Two former Marines were sentenced to prison Thursday for their participation in a plot to attack the U.S. power grid, the Justice Department said.

A judge sentenced Liam Collins, 25, of Johnston, Rhode Island, to 10 years in prison. Justin Wade Hermanson, 25, of Swansboro, North Carolina, received a prison sentence of one year, nine months. Both men were part of a neo-Nazi group that sought to destroy transformers, substations and other components of the power grid at about a dozen locations across Idaho and its surrounding states.

“As part a self-described ‘modern day SS,’ these defendants conspired, prepared, and trained to attack America’s power grid in order to advance their violent white supremacist ideology,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement. “These sentences reflect both the depravity of their plot and the Justice Department’s commitment to holding accountable those who seek to use violence to undermine our democracy.”

A third man was also sentenced Thursday. Paul James Kryscuk, 38, of Boise, Idaho, was sentenced to six years, six months in prison. Collins and Hermanson both pleaded guilty to federal firearms charges, while Kryscuk pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to destroy an energy facility.

Two other men were previously convicted in the plot. Joseph Maurino, a member of the New Jersey Army National Guard, and Jordan Duncan, a Marine veteran, pleaded guilty to weapons charges. Neither men have received their sentences.

Marine veteran pleads guilty to federal weapons charge in neo-Nazi plot

Collins was the leader of the neo-Nazi group, which communicated through the now-defunct web forum Iron March. He described the group as a “modern day SS” that went hiking and camping together, did gym sessions and performed live-firing training exercises, according to federal indictments. Collins reportedly added that the group had planned to “buy a lot of land,” and posted that all members would be required to have served in the military.

Collins joined the Marine Corps in 2017 with the intention of gaining experience and training to benefit his group, according to his indictment. He was stationed at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where he allegedly stole body armor and rifle magazines and delivered them to other neo-Nazi members, according to federal prosecutors.

Collins was kicked out of the Marine Corps in 2020. The nature of his discharge is not included in court documents. Hermanson served in the Marines as part of the same unit that Collins was last assigned.

“I’ll be in the USMC for 4 years while my comrades work on the groups [sic] physical formation,” Collins posted on Iron March in 2016. “It will take years to gather all the experience and intelligence that we need to utilize — but that’s what makes it fun.”

In addition to the weapons charge, Collins was accused by federal authorities of threatening to shoot Black Lives Matter protestors and conspiring to destroy government-owned energy facilities. Investigators said Collins asked group members to purchase thermite, a powdered mixture used in incendiary bombs. The group had discussed using the substance to burn through transformers.

On Iron March, Kryscuk shared his ideas for the group, which included buying property in “predominantly white and right leaning” locations, where they could recruit residents and stockpile weapons to take over local governments and industries.

While Collins was serving in the Marine Corps, Kryscuk manufactured firearms, and Duncan gathered a library of information, including some military-owned information, regarding firearms, explosives and nerve toxins.

The group created propaganda video montages of their live-fire training. In one video obtained by federal authorities, the participants are seen firing assault-type rifles. The video showed four group members wearing masks with a symbol of the neo-Nazi Attomwaffen Division and giving the “Heil Hitler” sign. An image of a black sun, a Nazi symbol, was pasted above them.

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

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A North Korean military intelligence operative has been indicted in a conspiracy to hack into American health care providers, NASA, U.S. military bases and international entities, stealing sensitive information and installing ransomware to fund more attacks, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

The indictment of Rim Jong Hyok by a grand jury in Kansas City, Kansas, accuses him of laundering the money through a Chinese bank and then using it to buy computer servers and fund more cyberattacks on defense, technology and government entities around the world.

The hacks on American hospitals and other health care providers disrupted the treatment of patients, officials said. He's accused of targeting of 17 entities across 11 U.S. states, including NASA and U.S. military bases, as well as defense and energy companies in China, Taiwan and South Korea.

For more than three months, Hyok and other members of the Andariel Unit of North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau had access to NASA’s computer system, extracting over 17 gigabytes of unclassified data, the indictment says. They also reached inside computer systems for defense companies in Michigan and California along with Randolph Air Force base in Texas and Robins Air Force base in Georgia, authorities say.

The malware enabled the state-sponsored Andariel group to send stolen information to North Korean military intelligence, furthering the country’s military and nuclear aspirations, federal prosecutors said. They've gone after details of fighter aircraft, missile defense systems, satellite communications and radar systems, a senior FBI official said.

“While North Korea uses these types of cyber crimes to circumvent international sanctions and fund its political and military ambitions, the impact of these wanton acts have a direct impact on the citizens of Kansas,” said Stephen A. Cyrus, an FBI agent based in Kansas City.

Online court records do not list an attorney for Hyok, who has lived in North Korea and worked at the military intelligence agency’s offices in both Pyongyang and Sinuiju, according to court records. A reward of up to $10 million has been offered for information that could lead to him or other foreign government operatives who target critical U.S. infrastructure.

The Justice Department has prosecuted multiple cases related to North Korean hacking, often alleging a profit-driven motive that sets the nation’s cybercriminals apart from hackers in Russia and China. In 2021, for instance, the department charged three North Korean computer programmers in a broad range of hacks including a destructive attack targeting an American movie studio and the attempted theft and extortion of more than $1.3 billion from banks and companies around the world.

In this case, the FBI was alerted by a Kansas medical center that was hit in May 2021. Hackers had encrypted its files and servers, blocking access to patient files, laboratory test results and computers needed to operate hospital equipment. A Colorado health care provider was affected by the same Maui ransomware variant.

An ransom note sent to the Kansas hospital demanded Bitcoin payments valued then at about $100,000, to be sent to a cryptocurrency address.

“Otherwise all of your files will be posted in the Internet which may lead you to loss of reputation and cause the troubles for your business,” the note reads. “Please do not waste your time! You have 48 hours only! After that the Main server will double your price.”

Federal investigators said they traced blockchains to follow the money: An unnamed co-conspirator transferred the Bitcoin to a virtual currency address belonging to two Hong Kong residents, and the money was eventually converted into Chinese currency and transferred to a Chinese bank. The money was then accessed from an ATM in China next to the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge connecting China and North Korea, according to court records.

In 2022, the Justice Department said the FBI seized approximately $500,000 in ransom payments from the money laundering accounts, including the entire ransom payment from the hospital.

An arrest of Hyok is unlikely, so the biggest outcome of the indictment is that it may lead to sanctions that could cripple the ability of North Korea to collect ransoms this way, which could in turn remove the motivation to conduct cyber attacks on entities like hospitals in the future, according to Allan Liska, an analyst with the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

“Now, unfortunately, that will force them to do more cryptocurrency theft. So it’s not going to stop their activity. But the hope is that we won’t have hospitals disrupted by ransomware attacks because they’ll know that they can’t get paid,” Liska said.

He also noted that a Chinese entity was among the victims and questioned what the country, which is an ally of North Korea, thinks of being targeted.

“China can’t be too thrilled about that,” he said.

Goldberg reported from Minneapolis. Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Associated Press reporter Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from Washington, D.C.

The Marines are looking for weapons-mounted gear and ammo that can detect and blast drones out of the sky with “buckshot-like” capability.

Marine Corps Systems Command posted a request for information from industry on July 15 seeking white papers on how developers would provide sensing, detection, defensive and offensive ways to counter drone threats at the Marine squad and platoon-level.

A Marine squad is one of the service’s smallest units of action and contains between 13 and 15 Marines depending on manning. A traditional Marine Corps platoon holds up to three squads.

In February, the Corps began the search for counter drone tech to defend installations, according to a service solicitation. That equipment would also allow operators to jam drones and capture them without destroying them.

Marines want $200M for powerful drone-killing machines

Industry submissions are expected by August 2 and those selected for consideration may get an invite to Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California for a September live fire demonstration, according to the solicitation.

The service has been using the Light Marine Air-Defense Integrated System, or L-MADIS, which uses two all-terrain vehicles that combine jamming technology and traditional firepower, such as Stinger missiles, to take out drones.

But both of those solutions are for larger threats and must be either vehicle-mounted or stationary.

The squad and platoon-level Marines need to carry their own devices to detect, defeat and destroy group 1 and 2 drones. Group 1 drones weigh up to 20 pounds and fly under 1,200 feet.

Group 2 drones weigh between 21 and 55 pounds and can fly as high as 3,500 feet.

The new capability that the Corps wants would include detecting and tracking gear that uses acoustic or radio frequency detection, according to the solicitation. Those sensors would be worn by individual Marines and could have a handheld tablet, bracelet, earpiece or glasses “that receives alerts, warnings, notifications from an external sensor.”

The same capability at the platoon level could be vehicle, mast or tripod mounted, according to the solicitation.

On the offensive side of the counter-drone tech, the Marines want this individual piece of equipment to have either directional radio frequency or global positioning system jammers that can mount to a rifle.

But to destroy the threat at both the squad and platoon level, they’re looking for a rifle and rifle optic combination that can track the drone and use “enhanced ammunition” for weapons already in their inventory, to include “buckshot-like” 5.56mm, 7.62mm, .50 caliber and 40mm grenade launchers.

Weapons that use those ammunition configurations include the M72 Infantry Automatic Rifle, the M240 machine gun, the M2 machine gun and the M320 and M32 grenade launcher and Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher.

The joint office established to find solutions to countering air drone systems sought to challenge industry with large barrages of drone attacks during a demonstration in the Arizona desert last month.

“Although I can’t discuss at this time, the actual results of the demo, what I can say is the selected vendors did show increased maturity and awareness of the threat environment that U.S. allies are facing,” Col. Michael Parent, chief of the Joint Counter-small unmanned aircraft systems Office’s acquisition and resources division, told reporters in a recent briefing. “It was a very successful demonstration informing the U.S. and our allies what capabilities exist out there in a very challenging profile.”

The proliferation of drones on the battlefield is rising. For example, Ukraine is losing 10,000 per month while defending itself from Russian invaders, according to the Royal United Services Institute think tank. Flooding the battlefield with a large number of drones, especially those able to fly in a coordinated fashion, is a threat the U.S. military is still trying to address.

The joint office, also known as JCO, and the U.S. Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, or RCCTO, chose eight industry teams and evaluated nine systems during a capability evaluation at Yuma Proving Ground over the month of June.

Whittled down from nearly 60 proposals, the eight companies chosen to bring systems were Clear Align; Trakka USA Defense; Ideas, Commitment, Results (ICR), Inc.; ELTA North America; Teledyne FLIR; Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC); Advanced Technology Systems Corporation (ATSC) and Anduril Industries.

Both non-kinetic and kinetic solutions were evaluated along with multi-mission radars, electro-optical/infrared cameras, radio frequency scanners and jammers, guided rockets, interceptor drones and small arms weapon systems, according to Parent.

The demonstration “was the most challenging demonstration to date at this point,” Parent said, with up to 50 air drone targets at a time, operated by a third party, coming from all directions and converging on a defended area. Drones in the swarms included rotary and fixed-wing aircraft — fast moving jets and slow-moving propeller-driven frames — and ranged from Group 1 drones weighing less than 20 pounds to Group 3 drones weighing less than 1,300 pounds.

Test scenarios were not shared with industry teams before the demonstration.

“The challenge of the profiles really meant that no one characteristic, no one capability, whether kinetic or non-kinetic, in itself could really defeat this kind of a profile,” Parent said. “So what we saw was that you really do need a full system-of-systems approach, a layered approach.”

The demonstration is the fifth of its kind. The Pentagon created the joint office in late 2019 and selected the Army to lead the organization. It is entirely focused on bringing counter-small drone capability into the force. The office’s first demonstration took place in the spring of 2021 and the second took place in the fall, followed by another in the spring of 2022, and then another in the summer of 2023.

In the first demonstration, the office looked at low-collateral interceptors to counter small drones; in the second demonstration, it examined cheap, ground-launched and hand-held capabilities; and in the third, it evaluated high-power microwaves as well as the concept known as counter-UAS as a service.

To address the challenging threat of one-way attack drones prominently seen in Ukraine over the past year, the office most recently tackled how to defeat them in a June demonstration at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona.

As the demonstrations have evolved, Parent said he is seeing industry come with increasingly mature approaches.

“The vendors being selected in the demonstrations are having a better understanding of the threat that they must defeat, their command and control is better and you have a better understanding of what is required to operate in the environment,” Parent said. “We are seeing a much better capability from the vendors in actual solutions themselves as well.”

The solutions all showed better tracking, identification and defeat capabilities, he added.

Now the JCO is in the process of analyzing the data from the demonstration in order to inform individual vendors on performance and progress, according to Parent.

The JCO may determine more investment is required for a solution and could either choose to fund that effort or encourage industry teams to continue their own internal investment to reduce system risk, Parent said.

The services or combatant commanders could also choose to embark on a prototyping effort for a particular solution like the U.S. Army did, for example, with its Epirus-developed Leonidas High Power Microwave counter-drone solution, Parent noted.

Some solutions could be chosen for immediate acquisition, he added, because a solution showed enough maturity to address current or future threats.

The JCO is planning another demonstration between the second and third quarter of fiscal 2025. Additional details on the demonstration will be released within the fourth quarter of FY24.

BEIJING — Two Chinese and two Russian long-range bombers were tracked flying over international waters near Alaska and U.S. and Canadian fighter jets were sent up in response, their joint aerospace command said.

The Chinese and Russian military activity Wednesday was not seen as a threat, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, known as NORAD, said. China and Russia confirmed Thursday that they had conducted a joint air patrol over the Bering Sea, which divides Russia and Alaska.

“NORAD will continue to monitor competitor activity near North America and meet presence with presence,” the command said in a news release.

While Russia’s military has long been active in the north Pacific, China has emerged as a new actor in recent years as its growing navy and air force expands their presence farther from the country’s shores.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the joint patrol also flew over the Chukchi Sea, which is on the north side of the Bering Strait. Russian fighter jets and strategic bombers were joined by Chinese strategic bombers in the exercises, which lasted more than five hours, the ministry said.

The joint patrol tested and improved coordination between the two air forces, said Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesperson for China’s Defense Ministry. He said it was the eighth joint strategic air patrol since 2019. He declined to comment when asked if it was the first such patrol over the Bering Sea.

NORAD said it had detected the two Chinese H-6 and two Russian Tupolev Tu-95 bombers in the North American U.S. Air Defense Identification Zone, an area beyond U.S. and Canadian airspace in which those countries require aircraft to be identified for national security reasons.

A photo released by the Russian Defense Ministry showed a Russian Su-30 fighter jet escorting a Chinese bomber. Another photo posted online by the military channel of China’s state broadcaster CCTV showed Russian and Chinese long-winged bombers flying in parallel formation against mostly blue skies.

The Japanese military has grown increasingly concerned about joint China-Russia drills and the potential threat they represent to the security of Japan and the region.

A fleet of Russian and Chinese warplanes including Tu-95s and H-6s was seen flying together last December over the waters between Japan and Korea, Japan’s Defense Ministry said. At the time, China’s Defense Ministry called it the seventh joint strategic air patrol with Russia.

Chinese naval ships have showed up in international waters near Alaska, most recently in mid-July when the Coast Guard spotted four ships in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from the shore.

Zhang described the naval activity as routine combat readiness training and said that China would continue to conduct far-seas training to improve the capabilities of its troops.

When President Joe Biden announced the mission to build a humanitarian pier off the coast of Gaza this March, he framed it as a symbol of what the U.S. military can do.

Palestinian civilians were dying five months into the Israel-Hamas war. Most of the territory was struggling to get food or near famine. And Israel wasn’t opening more land routes for assistance to flow in.

So the U.S. would make a route of its own.

“This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day,” Biden said during his State of the Union speech.

Instead, four months later, the pier’s mission is over and its clearest legacy is what wasn’t possible.

Despite the work of 1,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors using the Joint-Logistics-Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, capability, the pier couldn’t stay afloat for long due to choppy seas. And while it got aid into the Gaza Strip, it couldn’t fix another intractable problem: actually getting it to the Palestinian people — 96% of which face “acute food insecurity,” according to the United Nations World Food Programme.

Military’s novel floating pier arrives in Gaza amid security concerns

The Pentagon estimated the pier would cost $230 million, though the final number isn’t yet certain, and Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, said it would come in well under budget.

A clearer cost has been to U.S. personnel: One soldier remains in the hospital due to a pier-related mishap in May, and is still recovering stateside.

Citing privacy regulations, DOD officials have declined to explain what injured the soldier and two other service members, who were able to return to duty after the incident.

U.S. officials have defended the mission as the safest and most efficient way to get American assistance into Gaza during the war. And they can cite almost 20 million pounds of aid as evidence.

“The pier has done exactly what we intended it to do,” said Cooper.

Many watching from the sidelines in Washington disagree.

The pier arrived at a moment of acute political pressure on the White House to help the Palestinian people, said Steven Cook, an expert on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Despite that, he said, it’s become an emblem of what the U.S. hasn’t learned in the region.

“This is a constant theme in American foreign policy in the Middle East,” he said. “Despite our best intentions, we didn’t really understand what we were walking into.”

‘I was hopeful that would be more successful’

When announcing that the pier was being dismantled, military officials came with a list of statistics. The JLOTS pier delivered 19.4 million pounds of aid, or enough to feed half a million Palestinians for one month.

By comparison, the U.S. has sent 2.4 million pounds via air drops and 33 million pounds via land crossings since the start of the war in October.

In its 20 days of operating, the admiral said, it carried double or triple the amount of aid the U.S. initially expected. Altogether, it was the most humanitarian support America has ever sent to the Middle East.

“That data stands on its own,” Cooper said.

And yet, those numbers have another side. The aid may have gotten onto Gazan territory, but much of it hasn’t reached people in need. Due to rough weather, the pier was in service only about one-third of the time since it was first anchored in May. At one point, it buckled under rough seas and had to be repaired in the Israeli city of Ashdod.

Meanwhile, crowds ransacked at least one aid-laden truck coming from the pier before it could get to distribution points, The Associated Press reported, and the United Nations halted aid distribution at times due to security concerns.

“You can have the best fighting force in the world and the best logisticians in the world, but high seas and strong winds still create quite a dilemma,” said Brad Bowman, who researches U.S. defense policy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

After the NATO summit in July, even Biden acknowledged that the pier could have performed better.

“I was hopeful that would be more successful,” he said.

A JLOTS test case

Still, using the pier in a real-world combat zone likely helped prove its use to the Pentagon, argued Keith Robbins, a retired Army officer who oversaw the JLOTS program for U.S. Transportation Command before his retirement in 2007.

JLOTS is, in essence, a set of metal pieces that can be assembled in multiple ways. It’s meant for calmer waters than the eastern Mediterranean Sea, Robbins said, but there were few better options for the mission itself: quickly shuttling tons of aid onshore.

“JLOTS is the perfect capability to handle that, but it has to be put in the right place in order for it to be successful,” he added.

Now that JLOTS has made its debut in a combat zone, Robbins hopes it will convince the Pentagon to continue funding it.

“Ten, 15 years ago, when I was doing it, the higher-ups didn’t really understand what the capability was,” he said. “I would hope that this has been a great illustration of how valuable this capability can be.”

‘The needs are staggering’

In their briefing last week, CENCTOM deputy commander Cooper and an official from USAID argued the pier hadn’t only finished its mission — it was also no longer necessary.

The maritime supply route was now moving from off the 25-mile Gazan coast to Ashdod, Israel, where aid will enter the strip via trucks.

As the U.S. and humanitarian groups have said for months, there is no substitute for these land crossings.

“The needs are staggering and continue to grow,” said Solani Korde, a USAID official, briefing alongside Cooper.

From the start, U.S. officials stressed that the pier was “temporary.” In other words, the U.S. was not committing to an indefinite mission attached to Gaza, and it wasn’t suggesting this path could replace others.

“A maritime route is not a zero-sum discussion,” said Chris Hyslop, a former U.N. official who now works with Fogbow, a humanitarian advisory group that assisted the pier’s mission.

But even when aid crosses into Gaza it has been extremely hard to deliver. Roads are damaged. Swathes of territory are dangerous. And the actors involved — from Egypt to Israel to Hamas to other groups in Gaza — often don’t have reason to distribute aid quickly, whether due to cronyism, domestic politics or the terrorist group’s total-war strategy, said Cook, the analyst at CFR.

“That is really, chiefly, the obstacle to ensuring that the innocent people of Gaza get the lifesaving food, water, medicine that they need,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a July briefing. “It’s distribution within as opposed to distribution from without.”

No pier or new land crossing can solve that problem. But while the pier’s mission may be over, some involved don’t think the maritime route should close.

Mick Mulroy, a former Pentagon Middle East official who also works at Fogbow, the aid group, said the pier was a proof of concept, despite its limitations.

“I think it needs to be continued because quite frankly, the mechanism in Cyprus [where aid was sorted] and the aid delivery zone is already established,” he said. “If we don’t put something in its place that will be for naught.”

A top Air Force commander at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been nominated to be the next chief of the National Guard Bureau, just a bit more than a week before the current chief retires.

The nomination of Air Force Lt. Gen. Steven Nordhaus went to the Senate on Tuesday. If confirmed, he would be promoted to four-star general and become a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He would replace Army Gen. Daniel Hokanson, who is set to retire Aug. 2.

Guard nominations languish, raising concerns as top officers retire

A fighter pilot, Nordhaus is the commander of the 1st Air Force and heads NORAD's continental U.S. region, which provides and controls airspace surveillance and activities for the nation. Before that, he was the special assistant to the director of the Air National Guard.

His nomination is one of several top Guard jobs that have been languishing for weeks and months. The top four officers of the National Guard Bureau have left or are set to retire in early August. To date, no nominations for their replacements have been confirmed by the Senate, leaving the bureau, the Air Guard and the Army Guard without permanent leadership as they head into a busy hurricane season and a potentially challenging election period.

In addition to Hokanson's impending departure, Lt. Gen. Marc Sasseville, who was the vice chief, has already retired. Lt. Gen. Jon Jensen, who is chief of the Army Guard but has been serving as acting vice chief, will retire in early August. And Lt. Gen. Michael Loh, director of the Air Guard, has already retired.

The nomination of Air Force Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak to become the next Air Guard director was sent to the Senate in March. He has been serving as the acting director.

And Maj. Gen. Jonathan Stubbs, currently the adjutant general in Arkansas, has been nominated to be the next director of the Army Guard, to replace Jensen.

No hearings or votes have been scheduled for either Stubbs or Pirak.

U.S. officials say that Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Jarrard is the likely nominee to become the next vice chief of the Guard Bureau. But his name hasn't been sent to the Senate. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel movements.

The lack of progress on the nominations has become a source of concern to the bureau, which oversees the training and oversight of the Guard forces who deploy on federal duty for overseas combat and to protect the homeland. The Guard chief is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and serves as a key link to the adjutant generals who command the state Guard units across the country and its territories.

Nordhaus graduated from the Air Force Academy in Colorado and served as an F-16 pilot and instructor while on active duty. He joined the Ohio National Guard in 1998 and commanded the 180th Fighter Wing there. He flew combat missions in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and has more than 3,000 flight hours.

Banning transgender troops from service, revoking the VA’s ability to provide abortion-related care and slashing the number of general officers in the ranks are just a few of the policy proposals laid out in a political playbook for what the next Republican administration could look like.

Known as Project 2025, the plan organized by the conservative think thank The Heritage Foundation would make sizable changes to the lives of service members and veterans if implemented.

The lengthy guidebook that seeks to reform several facets of the federal government has taken the spotlight in the 2024 presidential race.

While Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, Democrats have called the agenda a “dangerous blueprint” for what his second term could look like.

Project 2025 was authored by many officials who served in the first Trump administration.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump said in July on Truth Social. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

He doubled down on that message just days later, and did so again in a campaign speech delivered following an attempted assassination against him.

But Democrats are not ready to let him off the hook yet. Vice President Kamala Harris, who received an endorsement from President Joe Biden to serve as the next commander-in-chief after he dropped out from the presidential election this past weekend, warned in a social media video that Trump and his team intend to implement Project 2025.

What exactly is Project 2025?

The Project 2025 initiative includes a roughly 900-page policy agenda, a personnel database for those who could serve in the next Republican administration, a training for those individuals called the “Presidential Administration Academy” and also plans for a playbook of actions to be taken in the first 180 days of office.

The effort includes recommendations by former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, and has been led by other former Trump administration officials including Paul Dans, former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, and Spencer Chretien, former special assistant to the president and associate director of presidential personnel.

Policy recommendations stretch across the executive branch, from the White House to the Department of Justice to independent regulatory agencies, each broadly seeking to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.

“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State,” a prelude to the handbook states.

The “administrative state” refers to executive branch agencies exercising the power to create, enforce and adjudicate their own rules. Those who oppose such a setup, primarily Republicans, argue that unelected officials should not have such powers.

How would Project 2025 impact troops?

The policy chapter on remaking the Department of Defense includes reducing the number of generals and reinstituting policies barring transgender individuals from serving in the military.

That portion of the guidebook was written by Miller, who served as acting defense secretary in the final months of the Trump administration.

“Our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, our impossibly muddled China strategy, the growing involvement of senior military officers in the political arena, and deep confusion about the purpose of our military are clear signals of a disturbing decay and markers of a dangerous decline in our nation’s capabilities and will,” Miller wrote.

Some of the suggested personnel changes Miller put forth fall in line with conservative culture war arguments, including:

• Reinstating service members to active duty who were separated for not receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, restoring their rank and providing them back pay.
• Abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion offices and staffs.
• Reversing a policy that lets DOD cover travel costs for troops seeking reproductive care, including abortion services.
• Eliminating “Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs,” which the text does not provide examples of.

Other prescriptions include:

• Suspending the use of the recently introduced Military Health System Genesis, where military applicants are medically examined before they can sign up.
• Requiring completion of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the military entrance examination, by all students in schools that receive federal funding.
• Increasing the Army force structure by 50,000.
• Aligning the Marine Corps’ combat arms rank structure with the Army’s.
• Maintaining between 28 and 31 larger amphibious warships as opposed to the what is specified in current Navy shipbuilding plans.
• Increasing F-35A procurement to 60–80 per year.
• Providing necessary support to Department of Homeland Security border protection operations.
• Improving base housing and considering the military family “holistically” when considering change-of-station moves.

Separately, in a chapter dedicated to revisions to the Department of Homeland Security, it was suggested that the Coast Guard, which currently operates under DHS during peacetime, be transferred out to another department.

Ken Cuccinelli, a former DHS official from the Trump administration, who wrote that section of the guidebook, said the maritime service should instead be moved to the Department of Justice when not at war, or alternatively to DOD for all purposes.

John Oliver rips Trump’s Schedule F: ‘Not a recipe for good government’

How would Project 2025 impact veterans?

The policy chapter on reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs involves rescinding VA’s ability to provide abortion services and revising hybrid and remote work options for the department’s employees.

That section of the handbook was written by Brooks Tucker, who served as the VA’s acting chief of staff in the last year of the Trump administration.

“The VA must continually strive to be recognized as a ‘best in class,’ ‘Veteran-centric’ system with an organizational ethos inspired by and accountable to the needs and problems of veterans, not subservient to the parochial preferences of a bureaucracy,” Tucker said.

Changes that Tucker advocated for include:

• Rescinding all departmental clinical policy directives related to abortion services and gender reassignment surgeries.
• Reviewing in-person work options. Tucker cited that, specifically for VA staff in the nation’s capital, the remote work policy is “undermining the cohesiveness and competencies of some staff functions and diluting general organizational accountability and responsiveness.”
• Requiring Veterans Health Administration facilities to increase the number of patients seen each day to equal the number seen by DOD medical facilities: approximately 19 patients per provider per day. Currently, Tucker said, VA facilities may be seeing as few as six patients per provider per day.

Not everyone however agreed with taking that approach.

“VHA healthcare providers need to spend more time with veterans during their appointments to effectively address their complex health needs,” Russell Lemle and Jasper Craven, from the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, wrote in a Task & Purpose op-ed. “By demanding that VHA facilities match the patient volume at DOD facilities, Project 2025 risks shortchanging veterans and compromising the quality of care they receive by treating them as if they are in the prime of their youth,” they added.

Other recommendations from Tucker included:

• Embracing the expansion of Community Based Outpatient Clinics without “investing further in obsolete and unaffordable VA health care campuses.”
• Revising disability rating awards for future claimants while “preserving them fully or partially for existing claimants.”
• Establishing a veterans “bill of rights” so vets and VA staff know exactly what benefits veterans are entitled to receive.
• Transferring all career Senior Executive Service individuals out of specific positions on the first day to “ensure political control of the VA.”

Michael Embrich, a former member of the Advisory Committee on the Readjustment of Veterans, shared in an op-ed for GovExec that following Project 2025′s plans to reshape the government workforce “would disproportionately affect veterans, many of whom rely on these positions not only for employment but also for a sense of purpose and community.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to an email request for comment.

In response to outcries from military families and others, government officials have revised the new rules for importing dogs from overseas to the United States, according to an announcement Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The rules will still take effect Aug. 1 during the busy military moving season, and the impact of the changes is unclear. It remains to be seen whether overseas airlines will reverse their decisions to stop allowing overseas families to travel back to the U.S. with their dogs either in the cabin or as excess baggage on the plane.

The CDC rules prompted eight airlines to previously announce they will no longer fly the dogs with their owners, leaving many military families scrambling to find alternative transportation — with a number of departures scheduled in early August.

“CDC values the feedback received from various countries, industry partners, and the public,” officials stated Monday. “CDC simplified the process for meeting requirements for dogs arriving from rabies-free or low-risk countries.”

In easing some of the requirements, the CDC announced Monday that through April 30, 2025, it won’t require veterinary documents for dogs that have spent the previous six months in rabies-free or low-risk countries. The only form needed is the CDC Dog Import Form, which is completed online by the traveler or importer. This makes it easier for owners of dogs coming from low-risk countries.

There are two versions of the CDC Dog Import Form: one for dogs coming from no-to-low risk countries for dog rabies, and the other for dogs coming from high-risk countries for dog rabies. The list of high-risk countries is here. Dogs coming from those countries have more requirements, such as documentation and testing.

Military families overseas scrambling as U.S. dog travel rules change

The CDC requirements are aimed at preventing the introduction of dog rabies into the United States. While dog rabies was eliminated in the United States in 2007, there are over 100 countries where dog rabies isn’t controlled, according to the CDC.

Liz Hensel, a Marine Corps wife and CEO of Leave No Paws Behind USA, said she is hopeful the update will be helpful to military families. “It’s clear our voices are being heard,” said Hensel, who has been advocating for change in the rules to help military families.

However, she said, “There has to be communication between CDC and the airlines. The faster we can clarify, the better for our military families on standby for that Aug. 1 deadline.”

The CDC said it will also have a waiver process for airlines. Starting Aug. 1, airlines must create an air waybill document for each dog transported to the U.S. If they can’t create that air waybill, they can request a waiver. Unless the airlines create the air waybills or have a waiver, they can’t transport dogs as hand-carried or excess baggage to the U.S. If they are granted a provisional waiver for 90 days, they can transport dogs as hand-carried or excess baggage to the U.S. with an air waybill. They can also submit an application to apply for a longer-term waiver to last nine months.

Airlines continue to be able to transport dogs if the dog is traveling separately as manifest cargo — on its own ticket, and as in the past, creating an air waybill for the dog. But for dogs traveling as excess baggage or in the cabin with their owner, none of the airlines are currently equipped for the process of receiving dogs traveling as excess baggage or in the cabin with their own air waybill, according to Angela Passman, owner and president of World Pet Travel.

“The passenger terminal, where pets arrive as excess baggage or [to travel] in the cabin, is not connected to the cargo facilities, so they are unable to clear a pet coming into the passenger terminal,” Passman said. “They are simply not set up for this, and this is a requirement insisted upon by the CDC for bringing a pet into the continental U.S.”

If the CDC rules aren’t followed, the dog won’t be allowed to enter the U.S.

“If denied entry, your dog will be sent back to the last country of departure at your expense. Country of departure is where the last trip originated — not where the dog was born or where it lives,” officials state on the CDC’s website.

If families can’t travel with their dogs, they may be left with no alternative other than to use a pet shipper to navigate the complex requirements. While the cost for a dog to travel with the family has been around $400, it will now be more than $2,000, Hensel said, noting that the cost to ship a dog from overseas through a pet shipper could be anywhere from $2,500 to over $4,000, depending on the dog, location and other factors.

Lawmakers also urged the CDC to delay implementing the blanket requirements, as the rules affect low-risk dogs personally owned by various types of individuals.

Seeking to move away from its reliance on hauling equipment back stateside for repairs, the Pentagon is working with allies and partners to better sustain capability forward in operational theaters, beginning with the Indo-Pacific region.

Being able to fix gear close to the fight is considered critical to any future conflict with China, according to officials.

The Pentagon recently released a regional sustainment framework that would “satisfy demand closer to the point of need,” while enhancing both U.S. and regional partners’ capabilities, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment Christopher Lowman told reporters at a recent briefing.

“For the past two and a half years, we’ve been focused on the realities of sustaining the U.S. joint force in a contested theater and what it would take to ensure success and mitigate some of the risk of relying on long, over-ocean lines of communication to retrograde equipment back to the United States for repair and then return,” Lowman said.

Historically, sustainment has been viewed solely as a national responsibility, with the U.S. government sustaining its own forces in theater.

The Pentagon’s new, partner-focused plans are “really a recognition that sustainment can be performed through a coalition and a network of regional providers, because each of those regional allies has capability, industrial capability, maintenance, repair and overhaul capability and a desire to support the work,” Lowman said.

The idea is not to build new maintenance and repair capabilities in theater, but to take advantage of what already exists while “making the appropriate changes to accommodate specific U.S. needs and then utilizing that through a joint venture arrangement, as opposed to a U.S. funded, built, owned and operated capability,” Lowman said.

The Pentagon’s under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, Bill LaPlante, and Lowman recently signed the strategy laying out the regional sustainment framework to align maintenance, repair and overhaul capabilities globally.

Such a strategy would cover sustaining equipment that has experienced normal wear and tear or battle damage.

The framework will also provide theater commanders multiple options to redirect equipment sustainment and “creates a higher level of uncertainty within adversaries’ planning cycles, and thereby enhancing deterrence,” Lowman said.

The plan is to establish the framework in the Indo-Pacific theater first, and the Defense Department is already working with five nations there to put together maintenance, repair and overhaul capability for American and partner equipment.

Lowman said he was unable to disclose the countries the U.S. is working with in the Pacific as terms of agreements are still being negotiated.

But he said the Defense Department is working with five Indo-Pacific countries to establish appropriate projects and to identify industrial partners, both U.S. and regionally based.

The Pentagon plans to build out regional sustainment partnerships within the European and Middle East theaters in fiscal 2025, followed by South America in FY26 and Africa later on, Lowman said.

INDOPACOM is being prioritized given the U.S. national defense strategy’s focus on China as the pacing threat, but also because it presents the greatest contested logistics challenge because relying on long, over-the-ocean lines will no longer prove effective if the U.S. finds itself in a war against China.

Already in the European theater, because of support for Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion, sustainment partnership capabilities are emerging within the context of NATO cooperation, but the Pentagon plans to apply lessons learned from the INDOPACOM pathfinder effort to other key theaters, according to Lowman.

Ideally, regional partners will come to the table with existing capability because those countries are similarly equipped, or are equipped with U.S. produced weapon systems, “so they have repair capabilities that we’ll capitalize on,” he said.

The Defense Department will also take a look at capabilities like shipyards that are not currently configured to accommodate America’s specific requirements, but would require money for expansions and workforce training, Lowman said.

Less desirable, but also under consideration, is to look at places where capability does not exist and build it, but “that would entail the greatest amount of capital investment,” Lowman added.

Already, the U.S. has seen what regional sustainment can look like through small examples during major exercises like Talisman Sabre in Australia. During the exercise, a vehicle was damaged during a road march and was able to be repaired in country using Australian parts.

In addition to the regional sustainment framework, Lowman said the Pentagon is also engaged in a major push to use advanced manufacturing techniques forward in theater, such as additive or subtractive manufacturing and 3D printing to make parts.

“What we’re doing is enabling a digital framework in order to transmit intellectual property to the point of manufacture and then, of course, secure that intellectual property at the point of manufacture and finally to ensure that the parts produced meet our standards of manufacture so that they’re safe and suitable to operate,” Lowman said.

Three Massachusetts lawmakers are pressing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to ground the V-22 Osprey aircraft again until the military can fix the root causes of multiple recent accidents, including a deadly crash in Japan.

In a letter sent to Austin on Thursday, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey and Rep. Richard Neal called the decision to return Ospreys to limited flight status “misguided.”

Air Force knows what failed in fatal Osprey crash — but not why

In March, Naval Air Systems Command said the aircraft had been approved to return to limited flight operations, but only with tight restrictions in place that currently keep it from doing some of the aircraft carrier, amphibious transport and special operations missions it was purchased for. The Osprey's joint program office within the Pentagon has said those restrictions are likely to remain in place until mid-2025.

The Ospreys had been grounded military-wide for three months following a horrific crash in Japan in November that killed eight Air Force Special Operations Command service members.

There’s no other aircraft like the Osprey in the fleet. It is loved by pilots for its ability to fly fast to a target like an airplane and land on it like a helicopter. But the Osprey is aging faster than expected, and parts are failing in unexpected ways. Unlike other aircraft, its engines and proprotor blades rotate to a completely vertical position when operating in helicopter mode, a conversion that adds strain to those critical propulsion components.

The Japan crash was the fourth fatal accident in two years, killing a total of 20 service members.

Marine Corps Capt. Ross Reynolds, who was killed in a 2022 crash in Norway, and Air Force Staff Sgt. Jacob Galliher, who was killed in the November Japan crash, were from Massachusetts, the lawmakers said.

“The Department of Defense should be making service members' safety a top priority,” the lawmakers said. “That means grounding the V-22 until the root cause of the aircraft's many accidents is identified and permanent fixes are put in place.”

The lawmakers' letter, which was accompanied by a long list of safety questions about the aircraft, is among many formal queries into the V-22 program. There are multiple ongoing investigations by Congress and internal reviews of the program by the Naval Air Systems Command and the Air Force.

The Pentagon did not immediately confirm on Friday whether it was in receipt of the letter.

A Marine who stormed the U.S. Capitol and apparently flashed a Nazi salute in front of the building was sentenced on Friday to nearly five years in prison.

Tyler Bradley Dykes, of South Carolina, was an active-duty Marine when he grabbed a police riot shield from the hands of two police officers and used it to push his way through police lines during the attack by the mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Dykes, who pleaded guilty in April to assault charges, previously was convicted of a crime stemming from the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Dykes was transferred to federal custody in 2023 after he served a six-month sentence in a state prison.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell sentenced Dykes, who's 26, to four years and nine months of imprisonment, the Justice Department said.

Federal prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of five years and three months for Dykes.

“He directly contributed to some of the most extreme violence on the Capitol’s east front,” prosecutors wrote.

Dykes’ attorneys requested a two-year prison sentence. They said Dykes knows his actions on Jan. 6 were “illegal, indefensible and intolerable.”

“Tyler hates his involvement in the Capitol riot,” his lawyers wrote. “He takes complete responsibility for his actions. Tyler apologizes for those actions.”

Dykes, then 22, traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the Republican Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally with two friends from his hometown of Bluffton, South Carolina. After parting ways with his friends, Dykes ripped snow fencing out of the ground and pulled aside bicycle rack barricades as he approached the Capitol.

Later, Dykes joined other rioters in breaking through a line of police officers who were defending stairs leading to the Capitol’s East Rotunda Doors.

“After reaching the top of the stairs, Dykes celebrated his accomplishment, performing what appears to be the Sieg Heil salute,” prosecutors wrote.

After stealing the riot shield from the two officers, Dykes entered the Capitol and held it in one hand while he raised his other hand in celebration. He also used the shield to assault police officers inside the building, forcing them to retreat down a hallway, prosecutors said.

Dykes gave the shield to an officer after he left the Capitol.

Dykes denied that he performed a Nazi salute on Jan. 6, but prosecutors say his open-handed gesture was captured on video.

In August 2017, photos captured Dykes joining tiki torch-toting white supremacists on a march through the University of Virginia's campus on the eve of the Unite the Right rally. A photo shows him extending his right arm in a Nazi salute and carrying a lit torch in his left hand.

In March 2023, Dykes was arrested on charges related to the march. He pleaded guilty to a felony charge of burning an object with intent to intimidate.

Dykes briefly attended Cornell University in the fall of 2017 before he joined the Marine Corps. In May 2023, he was discharged from the military under “other than honorable” conditions.

“Rather than honor his oath to protect and defend the Constitution, Dykes’s criminal activity on January 6 shows he was instead choosing to violate it,” prosecutors wrote.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. More than 900 of them have been sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years.

A number of military families stationed overseas are scrambling to find other arrangements for transporting their dogs back to the United States because of new regulations taking effect Aug. 1 — in the middle of the military’s heavy moving season.

Families are posting on Facebook about departure dates happening as soon as the first weeks of August — but now transportation is uncertain for their dogs due to new U.S. regulations and some airlines refusing to allow dogs to travel back to the states.

“Why do things always have to be so complicated for military families to bring our pet family members with us when we move?” one military wife asked on the platform. “As if moving far from home and family every few years isn’t stressful enough.”

The issue stems from new requirements from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that take effect Aug. 1, aimed at preventing the introduction of dog rabies into the United States. While dog rabies was eliminated in the United States in 2007, there are over 100 countries where dog rabies isn’t controlled, according to the CDC.

The new regulations will be cumbersome for some military families, and there’s some confusion. But the more immediate problem is that eight airlines will stop allowing dogs to travel back to the states with their families either in the cabin or as excess baggage in the cargo hold.

German airline Lufthansa is the most recent airline to make the announcement. “Due to new restrictions imposed by the U.S. authorities it is no longer possible to import dogs into the USA after 1 August 2024 until further notice,” the Lufthansa website states.

The abrupt policy changes have some military advocates baffled by it all.

“I 100% agree we have to protect the population from rabies,” said Liz Hensel, CEO of Leave No Paws Behind USA. “But there must be a better way than to leave hundreds of military families stranded in a situation where they have no idea what to do with their dogs,” she said.

There are more than 100,000 service members stationed in Europe alone, she noted. It remains to be seen how this will play out around the world.

“Our household pets really help with mental health not only for the men and women serving, but for the family dynamic as a whole,” said Hensel, a veteran who is also the 2024 Armed Forces Insurance Marine Corps Spouse of the Year.

The decision by Lufthansa is “heartbreaking,” as the airline has been one of the most pet friendly airlines for military families, Hensel said.

The new CDC requirements standardize the process for importing dogs, including standard requirements for the minimum age of imported dogs, microchips, the CDC Dog Import Form, and other documentation. This will “streamline the importation process and allow for safer and more efficient entry of dogs into the United States,” according to the CDC.

The rules require some documentation that generally only commercial pet shippers were required to do, and which could require extra steps such as translating the CDC form into the local language for host-nation veterinarians and their supervisors, Hensel said.

Hensel is advocating for urgent policy adjustments by the CDC, including exemptions for military families in recognition of their unique circumstances; increased quarantine and vaccination facilities; airline partnerships; and streamlined import processes with clear and consistent guidelines.

Lawmakers have stepped in to urge the CDC director to allow an 18-month delay in implementation of the blanket requirements, because the rules affect low-risk dogs personally owned by various types of individuals.

A July 8 letter from Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., has been signed by six additional members of Congress. Among other things, the dog import form has caused concern because of its delayed public availability and potential concern among dog owners, Langworthy wrote.

Information was not immediately available from the CDC about whether any solutions are being considered for military families.

Hensel speculates that the airlines are backing away from transporting the pets with their families on the same flight because they don’t want to be held liable.

According to the CDC website, if their rules aren’t followed, the dog won’t be allowed to enter the U.S. “If denied entry, your dog will be sent back to the last country of departure at your expense. Country of departure is where the last trip originated—not where the dog was born or where it lives,” officials state.

Many military families will now be forced to use pet shippers, which can continue to ship on the airlines, Hensel said.

But the cost will be a great hardship for many families.

“What has been costing around $400 will now be over $2,000,” she said, noting that the cost to ship a dog overseas through a pet shipper could be anywhere from $2,500 to over $4,000, depending on the dog, location and other factors.

Hensel worked for four years to advocate for a law to allow service members to be reimbursed for up to $2,000 of pet transportation expenses to or from overseas during a PCS move, and up to $550 for pet transportation in a move within the continental U.S. DOD implemented that benefit Jan. 1.

“And now this?” she said.

Military issues new details on reimbursing pet travel costs

Limited spaces are available to transport dogs on military-contracted Patriot Express flights on PCS moves, although U.S. Transportation Command increased the cabin flight spaces from 10 to 20, in 2021.

TRANSCOM officials are aware of the issue, said spokesman Nate Allen.

“This is where the conversations between passengers and their local transportation management offices are crucial,” he said. “While there is no immediate plan to increase pet spaces, if presented with a significant increase in requirements, we have and will engage with commercial partners to increase capacity where possible.”

Passengers traveling on the Patriot Express flights will also be required to comply with the CDC’s new import requirements, Allen said.

One family posted that they are being relocated stateside for a humanitarian reassignment, which is already stressful.

“I literally don’t know how I’m going to get our dog home with us,” the military wife posted. “This is to the point I’m in tears. This is just another stressor military families don’t need.”

Russia said Sunday it scrambled fighter jets to intercept two U.S. military long-range bomber aircraft that approached the Russian border over the Barents Sea in the Arctic.

“The crews of the Russian fighters identified the aerial target as a pair of U.S. Air Force B-52H strategic bombers,” Moscow’s defense ministry wrote on the social media platform Telegram, specifying that the planes scrambled were MiG-29 and MiG-31 fighters.

Russia warns of possible response to US drone flights over Black Sea

“As the Russian fighters approached, the U.S. strategic bombers turned away from the State Border of the Russian Federation,” the ministry said.

The U.S. routinely carries out flights over international waters. Moscow has recently responded more aggressively to the exercises, accusing the U.S. in June of using its reconnaissance drone flights over neutral waters in the Black Sea to help Ukraine strike Russian-occupied Crimea.

Last month, Moscow warned of a “direct confrontation” between Russia and NATO, and Russia’s defense minister ordered officials to prepare a “response” to U.S. drone flights over the Black Sea, in an apparent warning it may take forceful action to ward off the American reconnaissance aircraft.

Washington and Moscow have clashed before over the issue. In March 2023, a Russian Su-27 fighter jet damaged a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, causing it to crash into the Black Sea. It was the first direct clash between Russian and U.S. forces since the Cold War.

A repeat of such a confrontation could further fuel tensions over the war in Ukraine.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House on Sunday, ending his bid for reelection after a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that raised doubts about the incumbent’s fitness for office.

The unprecedented announcement, delivered less than four months before the election, immediately upended a campaign that both political parties view as the most consequential in generations.

The president — intent on serving out the remainder of his term in office — quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take on Trump and encouraged his party to unite behind her, making her the party’s instant favorite for the nomination at its August convention in Chicago.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, nominated by Biden in late 2020, praised Biden as “an extraordinary guardian of America’s national security” in a statement Sunday.

“I am deeply grateful for his leadership and statesmanship,” Austin said. “He has a secure place in American history as one of our great foreign-policy presidents.”

Biden’s Sunday announcement is the latest jolt to a tumultuous campaign for the White House, coming a week after the attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally.

A party’s presumptive presidential nominee has never stepped out of the race so close to the election. President Lyndon Johnson, besieged by the Vietnam War, announced in March 1968 that he would not seek another term after just a single state’s primary. Biden’s July decision comes after more than 14 million Democrats cast votes supporting him through the primary process.

Harris, in a statement, praised Biden’s “selfless and patriotic act” and said she intends to “earn and win” her party’s nomination.

“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” she said.

Biden’s decision to bow out came after escalating pressure from his Democratic allies to step aside following the June 27 debate, in which the 81-year-old president trailed off, often gave nonsensical answers and failed to call out the former president’s many falsehoods.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a letter posted Sunday to his X account.

Nearly 30 minutes after he delivered the news that he was folding his campaign, Biden threw his support behind Harris.

“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” he said in another post on X. “Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump.”

There were early signs that the party was moving to coalesce around Harris, who scored the endorsements of the Congressional Black Caucus and former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even before she had commented on Biden’s decision to quit the race. But notably, former President Barack Obama held off, pledging support behind the eventual party nominee.

“We are honored to join the President in endorsing Vice President Harris and will do whatever we can to support her,” former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement.

But Obama, who had privately shared doubts about Biden’s reelection chances, stopped short of endorsing Harris even as he praised Biden for his decision to leave the race.

“I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” he said in a statement.

Biden’s decision came as he has been isolating at his Delaware beach house after being diagnosed with COVID-19 last week, huddling with a shrinking circle of close confidants and family members about his political future. Biden said he would address the nation later this week to provide “detail” about his decision.

Harris found out about Biden’s plans on Sunday morning and senior campaign and White House staff were notified just minutes before the letter went out, according to people familiar with the matter who commented on the private discussions on condition of anonymity. Biden had been reflecting on his future for the past couple days and the decision was closely held.

Now, Democrats have to urgently try to bring coherence to the nominating process in a matter of weeks and convince voters in a stunningly short amount of time that their nominee can handle the job and beat Trump. And for his part, Trump must shift his focus to a new opponent after years of training his attention on Biden.

The decision marks a swift and stunning end to Biden’s 52 years in electoral politics, as donors, lawmakers and even aides expressed to him their doubts that he could convince voters that he could plausibly handle the job for another four years.

Biden won the vast majority of delegates and every nominating contest but one, which would have made his nomination a formality. Now that he has dropped out, those delegates will be free to support another candidate.

Harris, 59, appeared to be the natural successor, in large part because she is the only candidate who can directly tap into the Biden campaign’s war chest, according to federal campaign finance rules.

Biden’s campaign formally changed its name to Harris for President, reflecting that she is inheriting his political operation — a sign of the leg up she has in the race for the Democratic nomination. Democratic groups, including the Democratic National Committee, also filed paperwork changing the names of their joint fundraising committees to reflect Harris’ candidacy.

The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin.

It remained to be seen whether other candidates would challenge Harris for the nomination. The Democratic National Committee’s chair, Jaime Harrison, said in a statement that the party would “undertake a transparent and orderly process” to select “a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November.”

Harris was spending Sunday afternoon calling Democratic elected officials and delegates as she works to lock up the nomination.

Harris received her first delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination on Sunday. The Tennessee Democratic Party posted on X that its delegation voted during a meeting Sunday to back Harris after Biden’s departure from the campaign.

Trump reacted to the news in a post on his Truth Social site, in which he said Biden “was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve.”

“We will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly,” he added. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

While Trump and his team had made their preference for facing Biden clear, his campaign had nonetheless ramped up its attacks on Harris as pressure on Biden to step down intensified.

Democratic officials, including many who were behind the effort to push Biden from the race, quickly released statements praising Biden’s decision.

“His decision of course was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future first,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “Joe, today shows you are a true patriot and great American.”

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York praised Biden as “one of the most accomplished and consequential leaders in American history.”

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said Biden should immediately resign if he is not fit enough to run for office. In a statement, Johnson said, “November 5 cannot arrive soon enough.”

In addition to his planned address to the country, Biden still intends to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House this week, according to a person familiar with the president’s schedule who was not authorized to comment publicly.

The exact timing of the meeting is still not set in stone as Biden continues to recover from COVID. Netanyahu is scheduled Wednesday to deliver an address to Congress and he is also expected to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris while in Washington.

In 2020, Biden pitched himself as a transitional figure who wanted to be a bridge to a new generation of leaders. But once he secured the job he spent decades struggling to attain, he was reluctant to part with it.

Biden was once asked whether any other Democrats could beat Trump.

“Probably 50 of them,” Biden replied. “No, I’m not the only one who can defeat him, but I will defeat him.”

Biden is already the country’s oldest president and had insisted repeatedly that he was up for the challenge of another campaign and another term, telling voters all they had to was “watch me.”

And watch him they did. His poor debate performance prompted a cascade of anxiety from Democrats and donors who said publicly what some had said privately for months, that they did not think he was up to the job for four more years.

Concerns over Biden’s age have dogged him since he announced he was running for reelection, though Trump is just three years younger at 78. Most Americans view the president as too old for a second term, according to an August 2023 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. A majority also doubt his mental capability to be president, though that is also a weakness for Trump.

Biden often remarked that he was not as young as he used to be, doesn’t walk as easily or speak as smoothly, but that he had wisdom and decades of experience, which were worth a whole lot.

“I give you my word as a Biden. I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job,” he told supporters at a rally in North Carolina a day after the debate. “Because, quite frankly, the stakes are too high.”

But voters had other problems with him, too — he has been deeply unpopular as a leader even as his administration steered the nation through recovery from a global pandemic, presided over a booming economy and passed major pieces of bipartisan legislation that will impact the nation for years to come. A majority of Americans disapprove of the way he’s handling his job, and he’s faced persistently low approval ratings on key issues including the economy and immigration.

Biden’s motivation for running was deeply intertwined with Trump. He had retired from public service following eight years serving as vice president under Obama and the death of his son Beau but decided to run after Trump’s comments following a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when white supremacists descended on the city to protest the removal of its Confederate memorials.

Trump said: “You had some very bad people in the group, but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. On both sides.”

Biden’s wife, first lady Jill Biden, responded to the president’s announcement by reposting Biden’s letter announcing his decision and adding red heart emojis.

Granddaughter Naomi Biden Neal said on social media, “I’m nothing but proud of my Pop.” She said he has served the country “with every bit of his soul and with unmatched distinction” and “our world is better today in so many ways thanks to him.”

Editor’s note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter.

Andrew Espinosa was in his office in Boulder, Colorado, when the first message popped up on the Air Force veteran’s phone: Andy, is this finally the resolution you’ve been working for?

President Biden had just announced he was “righting a historic wrong” by issuing pardons for gay veterans convicted of consensual sex, and Espinosa says the text messages didn’t stop for hours.

“I’ve got shivers,” Mona McGuire, an Army veteran, told The War Horse on that June 26 morning, celebrating the news from her home in suburban Milwaukee in between interviews with CNN and the BBC. “I feel relief.”

More than 25 years ago, both McGuire and Espinosa were kicked out of the military for being gay. Finally, it appeared, they would get a long-overdue reprieve and apology — and possibly qualify for health care and other veterans benefits they have been denied because of their “bad paper” discharges.

Then reality struck. In the weeks since the president’s historic gesture, McGuire and Espinosa have dug into the details and learned they and thousands of other veterans are unlikely to qualify under the narrow confines of Biden’s pardons. The whipsaw of emotions has renewed the sting of exclusion that has followed them for decades after their military service was cut short.

It’s “another kick in the gut,” says Espinosa.

The two are among about 100,000 veterans pushed out of the military for reasons related to their sexual orientation from World War II through the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in 2011. Thirteen years after that repeal, Biden’s pardons invigorated advocates and LGBTQ veterans who continue to try to undo the harms inflicted on gay veterans, including, for some, imprisonment and convictions that still mar their records today.

But it turns out there is a catch: Only those convicted in a military court of nonforcible sodomy qualify for a pardon, and neither the White House nor the Defense Department could tell The War Horse exactly how many veterans that includes — or why it excludes so many others.

It doesn’t include McGuire, who became a symbol of the injustice stemming from the military’s discriminatory past after sharing her story with The War Horse days before Biden’s announcement. The Milwaukee mom was never convicted in a military court because she opted to avoid court-martial by admitting to a lesbian relationship and accepting a bad discharge. The pardons will do nothing to fix her record.

What’s also worrying advocates is that the presidential election is only four months away, and a return to the White House for Donald Trump could halt the processing of pardon applications altogether, experts say.

Amid the euphoria of Biden’s announcement, the White House estimated thousands of veterans would benefit from his pardons, allowing them to upgrade their discharges and receive veterans benefits they’d been locked out of. But Michael Wishnie, a professor at Yale Law School and veteran law expert, is wary.

“There’s a real danger that no one benefits,” he says.

‘Mass’ pardons are rare

By the time the text messages stopped, and Espinosa returned his focus to his real estate job, he had already concluded that the pardon didn’t apply to him.

He joined the Air Force in the late 1980s with the hopes of eventually becoming an astronaut. In 1993, the Air Force captain was court-martialed for an “indecent assault.”

The incident occurred, he said, in the blurry early morning hours after a party while he was stationed in Turkey. Espinosa was accused of touching a fellow airman’s leg and kissing him on the cheek as they watched the playoffs. Espinosa maintains his innocence and believes he was targeted because of homophobia in the military and his superior officers’ desire to get rid of him.

Espinosa, who first told his story to CBS News last year, had a letter written to his mother from a military official that explains “homosexuality is a factor in this case” but that the key factor is his harassment of another airman. Espinosa says he’s largely moved on from his dismissal from the military, but the conviction prevented him from getting a job with the government as a census taker, and he tried and failed to receive a discharge upgrade in the wake of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal. Until 1993, the military prohibited gay and lesbian people from serving, but under President Clinton, “don’t ask, don’t tell” allowed gay people to serve as long as their sexuality remained hidden.

After reading the fine print of the pardon, Espinosa responded to all those congratulatory text messages from childhood and military friends, thanking them for their support but telling them he would not receive any of Biden’s goodwill.

“If it helps one person, it’s good,” says Espinosa. “I wish it would’ve been explained more.”

What adds to the confusion is that rather than granting an individual pardon that names people specifically, Biden’s clemency action was bestowed upon a group of unnamed people. Such “mass” pardons are rare, but not unheard of. In 1977, for instance, President Jimmy Carter pardoned hundreds of thousands of Vietnam War draft dodgers.

Wishnie says advocates and veterans should be proud that their persistence likely encouraged Biden’s pardon. Still, Wishnie is “very disappointed that it is such a narrow program.”

Biden could have expanded his pardon to more veterans, he said, including those who were convicted for charges like “indecent acts” due to their sexual orientation. The pardon also could have helped veterans like McGuire.

In 1988, while stationed in West Germany, McGuire was outed, arrested, and forced to choose between a court-martial and possible prison time or a less than honorable discharge “in lieu of court-martial” if she admitted her lesbian relationship. She chose the latter.

The discharge has prevented her from accessing veterans benefits, and, though she tried to upgrade her discharge last year, the Army’s review board denied her request because as a 20-year-old under interrogation, she admitted guilt to charges of sodomy and an indecent act.

McGuire thought Biden’s pardon might render her admission obsolete, particularly since the president acknowledged the unjust criminalization of gay service members. But, she says, “I’m just kind of in the same place, in the same position I was for the last 37 years.”

‘These things aren’t slam dunks’

When Steve Marose learned of the president’s announcement, it sounded “glorious.” Justice, at last. He jumped into action, and the Air Force veteran, who lives in Seattle, sent in his pardon application last week.

In 1990, Marose was a second lieutenant who followed his father’s footsteps into the Air Force. He was a proud officer and says he was good at his job. But for a few months he lived with another airman, and was eventually convicted of three counts of consensual sodomy. He spent two years in federal prison at Fort Leavenworth. But Marose was also convicted of conduct unbecoming, a charge not included in the pardon.

“I’ve always tried to be optimistic,” he says. But “these things aren’t slam dunks.”

A White House spokesperson did not respond to requests from The War Horse to explain why the pardons excluded many LGBTQ veterans.

There is another route for those who don’t qualify, a Department of Defense spokesperson said. LGBTQ veterans can submit a standard Department of Justice pardon application to the secretary of the military branch in which they were convicted. But a decision can take years.

Wishnie and other veterans advocates say the Defense Department could have spared LGBTQ veterans the confusion over how far the pardons extend.

“For years, people have been asking DOD to do the work themself, to identify veterans discharged for being gay, whether they were court-martialed or not,” Wishnie says. “And for years, DOD has absolutely resisted.”

As the pardon stands, veterans like Marose who think they are eligible must apply, wait for an answer — which could take months — and then go through a separate process to upgrade their less than honorable or dishonorable discharges.

“They are leaving the onus on veterans,” Wishnie says, adding that such a multistep process will likely deter many veterans who could take advantage of the pardon.

What happens now?

If Marose’s application is approved before November’s election, it will remain intact no matter who wins the White House. If Donald Trump prevails, however, it’s possible that the new administration could slow or stop the process of receiving a pardon certificate that would allow veterans to access benefits, Wishnie says. No one from the Trump campaign responded to questions from The War Horse about whether a Trump White House would follow through on Biden’s pledge.

Presidents often issue pardons at the end of their terms, says Graham Dodds, an expert on U.S. politics at Concordia University in Montreal. It’s unclear why Biden decided to act on this particular issue now.

It could be an act of reconciliation, Dodds says, much like Canada, in 2017, apologized for past discrimination against LGBTQ people. But politics, he says, can’t be discounted.

“While the LGBTQ community is not monolithic, it does account for some 7% of the electorate,” Dodds says. “In a close election every vote might well matter.”

Still, the military didn’t treat each gay veteran in a uniform way. Policies shifted over the years, and a commander had the power to choose among quietly dismissing an LGBTQ service member with an honorable discharge, prosecuting them, or scaring them into accepting a bad discharge to avoid a court-martial. Because of that, Dodds says, this pardon is somewhat “messy.”

In McGuire’s case, she was not convicted or imprisoned. But she said it felt like she was.

After her arrest in May 1988, she waited three months for her discharge paperwork. She was stripped of her security clearance and forced to clean the men’s latrines. Soldiers whispered about her and three other women who were being kicked out for homosexuality. They were treated, she says, “not even like second-class humans.”

McGuire didn’t walk around alone out of fear of getting beat up.

In August of 1988, she was finally handed her orders to leave. Her dream of a career in the Army crumpled, and her heart broke on the spot. “I was crying and breathing so hard I couldn’t talk,” she says. “I was devastated.”

All those years ago, as a 20-year-old soldier, McGuire said she believed that taking responsibility and walking away from the Army would pay off in the long run.

“It’s just kind of ironic that those who were actually convicted and possibly spent time in prison are the ones eligible,” she says. “But not me.”

This War Horse investigation was reported by Anne Marshall-Chalmers, edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Abbie Bennett wrote the headlines. Coverage of veterans’ health is made possible in part by a grant from the A-Mark Foundation.

Our young service members are experiencing a crisis involving too much junk food and not enough movement that is leading them to be overweight and obese.

Such issues threaten not only their current military readiness, but their ability to age in a healthy way, with a study released last fall revealing that nearly 70 percent of U.S. service members are within the overweight or obese ranges of the body mass index.

A previous research study enrolling active duty service members who were seeking assistance with weight management offers a case in point: A young male participant was at risk for early discharge from the military for exceeding body fat standards. He lacked a professional appearance in uniform and was unable to keep up on unit physical training.

When told that he had strong bones after a research study bone density scan, he had his platoon sergeant accompany him to the research office so we could explain that he had “big bones” which accounted for his large body mass.

Unfortunately, we could not support that justification and he was ultimately discharged after failing to drop any body fat mass over the 12-week counseling period of the study. He had come to terms with his situation, saying his hometown police force had a position waiting for him. It is unlikely he would be able to meet the physical requirements for that position either.

Nearly 70% of active service members are overweight, report finds

This is one of many stories demonstrating the consequences for an overweight or obese service member. In a relatively short period of time, he or she may be discharged without future job prospects, possibly having experienced a recent physical activity-limiting injury, and a health status involving abnormal lipid levels and elevated blood pressure, conditions requiring medical oversight.

A service member being overweight impacts their ability to contribute to their respective unit’s mission. Statistics that reveal a continuing, alarming climb in rates of overweight and obesity in children and adults in America apply to America’s troops as well.

Obesity almost doubled from 22% to 42% in U.S. adults between 1988 and 2020. Active component Army statistics show a current rate of obesity of 20%, with overweight soldiers comprising approximately 40% to 50% of the force.

Therefore, we must be agile, resourceful and innovative in our approach to a service member’s overall health, while encouraging leadership across every unit to engage on this issue. More must be done.

As health care professionals and scientists, we see real-time consequences of neglected health in our clinics and research populations every single day.

Health promotion research conducted by my team and others has incorporated strategies involving everything from DNA-based counseling to activity trackers to raise awareness and educate troops about how bad food choices affect their body composition, blood pressure and vitamin levels.

When troops neglect their fitness, they increase their chance of suffering an injury that will take longer to recover from, as well as potential pain and a loss to their unit. An unhealthy formation is a combat ineffective formation; the lethality of our military is at risk by this pervasive health epidemic.

Pandemic pounds push 10,000 Army soldiers into obesity

In a time of a military-wide recruiting crisis, we cannot afford to lose trained, but physically unfit, troops because they are unable to do their military jobs, becoming candidates for early discharge in the process.

A common myth is that all service members have statures like elite athletes who have 24/7 access to optimal nutrition, physical training resources, and coaching, but this is not true for a large population of our ranks.

But due to diverse garrison environments, training demands, and limited access to high quality nutrition, American troops exhibit a wide range of fitness and health literacy.

The solution must be a multi-pronged approach by leaders to apply evidence-based recommendations and translate research findings to create a culture of health in all military environments.

Dip, Doritos and drinking: Why the Army can’t get in shape

The following are some steps we believe unit commanders can take to counter this crisis:

- Leaders must educate themselves and their subordinates. Engage in conversations about safe and healthy lifestyle behaviors, including diet, sleep, and physical activity.

- Leaders must set the example. They should visit their dining facilities, promote a performance-focused food environment and policies that allow sufficient time for meals, while continually assessing unit dining options and encouraging input from their troops regarding nutritious meals, snacks, and beverages in garrison.

- Leaders must monitor unit data regarding musculoskeletal injuries, sleep, and nutrition and hydration metrics. Holistic Health and Fitness, or H2F, teams have demonstrated impressive results in support of readiness. Seek out and support what H2F teams can do for your command.

- Leaders should support research opportunities available to the unit that advance the science of nutrition, exercise, and sleep in military populations. With the help of the H2F Team of researchers, the Military Nutrition Environment Assessment Tool (m-NEAT) can be used to assess the military food environment, promote a culture of health and boost community alignment to address food architecture in convenience marts, commissaries and exchanges, while strengthening healthy lifestyle practices messaging to the ranks.

- Leaders should re-evaluate health risk assessment intervals. Height, weight, waist and hip circumference and blood pressure are low burden, reliable, and evidence-based measures of cardiovascular risk and can be performed by unit medics.

- Finally, leaders should take care of themselves. A fit CO shows that you value your own health and wellness, which will help you lead from the front and be the best leader you can be.

The military should also continue to explore making anti-obesity medications available to service members, particularly for those who don’t respond to traditional paths.

Since 2023, an Army service-specific policy allows the use of FDA-approved prescription anti-obesity medications for soldiers who are supervised by a provider in a treatment facility under operational control of the Defense Health Agency.

Service members deserve this consideration when such medications are accompanied by comprehensive lifestyle interventions and engaged leadership.

Taken together, these actions may reduce chronic disease risk, promote physical and mental health, and restore the injured service member to a fit and ready state.

Mary McCarthy is a senior nurse scientist with the Defense Health Agency’s Center for Nursing Science & Clinical Inquiry at the Madigan Army Medical Center.

Lt. Col. Tanisha Currie is deputy chief for nursing science and clinical inquiry, and senior advisor to the Joint Forces Leadership Council at Brooke Army Medical Center.

Capt. Kevin M. Kilroy is a physician’s assistant at Okubo Clinic at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

The next generation of fighter aircraft could bring greater speed, range and ability to penetrate deep into enemy airspace — and it might even feature a revolutionary new type of engine, experts and retired U.S. Air Force officer say.

The aviation world has seen five generations of fighters, ranging from the subsonic F-86 Sabre after World War II to the current, stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Now, militaries around the world are working on jets they believe will represent technological leaps significant enough to qualify as sixth-generation aircraft.

And while the precise definition of a sixth-generation aircraft isn’t set in stone yet, experts agree on some common attributes, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote told Defense News.

The Air Force’s effort to build a sixth-gen fighter family of systems is known as Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, and experts say the platform will be asked to do a lot of things.

“You want it to be fast, you want it to fly high,” said Hinote, who was the Air Force’s former deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements. “You want it to fly a long way. You want it to be as stealthy as possible — not only in radar frequency … [but also] in the infrared spectrum as well.”

Hinote and Heather Penney, a retired F-16 pilot and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said speed, stealth and range will be among the most crucial elements of a sixth-generation fighter — particularly if it is needed to cross long distances in the Pacific and enter Chinese-controlled airspace.

“Range and the ability to penetrate will be absolutely critical for sixth-generation aircraft, especially given that we’re looking at the Pacific theater and China as our primary pacing threat,” Penney said.

Fifth-generation aircraft such as the F-22 and F-35 were conceived at a time when the United States military still had a Europe and NATO-focused mindset, Hinote said.

“The [F-35] requirements were basically developed right after the Cold War,” Hinote said. “It’s a short-range fighter. That makes total sense in NATO, where you’ve got hundreds of runways everywhere to operate off of. It makes no sense in the Pacific, where the situation is much different [and] you only have a few runways to operate off of.”

It needs to be able to communicate without giving its position away, Hinote said, and it must be able to carry larger payloads than fifth-generation aircraft carry today.

“That allows you to get to a position in the battlespace and the airspace where you can enforce your will through the use of force, if necessary, the concept of air superiority,” Hinote said.

And the ability to maintain a plane without damaging its stealth coating will be crucial, Penney said.

Early versions of stealth technology on aircraft such as the F-117A Nighthawk and B-2 Spirit bomber were delicate and difficult to maintain, she said.

Stealth has made considerable leaps forward over the years to be more practical and reliable, Penney said, and a sixth-gen fighter’s stealth capabilities also need to take another step forward to be maintainable and provide better performance.

Hinote and Penney said the next generation of aircraft must both take in large amounts of detailed data and fuse it in a way that sorts out the battlespace.

A sixth-gen aircraft “should be able to not only have those advanced sensors, not just forward looking, but side and aft, looking across [multiple] phenomena” such as radar, infrared and other frequencies, Penney said.

And the Air Force wants NGAD to team up with AI-operated drone wingmen known as collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA, as part of the “family of systems” concept. CCAs could carry out strike missions, jam enemy radars, conduct recon, or even serve as decoys.

The Air Force has so far planned for NGAD to have a new type of propulsion system known as an adaptive engine, which can shift to different, more efficient configurations depending on the flying situation. Pratt & Whitney and General Electric Aerospace are each developing their own adaptive engines as part of the Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion program.

An adaptive engine, however, would be very expensive, Hinote said. And with serious budget crunches prompting the Air Force to reconsider its plans and designs for NGAD, the service is considering whether to scale down its engine to bring NGAD’s price down.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a June interview with Defense News that making NGAD’s engine smaller and less complex is an option being considered.

But better dogfighting ability would likely not be on the wish list for sixth-generation fighters, Hinote said. He does not expect those aircraft to have advancements in slow-speed maneuverability or an emphasis on cannons that would allow fighters to go toe-to-toe in relatively close quarters.

“The F-22 can get a high [angle of attack] in ways we’ve never seen,” Hinote said. “The Sukhoi Su-57, same thing. I don’t think it’s relevant for enforcing air superiority in the Pacific.”

The Defense Department does not keep a hard-and-fast taxonomy of aircraft generations. But in 2017, a spokesman at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia took a crack at it.

In his column, Jeffrey Hood of the 633rd Air Base Wing’s public affairs office said the first generation of fighter jets that emerged following World War II took advantage of novel jet technology and swept wings, as opposed to the perpendicular wings that were previously standard. But those fighters, such as the F-86 Sabre, were limited to sub-sonic speeds and machine guns.

All that changed after Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947. This opened the door to a second generation of jets, such as the F-104 Starfighter, that could break Mach 1 and even Mach 2, and carry on-board radar and air-to-air missiles, Hood wrote.

The third generation — which included the Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom — incorporated advanced radars and better guided missiles that could engage enemies beyond visual range. After that came the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, and F-18 Hornet — fourth-generation fighters that can maneuver at high G-forces, use digital data links to share information, track multiple targets, and strike surface targets using lasers or GPS guidance.

In a 2016 study published by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, now-retired Gen. Jeff Harrigian said fifth-generation fighters such as the F-22 and F-35 include stealth, improved self-defense, sensing, and jamming abilities, integrated avionics, and more.

And depending on one’s perspective, the first sixth-generation aircraft could already be flying.

Northrop Grumman has touted its B-21 Raider bomber as the first sixth-gen aircraft. In an interview with Defense News before the B-21′s 2022 rollout, a Northrop official said the bomber’s cutting edge stealth, use of open systems architecture, and use of advanced networking and data sharing technologies to connect sensors to shooters across multiple domains make it “the first of the sixth-gen systems.”

Those abilities are probably enough for the B-21 to qualify as a sixth-generation aircraft, Penney said, though she said its high levels of classification make it hard for outside observers to gauge whether it lives up to the hype.

Hinote looks at Northrop’s claims with a bit more skepticism and thinks it’s more of a marketing angle, but notes these generational definitions are largely matters of opinion.

“If they want to call it sixth-generation, sure,” Hinote said. “I don’t necessarily believe that the stealth characteristics and the open architecture of the B-21 automatically makes it a generational change in what we’ve got. It’s an incremental step, it’s a good step, I’m glad that we’re doing it, but it’s probably not so big that it’s truly generational.”

MILAN — Air defense and drone warfare observed in Ukraine are changing the nature of military helicopter tactics, moving the platforms’ center of gravity away from the tip of the spear to an emphasis on combat-support missions along the front lines, according to officials and issue experts.

The shift is animated in large part by proliferating ground-based air defenses that make manned flight over the battlefield almost impossible.

“In 2024, helicopters at the front, due to the threat and saturation of anti-aircraft means, primarily perform fire support along the line of combat engagement, using the toss bombing tactics [unaimed strikes by unguided missiles] and have also been a means of countering unmanned systems,” said Serhii Kuzan, a former adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

He recalled the Russian emphasis on helicopters during the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Moscow’s troops had planned a large-scale landing operation, which eventually failed, at the Antonov airport near Hostomel, only 25 kilometers from Kyiv.

The vulnerability of combat helicopters has translated into a high number of losses on the Russian side. In February, a report published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies found that the Russian Aerospace Forces had lost 40% of their pre-war Ka-52 Hokum-B attack helicopter fleet.

“Russian rotary losses have continued, but changes in tactics and the introduction of new weapons, in particular the LMUR (also known as the Kh-39) air-to-surface missile, which provides a greater stand-off range, have had an effect,” Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at IISS told Defense News.

Maj. Gen. Pierre Meyer, commander of the French Army Light Aviation (ALAT), said Russia’s helicopter-based landing attempt should be a cautionary tale for military planners.

“At Hostomel, we saw Russian helicopters intervening almost on parade for two days, at a certain height and arriving en masse, tightly packed – in the end, it’s not a question of whether helicopters still have their place, it’s how we use them,” Meyer told the audience at the Paris Air Forum last month.

“Had we acted like the Russian helicopters, with the mode of action I’m talking about, we would’ve had exactly the same losses,” he said.

Meyer said there is utility in teaming helicopters with drones, as many Western armed forces are already doing, with unmanned aerial vehicles providing additional “aero-combat action and maneuver” to military choppers.

According to Kuzan, the former Ukrainian defense adviser, helicopters could soon become integrated with unmanned forces, “using their command control points, powerful communication relays or as a mobile means of radio-electronic warfare and intelligence.”

Bruno Even, the CEO of Airbus Helicopters, said rotary aviation can still play its trump card of all-around utility.

“Depending on the conflict, the attack helicopter has its rightful place and role to play – their use may have to evolve towards stand-off weapons that allow the aircraft to intervene from a greater distance,” he said at the Paris Air Forum.

Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris contributed to this report.

Legislators met on Thursday and passed bills to repeal changes to a college financial aid program for military veterans’ families and designate $90 million towards sustaining it for at least the next two years.

The Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program (VMSDEP) provides education benefits to children and spouses of severely injured or killed veterans. Amid the rising costs of the program in recent years, an effort to downsize it appeared in the state budget that lawmakers passed and Youngkin signed earlier this summer. That move was met with swift pushback from military families, who called for the changes to be reversed.

Virginia lawmakers reach deal on military tuition program

A point of contention throughout the summer has been who should take the credit — or blame — for the changes, as lawmakers met several times attempting to resolve matters. Members from both parties have acknowledged a desire to fix what several deemed a “mistake,” and to study the matter further.

“Clearly, we did this in the budget and quite a few of us didn’t understand the implications,” Sen. Richard Stuart, R-King George, said during a Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee meeting earlier in the day. “We are trying to fix it.”

Enter military spouse Kayla Owen, who’s prodded lawmakers all summer to protect the program.

During public comment at the committee meeting, Owen said that she didn’t feel like the day’s proceedings should be something legislators should pat themselves on the back too much for. While speaking to the committee, she urged lawmakers to stop “sneaking contentious or highly controversial legislation through the budget.”

The statement gave Stuart and Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, pause; they both asked Owen if she’d rather they leave and not pass the bill.

Both in a rebuttal to Owen and in an interview with media after the committee meeting, Lucas stressed that the changes to the program originally stemmed from the governor’s administration.

“Nothing was tucked into my budget,” Lucas said. “The bill came out of the governor’s office. So I just want to make sure I cleared that up.”

Virginia education program cuts for military families spark backlash

Curious about details leading up to the now-repealed changes to the program, Owen has sought internal communications from the governor’s office for insights into how the changes came about in the first place. Despite being a member of a task force Gov. Glenn Youngkin created to study the program and its future sustainability, Owen’s Freedom of Information Act request was denied.

After the legislature’s actions, Youngkin signed the bills and said in a statement he and lawmakers “took the necessary step to reverse and fully repeal changes to VMSDEP and provided significant new funding for the program. We will continue our work to make Virginia the best place for our military, veterans, first responders and their families to live, work, raise a family, and retire.”

Beyond the bills passed Thursday to continue funding the program for two years, Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission will conduct a study and Youngkin’s task force will analyze the program, as well.

Owen said she hopes the situation will encourage lawmakers to stop using the budget to legislate, as changes to VMSDEP done through a standalone bill originally would have been able to undergo a robust committee process. She suggested that the original VMSDEP changes were made “under the cloak of darkness.”

“Everybody’s blaming each other and it’s like that Hamilton song ‘Room Where It Happens’ — nobody else is in the room where it happens!”

With the matter resolved for now, lawmakers will have their eyes on the various groups that are analyzing VMSDEP. As the costs of the program rise, Lucas stressed that lawmakers need to figure out how to make sure it can last for future generations.

“[The passage of bills on Thursday] will allow us to have a solution while we await results from the JLARC study and other groups to ensure that the program is sustainable in the long term,” Lucas said.

When the legislature reconvenes for its 2025 session, it could take up adjustments to the program.

For Owen, who has spearheaded military families’ advocacy for keeping the program, she said Thursday’s actions are “a sigh of relief until January.”

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: [email protected]. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and X.

A federal jury convicted an officer in the Navy Reserves last week for his involvement in a bribery scheme to provide unknown Afghan nationals visas to the United States.

Cmdr. Jeromy Pittmann, 53, a civil engineer corps officer who deployed to Afghanistan in 2014 and 2015 with NATO Special Operations Command, received thousands of dollars for drafting, submitting, and falsely verifying bogus letters of recommendation for Afghan nationals seeking a Special Immigrant Visa that would allow them to live in the U.S., according to the Department of Justice.

The State Department issues a limited number of Special Immigrant Visas to Afghans who assisted U.S. troops and diplomats during the War in Afghanistan and served as translators.

In more than 20 letters, Pittmann claimed that he personally knew and oversaw the Afghan national visa applicants, and asserted they had served as interpreters for the U.S. military and NATO troops. These letters also claimed that these applicant’s lives were endangered by the Taliban, and affirmed his belief that they were not a national security threat to the U.S.

Navy officer charged with taking bribes to provide Afghan refugees with visas

“In reality, Pittmann did not know the applicants and had no basis for recommending them for SIVs,” the Department of Justice said in a news release. “In exchange, Pittmann received several thousands of dollars in bribes.”

“To avoid detection, Pittmann received the bribe money through an intermediary and created false invoices purporting to show that he was receiving the money for legitimate work unrelated to his military service,” the Department of Justice said.

Pittmann commissioned in 2003, and is a civil engineer corps officer, according to service records obtained by Navy Times.

Pittman first appeared in federal court in March 2022 on charges of accepting bribes and conspiring to commit visa fraud. Court documents alleged Pittmann worked with an unnamed co-conspirator in Kabul who solicited Pittmann’s assistance back in February 2018. The documents indicate Pittmann and the co-conspirator met during Pittmann’s deployment to Afghanistan in 2014 and 2015.

The money was wired to Pittmann through a Bank of America account in Hayward, California, and to an account with USAA in Pensacola, Fla., under the label “family support,” according to court documents.

“I got it today. Thank you and thank your friend for sending it,” Pittmann said in an email after receiving a payment in 2018, according to court documents. “I just wish the money would keep coming. Ha. Maybe one day we will get a business started. It would be nice to pay off my debts.”

Pittmann ultimately was convicted of conspiracy to commit bribery and false writing, bribery, false writing, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering, the Justice Department said.

Pittmann’s sentencing is slated for Oct. 21, and he faces up to 45 years behind bars.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated.

An Iran-backed militant group attacked a U.S. base in Iraq Tuesday, the first such attack since at least April, the Pentagon confirmed Thursday.

Two armed air drones flew toward Al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq, Pentagon Spokesperson Sabrina Singh said in a briefing.

American forces shot one down, and the other one hit the base, with “minimal damage,” Singh said.

Singh didn’t say which group launched the attack, except that it was likely one of multiple groups supported by Iran that have all targeted American forces since last fall.

She also did not indicate whether the U.S. would retaliate for the strike, except to say that shooting down one of the drones was itself a response.

It’s not yet clear, Singh said, whether there would be more attacks to come or if this was a one-off.

Since the war in Gaza began last year, following the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, U.S. ground forces in Iraq and Syria have come under fire from Iranian-backed proxies.

From October to February, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq launched regular drone attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, which they said was in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza and were aimed at forcing U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq.

Those attacks halted after three U.S. soldiers were killed in a strike on a base in Jordan, near the Syrian border in late January, prompting U.S. retaliatory strikes in Iraq, including one in central Baghdad that killed a militia commander.

U.S. troops on the ground in those countries have faced more than 100 attacks since October.

Meanwhile, at sea, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched a near-daily barrage of missiles and drones at U.S. Navy ships and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

U.S. forces have intercepted the attacks and also struck Houthi sites in Yemen.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this report misstated the last time Iranian proxies had attacked U.S. ground forces in the Middle East. The last attack before this week’s incident was in April.

MILWAUKEE — Relatives of some of the 13 American service members killed during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan appeared on stage at the Republican National Convention Wednesday in an emotional moment that revived one of the low points of President Joe Biden’s presidency.

Many of the Gold Star families have criticized Biden for never publicly naming their loved ones. On stage Wednesday, one of the family members named each of the 13 service members, and the crowd echoed back each name as it was read aloud.

Here are the names of the 13 US service members killed in Afghanistan attack

“Joe Biden has refused to recognize their sacrifice,” Christy Shamblin, the mother-in-law of Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, told the crowd. “Donald Trump knew all of our children’s names. He knew all of their stories.”

The crowd chanted “Never forget!” and “U.S.A.!” as Trump and the entire convention hall stood.

The display on the RNC’s third day was an implicit response to Biden’s repeated rebukes of Trump and his allegations that the former president doesn’t respect veterans. Biden has often brought up a claim by retired Gen. John Kelly, who was Trump’s chief of staff, that Trump referred to slain World War II soldiers as losers and suckers. Trump denies the allegation.

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“President Biden cares deeply about our service members, their families, and the immense sacrifices they have made,” Adrienne Watson, a National Security Council spokesperson, said in a statement.

“That’s why the President attended the dignified transfer of the 13 brave service members who lost their lives in Afghanistan on August 26, 2021; as well as, of the three who lost their lives in Jordan earlier this year. As he said then and continues to believe now: Our country owes them a great deal of gratitude and a debt that we can never repay, and we will continue to honor their ultimate sacrifice.”

The U.S. service members and 60 Afghans were killed by a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport in August 2021 as the U.S. worked feverishly to evacuate Americans and Afghans who helped the West during two decades of war.

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The parents and loved ones of those service members have been in the political spotlight ever since, appearing before congressional hearings and doing news interviews.

Republicans have claimed that Biden’s decision to remove U.S. soldiers after the two-decade war in Afghanistan was a strictly political move. But the agreement for the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan was signed by Trump’s administration in February 2020. The deal called for American troops to be out by May 2021, but Trump left office that January without leaving a plan in place for the actual withdrawal of forces.

Several months before the peace deal with the Taliban was signed in Doha, Qatar, Trump had contemplated inviting the Taliban leadership to Camp David to sign an agreement. Those plans, which were vehemently objected to by senior military officials, were put on hold after a Taliban attack that killed a U.S. soldier.

Criticism of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan resonates with voters across party lines. Former Biden supporters, such as former New Hampshire House Speaker Steve Shurtleff, have cited the botched withdrawal as one reason why he wants Biden to step aside.

Cooper reported from Phoenix.

The newest chief of staff for The Department of Veterans Affairs was sworn in Wednesday to her role as the top advisor to the VA secretary and deputy secretary.

Margaret “Meg” Kabat was tapped for the job guiding leadership of the cabinet department with a multi-billion dollar budget and hundreds of thousands of employees, after having served in multiple VA advisory positions, an announcement from the department said.

“Meg is a tireless advocate for Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors — and we’re thrilled that she’s going to be helping lead VA in this critical role,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in the statement. “As our next chief of staff, she will undoubtedly continue to positively impact our organization and ensure we deliver on the most sacred mission there is: serving America’s Veterans,” he added.

Kabat succeeds Kimberly Jackson as chief of staff, who announced last month she would step down from the role that she filled after her predecessor, Tanya Bradsher, left to become the VA’s deputy secretary.

Originally from Massachusetts, Kabat had worked as VA’s principal senior advisor since January 2022, and before that as senior advisor for families, caregivers and survivors, according to her department bio.

Previously, Kabat was also a senior director at the consulting firm Atlas Research and a social worker and case manager at National Naval Medical Center, her bio noted. Beginning in 2011, she served in leadership roles in the VA Caregiver Support Program, it added.

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“Serving Veterans, their caregivers, and their loved ones has been the greatest privilege in my career, and I am honored to continue driving our mission forward as VA’s next chief of staff,” Kabat said in the release.

“As the daughter of a Vietnam Veteran and the granddaughter of a World War I and a World War II Veteran, I carry our mission close to my heart,” she added.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has exonerated 256 Black sailors who were found to be unjustly punished in 1944 following a horrific port explosion that killed hundreds of service members and exposed racist double standards among the then-segregated ranks.

On July 17, 1944, munitions being loaded onto a cargo ship detonated, causing secondary blasts that ignited 5,000 tons of explosives at Port Chicago naval weapons station near San Francisco.

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The explosion killed 320 sailors and civilians, nearly 75% of whom were Black, and injured another 400 personnel. Surviving Black sailors had to pick up the human remains and clear the blast site while white officers were granted leave to recuperate.

The pier was a critical ammunition supply site for forces in the Pacific during World War II, and the job of loading those ships was left primarily to Black enlisted sailors overseen by white officers.

Before the explosion, the Black sailors working the dock had expressed concerns about the loading operations. Shortly after the blast, they were ordered to return to loading ships even though no changes had been made to improve their safety.

The sailors refused, saying they needed training on how to more safely handle the bombs before they returned.

What followed affected the rest of their lives, including punishments that kept them from receiving honorable discharges even as the vast majority returned to work at the pier under immense pressure and served throughout the war. Fifty sailors who held fast to their demands for safety and training were tried as a group on charges of conspiracy to commit mutiny and were convicted and sent to prison.

The whole episode was unjust, and none of the sailors received the legal due process they were owed, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said in an interview with The Associated Press.

It was “a horrific situation for those Black sailors that remained,” Del Toro said. The Navy’s office of general counsel reviewed the military judicial proceedings used to punish the sailors and found “there were so many inconsistencies and so many legal violations that came to the forefront,” he said.

Thurgood Marshall, who was then a defense attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, defended the 50 sailors who were convicted of mutiny. Marshall went on to become the first Black justice on the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, the 80th anniversary of the Port Chicago disaster, Del Toro signed paperwork officially clearing the sailors, who are now deceased. Del Toro handed the first pen to Thurgood Marshall Jr., the late justice's son.

The exonerations “are deeply moving,” Marshall Jr. said. “They, of course, are all gone, and that's a painful aspect of it. But so many fought for so long for that kind of fairness and recognition.”

The events have stung surviving family members for decades, but an earlier effort in the 1990s to pardon the sailors fell short. Two additional sailors were previously cleared — one was found mentally incompetent to stand trial, and one was cleared on insufficient evidence. Wednesday’s action goes beyond a pardon and vacates the military judicial proceedings carried out in 1944 against all of the men.

“This decision clears their names and restores their honor and acknowledges the courage that they displayed in the face of immense danger,” Del Toro said.

The racism that the Black sailors faced reflected the military’s views at the time — ranks were segregated, and the Navy had only reluctantly opened some positions it considered less desirable to Black service members.

The official court of inquiry looking into why the explosion occurred cleared all the white officers and praised them for the “great effort” they had to exert to run the dock. It left open the suggestion that the Black sailors were to blame for the accident.

Del Toro’s action converts the discharges to honorable unless there were other circumstances surrounding them. After the Navy upgrades the discharges, surviving family members can work with the Department of Veterans Affairs on past benefits that may be owed, the Navy said.