.

The discussions come as the U.S. military continues to attack Iran’s navy, its missile and drone stockpiles and its defense industry.

The U.S. has carried out more than 7,800 strikes since launching the war on Feb. 28 and damaged or destroyed more than 120 Iranian vessels so far, according to a factsheet released on Wednesday by the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East.

US casualties

Trump has said his goals go beyond degrading Iran’s military capabilities and could include securing safe passage through the strait and preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Ground forces could help broaden his options to address those goals, but carry significant risk. Even without any direct conflict in Iran, 13 U.S. troops have been killed so far in the war and about 200 have been wounded, although the vast majority of the injuries have been minor, the U.S. military says.

For years, Trump has railed against his predecessors for getting involved in conflicts and has vowed to keep the United States out of foreign wars. But more recently he has refused to rule out the possibility of “boots on the ground” in Iran.

A senior White House official told Reuters that Trump has various options for acquiring Iran’s nuclear material but has not decided how to proceed. “Certainly there are ways in which it could be acquired,” the official said, adding: “He hasn’t made a decision yet.”

In written testimony to lawmakers on Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Iran’s nuclear enrichment program had been obliterated by strikes in June and the entrances to those underground facilities had been “buried and shuttered with cement.”

The sources said the discussions on U.S. reinforcements go beyond the arrival of an Amphibious Ready Group next week in the Middle East, with an attached Marine Expeditionary Unit that includes more than 2,000 Marines.

But one of the sources noted that the U.S. military was losing a significant number of forces with the decision to send the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier to Greece for maintenance after a fire on board the vessel.

Trump has also oscillated on whether the U.S. should secure the Strait of Hormuz.

After initially saying the U.S. Navy could escort vessels, he called on other countries to help open the key water way. With little interest from allies, Trump on Wednesday mused about simply leaving.

“I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait?,’” Trump posted on Truth Social.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Erin Banco and Gram Slattery; additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Don Durfee and Rosalba O’Brien)

WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) — China does not currently plan to invade Taiwan in 2027 and seeks to control the island without the use of force, the U.S. intelligence community said on Wednesday, striking a measured tone on one of the world’s biggest potential flashpoints.

The assessment in the intelligence agencies’ annual report on global threats comes as Beijing has stepped up pressure on Taiwan with frequent military drills, even as U.S. President Donald Trump has played down the risk of Chinese military action while he is in office.

The Pentagon late last year said the U.S. military believed China was preparing to be able to win a fight for Taiwan by 2027, the centenary of the founding of its People’s Liberation Army, and was refining options to take Taiwan by “brute force” if needed.

“China, despite its threat to use force to compel unification if necessary and to counter what it sees as a U.S. attempt to use Taiwan to undermine China’s rise, prefers to achieve unification without the use of force, if possible,” the U.S. intelligence agencies said in the report.

The U.S. “assesses that Chinese leaders do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027, nor do they have a fixed timeline for achieving unification,” the report said.

It reiterated previous views that the PLA was making “steady but uneven” progress on capabilities it could use to capture the democratically governed island.

China’s embassy in Washington did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington also did not respond immediately.

Trump, who has repeatedly touted his “great relationship” with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, has downplayed the threat of the Chinese drills around Taiwan and said Xi told him he will not attack Taiwan while the U.S. president is in office — something Beijing has never confirmed.

China views Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to take the island under its control. Taiwan rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.

Pressure on Japan to intensify

Despite concerns in the U.S. and abroad about Trump’s inclination to back Taiwan, his administration in December unveiled a record $11 billion sale of weapons for the island, angering Beijing, which says such arms deals must end.

Nonetheless, some Japanese officials have worried Trump may be prepared to soften support for Taiwan in pursuit of a trade accord with China, a move they fear will embolden Beijing and spark conflict in an increasingly militarized East Asia.

Tokyo had been unnerved by muted U.S. rhetorical support for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi after her remarks last year that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could bring about a Japanese military response. Trump reportedly told her privately not to escalate the ensuing diplomatic row with Beijing.

In Wednesday’s report, the U.S. intelligence agencies called Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan a “significant shift” for a Japanese leader, a framing that is likely to irk Tokyo just a day ahead of a delicate visit by her to the White House. Takaichi has maintained her stance was consistent with Japan’s longstanding policy.

“China is employing multidomain coercive pressure that probably will intensify through 2026, aimed both at punishing Japan and deterring other countries from making similar statements about their potential involvement in a Taiwan crisis,” the report said.

(Reporting by Michael Martina, Patricia Zengerle and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Franklin Paul, Rod Nickel)

Editor’s note: This report has been updated.

MacDill Air Force Base in Florida has lifted a shelter-in-place order that was enacted earlier Wednesday after officials said a threat had been made against the Tampa-based installation.

“Shelter in place has been lifted and the gates are open and will resume normal FPCON Charlie operations,” the base, home of U.S. Central Command, said in a Facebook post. “The threat to MacDill Air Force Base has been cleared and we appreciate everyone’s patience and cooperation.”

The shelter-in-place order came days after a suspicious device was found at the visitors center at the Dale Mabry Gate on Monday, causing traffic to be diverted to the Bayshore Gate, according to a local NBC outlet.

After Monday’s incident, MacDill raised its security level to FPCON CHARLIE.

“This posture allows us to implement deliberate security measures proactively,” the base said on social media earlier this week. “All personnel should remain vigilant, follow the direction of security forces, and report any suspicious activity immediately.”

The base has been leading the United States’ military campaign against Iran, Operation Epic Fury, since the U.S. and Israel began their joint offensive on Feb. 28.

An agreement between the Justice Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs allows the VA to put veterans under guardianship if they are unable to make their own health care decisions.

A memorandum of understanding announced last week by the department gives VA attorneys the legal authority to enter into state court guardianships or conservatorship proceedings in cases where veterans don’t have family or legal representation to determine medical treatment.

VA officials say the process will help hundreds of veterans hospitalized at VA facilities who are unable to transition to more appropriate settings.

“Our new partnership with the Justice Department reflects our ongoing commitment to ensuring that every veteran receives timely, appropriate care, even in complex cases,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a release.

VA officials said the agreement is aimed at helping roughly 700 veterans languishing in VA facilities, but the announcement, which noted that the agreement includes some veterans who are “either homeless or at risk of homelessness,” raised concerns among advocates that the authority could be applied to a larger population of veterans, such as those living on the streets.

Carl Blake, CEO of Paralyzed Veterans of America, said court-ordered guardianships or conservatorships could result in a veteran’s loss of rights or lead to unnecessary institutionalization.

Blake asked how the VA previously met the needs of incapacitated veterans and whether they would have access to their own legal representation — paid for by the VA — if necessary.

“Guardianship can severely — or permanently — restrict an individual’s autonomy, civil liberties, and access to community-based supports,” Blake said in a statement on March 13. “Veterans who have served our country deserve care that honors their dignity, preserves their rights, and supports their ability to live in the community with appropriate services.”

Under the program, VA attorneys can ask a state court to determine if a veteran needs a court-appointed guardian to “represent the veteran’s best interests” to determine appropriate medical care, VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz said in an email to Military Times.

According to Kasperowicz, the decisions would be made with “full due-process and process rights for the veterans involved and continuous court supervision of the guardian,” and the court — not the VA — would appoint the representative.

Despite the VA’s assurances, California Rep. Mark Takano, the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said the agreement puts VA in a position where it is responsible for a veteran’s well-being as well as the “legal driver of stripping veterans of their rights.”

“Guardianship should always be a last resort, after all less restrictive options have been exhausted, to ensure veterans’ rights are protected. Veterans fought for our freedom and theirs. The federal government should not be engineering ways of taking it away,” Takano said in a statement on March 11.

Kasperowicz said the agreement is not an effort to institutionalize veterans against their will. Instead, he said, it provides the VA an avenue for removing veterans already stuck in VA hospitals who could benefit from other settings.

“We are trying to get them in the most appropriate care setting for their needs,” he said.

Blake asked the VA and Justice Department to commit to transparency, allowing for public scrutiny and independent oversight to ensure that affected veterans do not lose their civil liberties.

“VA must carefully consider any broad use of guardianship as a care-planning shortcut and adopt policies with robust safeguards,” Blake said.

WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) — The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, deployed in operations against Iran, is expected to temporarily pull into port after a fire on board, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, the 18th day of the war with Tehran.

The carrier, America’s newest and the world’s largest, is currently located in the Red Sea. It is expected to temporarily go to Souda Bay on the Greek island of Crete, the two officials said.

The warship has been deployed for nine months, including taking part in operations against Venezuela in the Caribbean prior to arriving in the Middle East. The length of the deployment has raised questions about morale of the sailors on board and the readiness of the warship.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not say how long the Ford was expected to remain in Crete.

One of the officials said nearly 200 sailors were treated for smoke-related injuries when the fire broke out in the ship’s main laundry area. The fire took hours to bring under control and had an impact on roughly 100 sleeping berths.

One service member was flown off the ship for injuries, the official said.

The New York Times first reported the extent of the damage on board the warship. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After the fire initially broke out, the U.S. military had said that there was no damage to the ship’s propulsion plant and the aircraft carrier was fully operational.

The United States has carried out strikes against more than 7,000 targets since it started operations against Iran on Feb. 28.

The Ford, with more than 5,000 sailors aboard, has more than ​75 military aircraft, including fighter aircraft like the F-18 Super Hornets. The Ford has sophisticated radar that can help control air traffic and navigation.

The supporting ships, such as the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy, Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney and USS Roosevelt, include surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and anti-submarine warfare capabilities.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Howard Goller)

The U.S. Marine Corps is hosting celebrations to honor the Harrier aircraft and its service members as it reaches its end of service life.

The Harrier Sundown celebration will “honor the legacy of the aircraft and the Marines who served with it,” according to a Tuesday Marine Administrative message. The sundown celebration will be hosted by the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina, from June 1 to 4, the memo states.

The AV-8B Harrier II+ will reach the end of its planned service life in fiscal year 2026, per the message. The last flight was flown by Marine Attack Squadron VMA 231 and its official deactivation is set for September.

The message says that the Corps will continue the Tactical Aircraft Transition Plan, which means switching to an all-fifth generation tactical air fleet to modernize their aviation capabilities. The plan increases fleet squadrons to 12 primary aircrafts.

The squadron is transitioning to a F-35B Lightning II aircraft, and the Corps is expecting to have a full fifth generation fleet in their tactical aircraft by 2030.

The sundown week will include events hosted by the 2nd MAW units, local governments and businesses and the Marine Corps Aviation Association, the release states. Many of the events are free to attend, but some, like the gala and the gold tournaments, will require payment, per the message.

Other events currently set for the celebration are a social, a picnic, a squadron and simulator open house, and the sundown ceremony, according to the release.

Additional information on registration and details will be made available on the website as the event approaches.

Read the full MarAdmin here.

The U.S. Navy is taking steps toward remedying ongoing maintenance delays by enlisting the help of artificial intelligence and robotic systems, the service announced.

The sea service reached an agreement with the Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics, the company confirmed Tuesday, to deploy tech capable of streamlining repairs and reducing maintenance delays for a surface fleet that continues to be stretched thin.

The contract will begin as a 5-year, $54 million indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity deal that will soon see Gecko begin work on 18 ships assigned to the Navy’s U.S. Pacific Fleet.

To expedite what has in recent years become a headache for naval readiness, Gecko uses drones, wall-climbing robots and fixed sensors to gather data on components, decks, welds and hulls.

That information, paired with AI tools, is used to identify current and potential structural issues that may remain hidden to the naked eye.

“A single robotic evaluation and digital rendering of a flight deck eliminated over three months of potential maintenance delay days,” the company release stated about one such procedure.

These measures have expedited maintenance “up to 50 times faster and more accurately than manual methods,” the company added.

“Readiness isn’t just a metric, it’s all that matters,” Jake Loosararian, co-founder and CEO of Gecko, said in the release. “This growing partnership is about unfair advantages Gecko is deploying to our Navy; and how prediction, through our robotics and AI products, ensure our brave men and women are the most advantaged in the world in their fight to defend freedom.”

In fall 2024, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti unveiled a goal of having 80% of the Navy’s fleet ready to deploy at any given time by 2027.

Obstacles to reaching that goal materialized quickly, however, with a Government Accountability Office report in December 2024 highlighting a readiness rate among the Navy’s amphibious warfare ships of just 46% between 2011 and 2020. This rate, in turn, significantly hindered Marine Corps deployment and training plans.

In August 2025, that rate reportedly dipped to just 41%, resulting in a more than five-month gap in Marine Expeditionary Unit deployments that year and further straining resources amid the Trump administration’s push to counter the illicit drug trade in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The 80% plan, meanwhile, was picked up by Franchetti’s successor, Adm. Daryl Caudle, who called the rate “an ambitious but essential readiness goal.”

“Achieving this requires shorter maintenance cycles, increased spare-parts availability, improved training pipelines and targeted upgrades across the fleet,” Caudle wrote for Military Times in December.

“Readiness is not a budget line — it is a promise to the American people that their Navy will never arrive late to a fight."

The Department of Veterans Affairs is developing a tool that will analyze veterans’ disability claims applications for fraud — a program VA officials say could identify providers or companies that abuse the system.

The tool will not, however, be used to pursue potentially fraudulent past claims, a concern that arose recently among veterans following a congressional hearing that divulged the program’s development.

Using a Microsoft data analytics program, the VA program will use information gleaned from forms known as Disability Benefits Questionnaires to identify patterns in language or omissions that could indicate fraud.

VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz said the effort, expected to be rolled out sometime this year, is designed to detect filings from companies that pose as legitimate medical providers or file claims on behalf of veterans and charge them excessive fees.

The number of for-profit companies that assist veterans with disability claims has skyrocketed since 2006, when criminal penalties were removed for those who charge veterans for the service. The PACT Act — the landmark legislation that expanded disability benefits to millions of veterans exposed to burn pits and other pollutants — also has presented these companies with business expansion opportunities.

While these companies market themselves as helping veterans navigate the challenging VA claims process and get appropriate disability ratings, veterans’ advocates say the businesses, which they refer to as “claim sharks,” prey on veterans and charge them exorbitant fees.

While veterans are permitted to hire companies or attorneys to appeal claims decisions, the law prohibits anyone from charging for assistance with initial filings.

But that hasn’t stopped for-profit companies from stepping in. And while some may offer legitimate services, others have been targeted by the VA as bad actors.

Over the past 10 years, the department sent “cease and desist letters” to at least 40 companies, according to an investigation by The War Horse and NPR published in December. The VA will use the Power Business Intelligence program to look for fraud.

“[The program] relies on manual data entry and analysis to help identify patterns that may help VA identify when organized fraud rings are posing as legitimate medical providers and preying on Veterans (for example, by excessively charging them),” Kasperowicz said in an email to Military Times.

In 2024, the VA Office of Inspector General said of nearly 32,000 claims completed in 2022, 69% contained “one or more indicators” of potential fraud risk, with an estimated monetary value of $390 million.

Given the amount of money, it’s no wonder the VA is being proactive in investigating disability compensation claims, said David Pineda, an Army veteran who runs a company that helps veterans with claims.

“In education, there were diploma mills where people were using GI Benefits to go to schools — these mills were unethical and illegal and [the VA] cracked down on it. In this space here, it’s a similar thing happening. Some organizations are DBQ mills,” Pineda said in an interview.

During the traditional claims application process, a VA Compensation and Pension examiner completes a veteran’s DBQ and assesses a veteran’s medical records, physical abilities, medications and daily activities. The review determines a veteran’s disability rating which sets the level of benefits and disability compensation.

This claims process can be navigated without cost to the veteran; with assistance provided by accredited veterans service officers at veteran organizations like the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars; through veterans service officers at state and county governments; and at the VA.

For-profit companies can assist veterans for appeals, but some companies unlawfully are charging for initial assistance and in other cases, are charging enormous fees on backdated benefits awards.

One Army veteran who spoke to Military Times said Trajector Medical, one of the companies on the VA’s cease and desist list, provided little assistance and after he canceled his contract, charged him thousands.

The new program is designed to look at discrepancies in DBQs identified by the VA inspector general, such signs of alterations, incorrect contact information, information from a medical examiner more than 100 miles from a veteran’s address or contradicting findings that may indicate fraud.

James Smith, deputy executive director of the VA’s Policy and Procedures for Compensation Service office, said in a February congressional hearing that to develop the program, the VA would scan DBQs back to 2010, which would give it the data and patterns needed to identify future problems.

But a story on Smith’s disclosure in Stars and Stripes generated concerns among veterans that the tool would be used to identify fraudulent claims filed in the past 16 years.

“When veterans hear that the VA is scanning private DBQs for fraud, the community at large interprets this as ‘they’re coming after me,’ whether they have committed fraud or not,” said Clayton Simms, a Marine Corps veteran who created a YouTube channel, The CivDiv, to discuss veterans issues.

VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz said Monday that this is not the case. The VA is only using older claims “to analyze patterns that could indicate fraud and are using that analysis to look at new claims,” he said.

“Those older claims won’t be reopened or reprocessed,” Kasperowicz said. “No veteran’s claim or benefit will be reduced or denied because of this effort.”

In its January 2024 report, the inspector general made five recommendations to the department for improved training and reporting processes and authenticating DBQs, including developing a system for identifying inauthentic or potentially fraudulent questionnaires.

A bill is under consideration in Congress that would require the VA to identify and report instances of fraud in DBQs. The legislation would require the VA to establish a process for veterans and claims processors to report suspected fraud.

VA officials said in the February hearing that the legislation would be a duplication of efforts.

“VA’s been proactive in this space,” Smith said. “We recognize that there are some problem players out there, but we’ve developed training that the claims processors are required to take so that they can understand their responsibility to potentially identify fraudulent DBQs, as well as a defined process for them to report suspected fraudulent DBQs up.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information obtained by The War Horse and NPR through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Joe Kent, one of the United States’ top counterterrorism officials, announced his immediate resignation on Tuesday, arguing that President Donald Trump had been led into an unnecessary war with Iran — in part by undue influence from Israel.

In a letter addressed to the president and posted to social media, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center claimed that the Islamic Republic “posed no imminent threat to our nation.”

“It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent said.

Kent described what he characterized as a “misinformation campaign” driven by high-ranking Israeli officials and echoed by the American media — a campaign that he said undermined Trump’s “America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.”

“This echo chamber was used to deceive you [Trump] into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,” he continued, adding, “This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war.”

Kent — a retired U.S. Army Green Beret — also invoked a deep personal loss. His wife, Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, a military cryptologist, was killed in 2019 by a suicide bomber in Manbij, Syria, along with three other Americans.

“As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of the American lives,” he wrote.

At least 13 U.S. service members have been killed in the current conflict with Iran, and more than 200 have been wounded, according to the Pentagon.

Asked about Kent’s resignation, Trump replied, “I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security.”

“When I read his statement, I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, insisting that “Iran was a threat.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Kent’s resignation.

Marines can now complete their handgun qualification using a pistol equipped with a red dot optic, according to a policy change announced in a Marine Administrative Message last week. However, there is a caveat: the optic — an M17 Romeo red dot — must be purchased and issued by the Marine’s unit.

Exactly how many Marines will receive the optics remains unclear. Military Times requested comment from the Marine Corps’ Marksmanship Program Management team and Training and Education Command but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Over the past decade, pistol-mounted red dot optics have surged in popularity among civilian shooters and police. Today, most major handgun models offer optics-ready variants.

Experts say the system provides a clear advantage over traditional iron sights. Rather than aligning the front and rear sights, shooters can focus on the target while placing a projected aiming point over it — a literal red dot. It not only simplifies the shooting process, especially under stress, but affords quicker target acquisition.

The Marine Corps update follows a broader set of changes developed through the service’s Marksmanship Campaign Plan, an initiative launched in 2024 to overhaul training and improve combat lethality.

Additional changes announced in the March 12 message include:

• A shift from annual qualification to deployment-focused training cycles;
• Replacing “destroy” targets with “drill” targets during annual rifle qualification;
• Adoption of updated Lethality Factor scoring metrics at combat schools.

Similar to the red dot policy, a limited number of Marines will also be authorized to qualify with Glock pistols instead of the standard M17 or M18. That exception applies only to Marines assigned to Marine Forces Special Operations Command and embassy security duty, the only units in the Corps currently issued Glock handguns.

As the “M17” designation implies, the optic is designed for use with the military’s M17 and M18 handguns, both of which — along with the optic itself — are manufactured by SIG Sauer.

In October 2024, SIG announced that the Army officially endorsed the Romeo red dot by adding it to the Approved Accessory List for the M17. And a year before that marked another milestone, when the optic received a NATO Stock Number, or NSN.

As the company explained in a press release, an NSN identifies the product as a “standardized material,” which in turn “streamlines the procurement process for all NATO members and partner countries.”

HOUSTON — An Afghan immigrant whose family said he had been evacuated from his home country after working for years with U.S. forces died at a Texas hospital after immigration authorities detained him, according to authorities.

Federal immigration officials called Mohommad Nazeer Paktyawal a “criminal” who had been arrested for alleged fraudulent use of food stamps and for theft. Officials also said Paktyawal had not provided any record of his military service.

#AfghanEvac, a San Diego-based group that helps resettle Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the two-decade war, pushed back against the federal government’s claims about Paktyawal, one of several people who have died in recent months after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

“Calling a man a criminal without a conviction while claiming there is ‘no record’ of service without checking interagency systems looks less like fact-finding and more like damage control,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of #AfghanEvac. “The government should be explaining how a 41-year-old father of six died less than 24 hours after entering ICE custody.”

A cause of death is still pending from the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office. But Paktyawal’s family said he was not ill.

“We still cannot understand how this happened. He was only 41 years old and was a strong and healthy man. His children keep asking when their father will come home,” the family said in a statement.

Paktyawal was arrested by ICE on Friday and during his medical intake exam at a Dallas ICE field office, he complained of shortness of breath and chest pain, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement Monday.

Paktyawal was taken to Parkland Hospital in Dallas and on Saturday, his tongue became swollen and he received treatment. But later in the morning, medical staff had to perform CPR on him. He was pronounced dead at 9:10 a.m. CDT.

“No one in ICE custody is denied access to proper medical care,” Bis said.

His death was still under investigation, ICE said.

U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson, who on Monday had visited the Dallas ICE field office where Paktyawal was held, said the Department of Homeland Security and ICE have had a history “lying and misrepresenting” the background of people they arrest or encounter.

“He was not a violent criminal, as President Trump likes to say when he’s rounding up these folks. He was working as a baker,” said Johnson, a Democrat who represents parts of Dallas County. “He was providing for his family and contributing to our economy. And so we have a lot of questions of why was this gentleman targeted? Why was he picked up? And why did he die in their custody?”

ICE said Paktyawal had been arrested for committing fraud against SNAP, the government’s biggest food aid program, on Sept. 16. ICE said he had also been arrested for theft by Garland police on Nov. 1.

A Dallas County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson said there is an active case regarding SNAP benefits fraud of $200 or more, a third-degree felony, against Paktyawal that had not been resolved.

Police in the Dallas suburb of Garland said Paktyawal was arrested on Nov. 1 after being accused of not paying for groceries and merchandise from a Walmart.

The case in Garland, a misdemeanor, had not yet been filed with the district attorney’s office, according to the spokesperson.

Paktyawal had previously served alongside U.S. military special forces in Afghanistan for a decade and came to the United States following the withdrawal by U.S. troops and the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in August 2021.

“The U.S. brought him here because of the role Afghans like him played in supporting the American mission,” VanDiver said.

Paktyawal, who was married, had been living in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas.

Johnson said she had been told by his family that he had applied for asylum and his case was pending. But Johnson said ICE agents are claiming that Paktyawal had missed his asylum appointments.

Deaths in ICE custody have soared during Trump’s second term.

The agency reported 14 custody deaths from the start of the government’s fiscal year Oct. 1 through Jan. 6, well on pace to surpass the previous 12-month count of 24. ICE reported 12 custody deaths in the 2024 fiscal year and 12 in the previous three years combined.

ICE has increased the number of people in its detention centers to more than 70,000 from about 40,000 at the start of Trump’s second term. It plans to spend $38.3 billion to boost capacity to 92,600 beds by the end of November, including converted warehouses that house up to 10,000 each.

Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego, Jamie Stengle in Dallas and Rebecca Santana in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) — The number of U.S. troops wounded in the war against Iran has risen to about 200, the U.S. military said on Monday, as the conflict entered its third week.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said the vast majority of those wounded had suffered minor injuries and 180 troops had already returned to duty. Ten of the injuries are serious, it said.

Troops had been injured in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, and Israel, Central Command added.

Thirteen U.S. troops have been killed since Iran launched strikes against U.S. military bases following ⁠the start of the conflict on Feb. 28.

Iranian attacks have also struck diplomatic missions, hotels and airports, and damaged energy infrastructure in Arab Gulf states.

Last week, Reuters reported that as many as 150 U.S. troops had been wounded in the conflict, highlighting the danger from Iranian strikes.

The United States, meanwhile, has carried out strikes against more than 7,000 targets in Iran.

About a dozen MQ-9 drones have been destroyed in the war, said a U.S. official on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle can loiter at altitudes of around 50,000 feet for more than 27 hours, gathering intelligence with sophisticated cameras, sensors and radars.

The Reaper, which entered service with the U.S. Air Force 16 years ago, can be equipped with weapons such as air-to-ground missiles.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Rosalba O’Brien)