Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Billboard campaign in military cities connects Iran war to high prices

 

at 8/24/26 8:32am

New billboards have gone up around select military towns that connect the conflict in Iran with an economic impact on American families.VoteVets, a non-profit group and political action organization that largely supports Democrat veteran candidates, launched a 10-day billboard campaign Monday in 10 U.S. cities that features photos of President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on a fiery background. “Trump & Hegseth’s Iran War means higher prices for you with no end in sight,” the signs declare.Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, senior adviser to VoteVets, told Military Times the effort is intended to connect “affordability with accountability,” linking political leaders’ actions with higher costs at the gas pump and grocery stores.“[Service members] tend to be married young with children, and when you allow the cost of living — not just gasoline, but the whole business, grocery stores — … it’s a visible increase in prices that we are bearing,” Eaton said during an interview Friday.Iran and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, killing numerous Iranian leaders, including its top official, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Trump said the strikes were meant to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.“[Iran] attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland,” Trump said in a social media post following the attack.Since the opening salvos, other regional powers have become involved, and the control of the Strait of Hormuz — a vital shipping lane through which roughly 25% of the world’s oil is transported — has fallen into dispute, interrupting maritime commerce.The conflict has caused natural gas and oil prices to swing, affecting prices of the commodities. But Eaton said the billboards also seek to call attention to the rising national debt, which surpassed $40 trillion this week. The national debt limit has doubled in the past decade under President Joe Biden and Trump, growing by $8.4 trillion while Biden was in the White House. When Trump took office in January 2025 that debt was hovering at $36.1 trillion. “That level of accountability to affordability, that linkage is also what we’re trying to make clear to everybody,” Eaton said.The locations of VoteVets’ billboard campaign include: Dayton, Ohio; West Point, New York; Fayetteville, North Carolina; San Antonio, Texas; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Tampa, Florida; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Tomah City, Wisconsin; and Savannah, Georgia.The group’s 1,000-plus digital and static billboards are slated to stay up until Sept. 2.“We are going where veterans and military families are around our nation’s military installations, and underscoring the cost of Trump and Hegseth’s neocon war to them directly,” the group said in a press release.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

— Incidents of sexual assault, harassment continue to drop in US military, report finds

 

at 8/21/26 2:49pm

The estimated number of sexual assaults on U.S. military personnel continued to decline in 2025, extending a downward trend that began in 2023.The Defense Department’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, released Friday, estimated that 20,492 active-duty service members, including 9,860 women and 10,632 men, were sexually assaulted in the year preceding the fiscal year 2025 survey, down from 29,000 in 2023.The 2025 figures represent a drop in sexual assaults from roughly 35,900 in 2021.“The FY 2025 report underscores our ongoing commitment to maintaining high standards, protecting our people, and building a unified, ready, and lethal fighting force,” Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata said in a statement Friday.The assault estimates were derived from the department’s 2025 Workplace Experiences Survey that polls troops on various topics such as sexual assault and harassment, work climate, leadership and training. According to the fiscal year 2025 survey, the estimated rate of assaults dropped among active-duty women from 6.8% to 4.3%, and among active-duty men from 1.4% to 1.0%.At the same time, reports of sexual assaults increased, with 7,998 filed in fiscal year 2025. Given the results of the survey, an estimated one in three individuals filed a formal report of an assault, up from one in four in 2023.Defense Department officials have long encouraged service members to report assaults as a means to address the issue in the ranks. The Pentagon uses the reports metric to help determine whether department and service sexual assault prevention and reporting initiatives are succeeding.“Estimated percentage of victimized service members making Restricted and Unrestricted Reports – desired state is increase,” the report stated.According to the report, the Marine Corps had the highest prevalence of unwanted sexual contact against women, at 6.8% of female Marines. The Navy had the highest prevalence of unwanted contact against men, at 1.5%.The Air Force had the lowest prevalence of unwanted contact reported by its members at 2.8% by women and 0.7% by men.The report noted that a majority of service members trusted their leaders to handle the problem, with 72% of women and 80% of men saying that those involved were “treated fairly.” Trust in the system also has risen since 2023, according to the data, but female members still struggle with confidence in the process. In 2025, 64% of men and 41% of women said they believed the system would protect their privacy, up from 61% and 41%, respectively.69% of men and 45% of women said they trusted the military to ensure their safety after a sexual assault, up from 66% and 43% in 2023.Female service members reportedly expressed more confidence in the resources provided by their sexual assault response coordinators and support team, with more than 60% saying they were satisfied with support from their victim advocates, sexual assault response coordinators and assigned attorneys.Male troops were less satisfied with the services of their sexual assault teams; however, between 36% and 47% expressed confidence in their victim advocates, response coordinators and counsel.The military services were required in 2023 to establish independent legal structures to handle serious crimes, including sexual assault, domestic violence, murder and manslaughter. The Office of Special Trial Counsel directly handles investigations and decisions to prosecute such cases, removing the chain of command from a role it historically held in judicial proceedings.The first survey since the Office of Special Trial Counsel’s creation found that men were “significantly more likely” than women to trust that the office would treat them fairly if they were to experience a sexual assault, with 65% of men reporting favorably. Just 44% of women expressed the same confidence, however.In the past, service members have hesitated to report incidents of sexual assault out of fear of retaliation from their leadership, peers and/or perpetrator. A 2021 study found that 31% of men and 28% of women said they experienced retaliation after a sexual assault.The report released Friday found that retaliation continues to be a concern. Among women service members who indicated an experience of Unwanted Sexual Contact (USC), 17% reported saying they experienced retaliation prohibited by law. For both men and women, one of the most common reasons for not coming forward was “worrying about backlash from coworkers and peers.”Along with the decrease in sexual assault, the prevalence of sexual harassment also declined among men and women. An estimated 4.4%, or 44,656 service members, said they experienced sexual harassment, down from 5.8% in 2023. Among women, 17.5%, or 39,744 service members, said they experienced sexual harassment, down from 24.7% in 2023.Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group dedicated to promoting equality and ending sexual assault in the ranks, said Friday that its analysis of the 2025 data found that service members experienced 38% more unwanted sexual contacts than a decade ago. The group also noted that the 4.3% rate of sexual assault among military women in 2025 was the same as the rate reported in 2016.The Defense Department cautions that the survey measure was substantially revised in 2021 and that prevalence estimates from 2021 onward cannot be scientifically compared with estimates from earlier years.The rate among men, at 1%, was higher than the 2018 rate of 0.7%, the group noted.The advocates said they have heard from personnel whose prosecutions never occurred or whose evidence and documents were lost, and victims were pushed out of the military without proper medical care, including mental health treatment.“I wouldn’t take these numbers at face value, and neither should the American public. They are not what we are seeing,“ said Protect Our Defenders Senior Vice President Josh Connolly. “Survivors are more afraid to come forward than they were two years ago, and this administration has spent the past year giving them reason to be – rolling back whistleblower protections, making it harder to report anonymously, warning people who come forward that they may be punished for it. A number that falls because people stopped talking is not progress,” Connolly said.In the report, department officials attributed the decline to numerous changes they have made to address sexual assault and harassment in the ranks, which they called harmful behaviors that “act as internal adversaries, eroding the very foundation of our operational readiness and unit lethality.”According to the department, the DoD assessed Sexual Assault and Prevention and Reporting Offices in Indo-Pacific Command in 2025, engaged at joint bases to improve collaboration across the services, conducted unit evaluations and standardized the workforce to address issues with the program.“Dignity, respect, and discipline are foundational to the warrior ethos and the overall preparedness of the force. Sexual assault and sexual harassment undermine these values, eroding trust and threatening the mission,” Tata said in the release.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

— Some military barracks ‘chronically neglected’ due to $285 billion in maintenance backlogs, GAO finds

 

at 8/21/26 1:05pm

The Department of Defense does not request enough funding to fully meet its installation maintenance and major improvement needs, a Government Accountability Office report found.The department sought to fund 90% of its maintenance needs, but the GAO found that the services continue to request funding for only about 80% of their needs, according to the report released Friday. The funding shortfall led to an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.“DOD has not fully determined the risks to its mission and to the quality of life of its personnel as a result of not meeting its funding goal,” the report reads. “Fully determining and communicating these risks would provide better information to DOD and Congress to weigh budget priorities.”GAO authors examined Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force military installations across the U.S. and its territories for this report.The report found that the department does not request the full amount of maintenance funding as recommended by its Facilities Sustainment Model, which estimates the average annual sustainment funding requirement for facilities based on their size, location and other factors.This contributed to the increased backlog of deferred maintenance needs. Even though in 2014 an Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics memorandum was issued to establish a goal of funding regular maintenance at 90% or higher of the amount estimated by the Facilities Sustainment Model, the GAO continues to find that the services are not meeting that goal.Instead, the Army, Navy and Air Force requested about 80% for fiscal years 2017 through 2020. The Marine Corps requested funding decreased from 80% to 40% over the past five fiscal years, opting to fund more facility restoration and modernization projects in exchange for reduced sustainment funding, the report says.Maintenance and improvement projects’ backlogs can contribute to service members’ quality of life and negatively affect installations’ missions.“By requesting less funding for installation maintenance and improvement projects than its models and experts recommend, DOD has chosen to accept some degree of risk that mission or quality of life will be negatively affected,” the report says.In past reports, the GAO has found that barracks maintenance were “chronically neglected” and resulted in poor conditions of enlisted service members that affected their quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in substandard barracks, with some hosting potentially serious health and safety risks, a 2023 report found.Of the 31 recommendations issued in 2023, the department implemented 19 as of April 2026. But many remain unaddressed, such as establishing an oversight structure for barracks, the report says.The GAO found that challenges in hiring and retaining key maintenance workers are seen in remote and isolated locations and other obstacles include private sector employment competition as well as federal hiring, pay and work eligibility practices.Military departments have not fully identified the extent of maintenance workforce shortages or created plans to address the hurdles. The GAO also found that installations rely on maintenance work order data systems to respond to needs, but the tracking is limited and the data is generally unreliable for determining the effectiveness of maintenance performed across the services.In the report, the GAO made 13 recommendations, including strengthening departmental oversight, determining risks associated with funding maintenance below levels proposed and improving maintenance data reliability.The department fully or partially concurred with 12 recommendations and did not concur with one.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

— US Navy leads multinational effort for next-gen SeaSparrow missile

 

at 8/20/26 2:23pm

The U.S. Navy is leading a multinational effort to develop a new version of the Evolved SeaSparrow air defense missile.The goal is to create a variant of the SeaSparrow that can be used by the 12 nations in the NATO SeaSparrow Project Office consortium, or NSPO, according to the Navy Sources Sought notice. The deadline is Oct. 19.The NSPO is looking for a weapon that can be employed against a wide variety of threats. The NSV SeaSparrow “should have capability against current and future threat classes spanning a variety of threat characteristics including velocity (low-speed to high-speed), altitude (sea skimming to high diver), maneuverability (non-maneuvering to high Gravitational (G)-Force maneuvers), and signatures,” the Navy said.The NSV is also meant to defend the fleet against massed salvos of missiles and function despite jamming. The weapon “should be able to work in complex natural, contested, Radio Frequency (RF), Electro-Optical (EO), and/or Infrared (IR) environments.”“The missile should have the capability to discriminate and resolve between multiple closely spaced targets and provide threat-track measurements to support missile guidance, navigation and lethality functions,” the Sources Sought notice continues. “The missile should have the capability to handle threat countermeasures.”The notice included a graphic that appeared to depict surface ships — including two aircraft carriers — being targeted by a dozen missiles and torpedoes, plus a hostile fixed-wing aircraft and a helicopter. The friendly ships appeared to be using active illumination to paint some threats, while the SeaSparrow used its on-board sensors to intercept others.NSPO seeks a modular, open-source design that would give the U.S. government “maximum rights in technical data, computer software, and computer software documentation (including source code), design artifacts, and interface specifications.”“This approach will simplify future upgrades, promote interoperability across consortium platforms, and outpace evolving threats,” the notice said. The NSPO wants contractors who can provide a complete missile system, including airframe, propulsion, guidance and software. The missile should have no more than a 10-inch diameter and fit inside a Mark 41 vertical launch tube.The Sources Sought notice emphasized that the missile and its technical data should be releasable to the entire NATO SEASPARROW Consortium: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the U.S. Other users include Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.The Block II RIM-162 Evolved SeaSparrow is currently manufactured by Raytheon, which doubled production to more than 350 missiles in 2025. Amid naval operations in the Persian Gulf, where Iran has launched numerous missiles and drones against dwindling stocks of U.S. and allied interceptors, future demand for short-range air defense weapons is likely to be brisk.First fielded in 2004, the Evolved SeaSparrow is descended from the 1950s AIM-7 Sparrow radar-guided air-to-air missile. Though the original Sparrow had a mixed combat record as an aerial combat weapon in the Vietnam War, the Evolved SeaSparrow was intended as a low-cost defense against anti-ship missiles, aircraft, helicopters and fast attack boats. The current version has an estimated range of around 30 miles.

[Category: / MilTech] [Link to media]

— He earned the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. Why did it take decades to receive it?

 

at 8/20/26 2:00pm

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.Inside an office building in West Los Angeles, retired Marine Maj. James Capers Jr. stood tall and strong in his signature spit-shined black cowboy boots. Under the shadow of a red Force Recon Association hat and tinted glasses, Capers’ eyes wore a hardened look that made no effort to hide the darkness and despair that gripped him at that moment. It was the fall of 2009, and Capers had come in search of a new mission. As the enlisted chief of the Marine Corps’ Hollywood liaison office, I’d been advised that Capers had been recommended for the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam 42 years earlier, and he would likely soon become the first Black Marine officer to receive the nation’s highest award for battlefield valor. Our job was to support the major as he made the move from North Carolina to California, where he planned to complete his memoir and share his story in Hollywood. I expected to meet a larger-than-life warrior. Instead, I met a soft-spoken, humble man who was grief-stricken over the recent loss of his wife to cancer. His eyes told the story of a wounded soul. At the time, I had no idea I was meeting him in the middle of what would become one of the longest Medal of Honor fights in American history.That fight finally ended in June at the White House after President Donald Trump clasped a powder blue ribbon around Capers’ neck and straightened the gold, star-shaped medal over his chest. The ceremony concluded a nearly 20-year struggle that profoundly shaped the latter decades of Caper’s life — a trial marked by devastating grief, institutional rejection, deteriorating health, and extraordinary perseverance.“Jim, the nation kept you waiting far too long,” Trump said at the ceremony. “So I say to you, congratulations. You made it.”The moment was the culmination of a push to recognize Capers that began in 2007 after a general at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, initiated an investigation to determine if Capers and others who served in Vietnam with 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company in 1966 and 1967 should be considered for valor awards or upgrades to medals they had already received. The elite special operations detachment, which fought in the rice paddies and triple-canopy jungles of Southeast Asia, had come to be known as “the lost detachment” because administrative records of their exploits were lost for years. After reviewing detailed records and accounts of Capers’ bravery and combat leadership in Vietnam, the general, James L. Williams, believed Capers’ actions were worthy of the Medal of Honor. ‘I had to make sure I kept my troops alive’Capers is a legend of the Marine Corps’ elite Force Reconnaissance community. In his first enlistment in the infantry, Capers stormed a beach south of Beirut, Lebanon, in 1958, with 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines. After that deployment, he tried out and was selected for duty with the 1st Force Reconnaissance Company.In 1965, he volunteered for duty in Vietnam with the newly formed 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company and was placed in charge of an all-white platoon of 20 men. Walter J. Doroski, who served as Capers’ point man in Vietnam, recalled the day he met his new platoon sergeant. “He stood with confidence and an ominous charisma,” Doroski said in a statement. “In a deep, clear, but not loud voice, he said, ‘Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. I am Staff Sgt. Capers, and we will be the absolute best platoon in this company, which will make us the best platoon of Marines in the world.’ … For the next 18 months, I never knew of anyone who questioned his authority or leadership.”From August 1966 to early April 1967, Capers led dozens of long-range reconnaissance patrols deep behind enemy lines. In his first missions in Vietnam, Capers led combat diver teams in shark-infested waters, searching the hull of the USS Boxer for enemy mines and saboteurs while it was docked at ports in Nha Trang and Qui Nhon. In August and September, Capers and his men endured intense combat during Operations Deckhouse III and IV. When an infantry unit was trapped and isolated by the enemy, Capers led a rescue mission to get the Marines out of the kill zone under fire. He also assumed command of another reconnaissance platoon after its commander was killed in action.“I wasn’t afraid because I had a job to do, and my job was to lead and to look out for my guys,” Capers said later of the Deckhouse operations. Then, in late November 1966, Capers and his team were tasked with locating and assessing the wreckage of a downed aircraft. After they gathered critical intelligence from the crash site of the B-57 Canberra bomber, torrential rains prevented the team’s helicopter extraction, leaving the lightly armed patrol isolated with limited food and ammunition. When extraction proved impossible, Capers gathered his men. “We can’t stay here,” he told them. “If we do, we’ll die. … Saddle up. We’re walking off of this damn mountain.” As the downpour continued for several days, Capers led his Marines on a grueling 9-kilometer hike through rugged mountains, flooded rivers, triple-canopy jungle, and two minefields, consistently outmaneuvering enemy forces to make it safely back to friendly lines. Capers was still exhausted from the mission when he learned he would no longer be the platoon sergeant. On Nov. 30, 1966, he received a battlefield commission — a rare honor given to only 63 enlisted men in Vietnam — and was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant. Still, Capers understood that any failure could reinforce racist beliefs about whether Black Marines should become officers.“Had I drowned on a dive mission, or had I made the wrong decision, then it would have given the naysayers fodder for saying, ‘We knew we shouldn’t commission those guys.’ So I couldn’t fail,” Capers said. “I had to succeed. … I had to make sure I kept my troops alive.”Capers earned a Bronze Star with “V” for his actions in January 1967 while serving as assistant patrol leader for a top-secret mission to locate and liberate prisoners of war from a Viet Cong prison camp more than 20 miles behind enemy lines. After completing that mission, he was sent to Khe Sanh, where he and his Marines patrolled the jungle around the combat outpost, moving like ghosts and killing dozens of enemy soldiers in a near-constant rotation of patrols that Capers coordinated, oversaw, and frequently led.On one mission, Capers and his team — named Team Broadminded for their tactical efficiency — killed around 15 enemy soldiers. On the chopper back to Khe Sanh, the team was subdued.“There was no backslapping,” Capers recalled. “For us, death and killing had become business as usual.” It was just one of many patrols through the jungle that ended in savage close combat.“You play God,” Capers said in 2009. “And you cover it up by saying, ‘In the interest of national defense — kill him before he kills me.’” The last patrolBy March 1967, the Marines of 3rd Force Recon in Vietnam had likely killed or wounded hundreds of enemy soldiers, but many of the 39 Marines who originally deployed in April 1966 had become casualties themselves. The survivors were battle-fatigued, short-handed, and waiting to be relieved by another force reconnaissance unit when Capers was given orders to locate a suspected North Vietnamese regimental base camp near Phu Loc.He gathered Broadminded’s core members — Ron Yerman, Capers’ trusted assistant team leader and first radio operator; Sgt. Richard Crepeau, another seasoned sergeant and the team’s second radio operator; and Billy Ray “Doc” Smith, the team’s medical corpsman. “He asked us if we would volunteer to go on our last combat patrol into an almost impossible situation,” Crepeau recalled. “He said, ‘I’ve been ordered to go, but you don’t have to.’”The sergeants and the corpsman looked at each other. There was no question.“Where you go, we go,” Crepeau said. Over the four days the patrol lasted, Broadminded got into several firefights. During one engagement, Capers called for fire on an enemy position, which stopped an attack on the unit they were supporting — M Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment.The team found four booby-trapped trails — likely ambush sites — which Capers reported to the M Company commander, who then ordered Capers to take his team back through the sites. Capers and his men knew the commander was essentially using their reconnaissance team as bait to flush out the enemy forces so the regular infantry could swoop in for the kind of large battle the big-brass strategy demanded at the time. On the last day of the patrol, April 3, Capers and his nine-man team maneuvered slowly and carefully, identifying and withdrawing from three ambush sites. As the team was about to withdraw from a fourth, the team’s war dog, King, alerted. Then the claymore mines detonated. A massive, nightmarish explosion swallowed the team in a shockwave of steel balls that punched through limbs and torsos. More than a dozen North Vietnamese soldiers opened fire from two directions with rifles, machine guns, and grenades, wounding every member of the team. The initial blast killed King and knocked Capers against a tree, leaving his body punctured in 14 places and right leg broken. As the whole team fought for their lives, Yerman, one of the only Marines with relatively minor wounds, crawled over to Capers. “We’re all down, sir!” Yerman yelled. “But we can still fight!”Capers ordered Yerman to redistribute the team’s ammo and pull the injured men into a tight perimeter. Smith, bleeding from his neck and face, sprinted from man to man, treating and dressing their wounds. Capers kept firing his rifle and throwing grenades as he shouted orders.Smith gave Capers a shot of morphine and then darted away to treat the other Marines. As Yerman called for help from the grunts and worked on getting medical evacuation helicopters inbound, Capers ordered Crepeau to call in mortars dangerously close to the Marines’ position — a risky gamble that silenced the enemy guns.“We’re not going to die on this trail,” Capers told his men. “We’re going home, and we’re going home like Marines.” With help from the line grunts, Team Broadminded hobbled down a winding, rain-swept trail toward the helicopter landing zone. Capers used his rifle like a cane and limped along, blood sloshing in his jungle boots. At the landing zone, with bullets whipping and cracking around them, Capers — barely clinging to consciousness — refused to board the helicopter until every last man, and his dog’s body, was aboard. When the aircraft struggled to take off under the weight of its load, Capers yelled to the crew chief, “It’s no good,” and tried to sacrifice himself by exiting the aircraft so it could get into the air. The crew chief pulled him back inside — twice — before the pilot managed to gain some speed and lift off. As the Marines lay recovering in the field hospital later, 3rd Marine Division Commander Maj. Gen. Bruno Hochmuth visited Capers and his men. Hochmuth knelt down beside Capers’ bed and patted his head. “You did a good job, son,” Capers remembered him saying. “You guys did a real good job out there, and you’ll be hearing from us.” Seven months later, Hochmuth was killed in a helicopter crash. In the dozens of combat patrols Capers had led, he’d never been caught in an ambush. His record was a point of pride. Perfection was the standard. “After Phu Loc, the thought never occurred to me that I might deserve a medal, because I felt like I had failed,” Capers said.A hero’s odyssey In 2007, the administrative staff at 2nd Marine Division began a years-long process of gathering witness statements, officer endorsements, and other official documents before sending medal recommendations to the Marine Corps Awards Branch on behalf of Capers and several other “lost detachment” Marines. Lt. Col. Gary Wilder, Capers’ battalion commander in Vietnam until February 1967, recommended Capers for the Medal of Honor for his actions during the last patrol at Phu Loc between March 31 and April 3. The Marine Corps kicked back the award recommendation in March 2008, citing procedural errors, including the fact that Wilder and Capt. Ken Jordan, who served as Capers’ detachment commander until three days before the Phu Loc patrol, were technically ineligible to initiate the recommendation for Capers’ medal. The four-day timeframe also overlapped with the Bronze Star with “V” that Capers received as an “end of tour” award covering his entire Vietnam deployment — though that award summary did not capture most of the details of the Phu Loc patrol. The team at 2nd Marine Division regrouped and revised their recommendation, tracking down the correct officers from Capers’ chain of command, obtaining their signed recommendations for Capers’ actions at Phu Loc, and addressing other discrepancies. As Capers endured a whirlwind of intense scrutiny during that time, he was forced to confront painful memories and long-dormant demons.“I was stripped down, and all my scars were measured. I answered many questions from investigators,” Capers said. “[They] asked me about the battle of Phu Loc and all the various missions I was involved in.”“I resented those guys questioning my integrity or my battlefield competence when they had never shed blood as I had.” When he got fed up with what he perceived as a callous approach by the doctors and investigators, Capers thought about two things. The first was his men. He focused on the effort to get them medals and upgrades for their actions in Vietnam. The other thing that kept Capers going was his wife, Dottie. “Dottie was the only woman I ever loved from the time I was 15 years old,” he says. “She was my rock.” But in June 2009, in the midst of the whole ordeal, Capers lost his rock. A week after their 50th wedding anniversary, he said goodbye to Dottie in a hospital room in North Carolina after a battle with cancer. He slipped her wedding ring gently off her finger and whispered through tears, “I kept my word.”Dottie was buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to Capers and Dottie’s only son, Gary, who was born blind and mentally handicapped and died at 44 in 2003. With his family gone, Capers was lost in grief, and his friends and loved ones could see it. “I loved her so much. … I was the luckiest man in the world,” Capers said in November 2009. “But now I’m a widower. And my life, as I knew it, has ended, basically. ” After Dottie passed, Williams, who served with Capers in the 1970s and remains close to him, connected Capers with a manager in Los Angeles and urged him to publish his memoir and pursue a documentary or feature film about his extraordinary life. The general had been inspired to join the Marine Corps, in part, after seeing Capers on a recruiting poster in his dress blues with a chest full of medals. So Capers, still deep in grief and in need of a new focus, left the small military town of Jacksonville, North Carolina, and settled in Santa Monica, California. It was practically the other side of the universe for him. As he met with producers and writers, nearly everyone placed this measurement on Capers’ life story: With the Medal of Honor approved, Capers was Hollywood gold. Without it, he was unmarketable. In 2010, Capers said he received a letter from the Pentagon telling him he would be awarded the Silver Star Medal — a downgrade of two levels for which no explanation was given. The processes that led to that decision remain a mystery. “We may never be able to piece together how that decision was made,” Dwight Mears, a historian who has spent decades investigating and writing about Medal of Honor standards, told The War Horse. “It’s a system that’s very mercurial. It’s not very transparent. You’re basically asking an organization to be transparent about something that may not make it look good.” Capers was awarded the Silver Star on Oct. 27, 2010, during a ceremony at the officer’s club on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. Yerman, Crepeau, Smith, and John Moran, the dog handler on the Phu Loc patrol, also received the Bronze Star that day for their valor during the ambush. “In the description for the Medal of Honor, it says that your deed has to be so significant that you don’t consider your own life,” Yerman, who accompanied Capers on more patrols in Vietnam than any other man, said in 2010. “He didn’t ever consider his own life when he was out there. … His whole life was dedicated to Marines.” At the ceremony, Maj. Gen. Paul E. Lefebvre, then commander of Marine Forces Special Operations Command, called Capers “the spiritual founder of Marine Corps special operations.” Hours before the Silver Star ceremony, Navy Adm. Eric Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, inducted Capers into SOCOM’s Commando Hall of Honor, enshrining Capers’ legacy as a leader, innovator, and hero in the Marine special operations community.Capers accepted the Silver Star with grace and humility. But when he returned to Los Angeles, he struggled. His health began to fail. After a long stay in the hospital, Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Bailey, a close friend and commanding general of 1st Marine Division, had Capers moved to Oceanside, where he slowly got better. He moved into an apartment and reconnected with James Dixon III, the corporal who worked obsessively for more than a year helping to prepare awards packages for Capers and his men. Dixon moved in with Capers and helped him with his memoir while trying to reignite the effort to award him the Medal of Honor. But Dixon died tragically in 2012. Alone and reeling from another loss, Capers moved back to Jacksonville. “I’d lost everything important to me,” Capers said of that time. “I guess I bought into the idea that the award was bigger than me because I needed to.”‘A very subjective award’For years, supporters tried unsuccessfully to persuade the military to reconsider Capers’ Silver Star. From 2010 to 2019, retired Marine Col. Phil Smith led efforts through the Force Recon Association to reopen the case. None succeeded. The Pentagon had shown that old valor awards could be reconsidered. In 2014, President Barack Obama presented the Medal of Honor to 24 soldiers from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam whose heroism had been overlooked because of racial discrimination. The award upgrades followed a congressionally mandated review that took 12 years. No Marine medals were upgraded. “The Medal of Honor is a very subjective award that depends very much on how well we tell the story,” Doug Sterner, an archivist and expert on military valor awards, told me in 2015.Capers’ story gradually reached a wider audience. In 2015, I published an investigative feature about him in Maxim magazine, and Capers published his memoir, “Faith Through the Storm: Memoirs of Major James Capers Jr.” in 2018. A documentary about Team Broadminded followed later. In 2021, Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Greg Murphy of North Carolina called for a review of an updated recommendation supported by new witness statements. Both lawmakers represented places closely tied to Capers: Norman’s district includes Bishopville, where Capers was born into a sharecropping family in 1937, and Murphy represented Jacksonville, where Capers lives. But then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro denied the recommendation, citing regulations that “preclude reconsideration of any previously approved personal decoration for upgrade to the Medal of Honor unless new, substantive, and relevant material evidence is presented.” Norman then introduced legislation in 2022 and again in 2023 that would have authorized the president to award Capers the medal. Neither effort advanced. By then, supporters had concluded that another appeal through normal military channels was unlikely to succeed.In 2024, retired Marine Lt. Col. David “Bull” Gurfein, who now serves as a senior Defense Department advisor, took over the campaign with board support from his nonprofit United American Patriots. After Gurfein learned of Capers’ story, he offered to lead a new strategic campaign that combined historical research, congressional lobbying, public pressure, and endorsements from senior military leaders. “Many senior military leaders believed Capers deserved the Medal of Honor, but few believed he would ever receive it,” Gurfein told The War Horse. “We refused to accept that as a rational conclusion.” Gurfein led a coalition that expanded upon research begun by Williams, gathering original records and examining why earlier efforts had failed. The coalition worked to push Capers’ story into public view. They circulated petitions urging President Trump to award Capers the medal while he was still alive. The major’s heroism was touted in news reports, opinion pieces, podcasts, and on social media. A 2025 interview with Capers on the Shawn Ryan Show garnered more than 1.7 million views on YouTube. “We were able to finally get this done through a combination of getting the right people in the right place and having the influence to constantly keep Maj. Capers’ name trending,” said Ruben Ayala, co-founder of BLK-OPS Foundation, which supported the campaign. “As people saw all of the injustices throughout the years of not being able to get this right, they joined the fight.”Another key victory came after retired Marine Sgt. Maj. Bryan Battaglia, a former senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, organized a letter to Trump supporting Capers that was signed by 133 retired senior enlisted leaders. A second letter was sent to the Commandant of the Marine Corps with signatures from four former sergeants major of the Marine Corps. In February 2025, Norman secured a similar letter to Trump signed by 47 members of Congress, including six senators. Norman then introduced legislation waiving the five-year deadline that ordinarily limits consideration of Medal of Honor recommendations. The bill passed both chambers by unanimous consent. Williams credited Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as a key supporter of the legislation who helped push it across the finish line. “Sen. Graham was absolutely a great supporter and a champion in this process,” Williams said after Graham’s unexpected death on July 11. “He did what he normally does: He strong-armed everybody on Capitol Hill.”The campaign gained additional support inside the administration. During an August 2025 White House dinner honoring Purple Heart recipients, Capers met Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and spoke with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins. Collins later endorsed the effort in a letter to Hegseth’s senior staff. The effort seemed to reach a critical mass of support after Hegseth presented Capers with Fox Nation’s Salute to Service Award in front of a large national audience in November.President Trump signed Norman’s bill into law on March 26. On June 18, 59 years after his actions at Phu Loc, Capers became the first Black Marine officer to receive the Medal of Honor. ‘Destiny’On a hot June afternoon in Washington, two Marines helped the 88-year-old warrior rise and navigate a couple steps onto a stage at the White House, where President Trump hooked his right arm around Capers’ left and helped him stand tall. Then a military member spoke the words that Capers, and all who had advocated for him, had waited decades to hear: “The President of the United States, in the name of the Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to 2nd Lt. James Capers Jr., United States Marine Corps.” After securing the medal around Capers’ neck, the president put his arm around him, pulling him close and smiling to the gathered guests, who erupted in applause and cheers. Capers stood there, beaming along with the president, flooded with the joy and validation of the moment. “He has always been an unwavering example of strength, courage and grace,” Renee White, Capers’ niece and one of his only living relatives, said in a statement. “While my heart aches that his beloved wife, my Aunt Dottie, and their son, my cousin Gary, are not here to share in this historic day, I know they, along with his parents and siblings, are looking down with immense love and pride.”After the ceremony, Capers attended a nearby reception. As he rolled into the venue, a huge crowd of friends, family members, and supporters gave him a long overdue hero’s welcome, showering him with love and admiration. “The award represented the culmination of decades of patience by Capers and years of disciplined research, principled advocacy, and broad-based collaboration by hundreds of individuals committed to ensuring that the historical record was finally set right,” Gurfein said.The following day — on Juneteenth — Capers was inducted into the Pentagon Hall of Heroes along with Marine Col. John Ripley, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor the day before. “Your applause reminds me of some dark days — of some brave men who are not here today. So I’ll speak for them,” Capers said at the ceremony. “This is the greatest country in the world. I fought for that flag. I believed in it.” In 1943, Capers’ family fled the Jim Crow South to Baltimore, Maryland. Four of his seven brothers and sisters died before age 10. When Capers enlisted in the Marines in 1956, his father drove him to the train station and explained that he would always have to perform better than his peers if he wanted to succeed. “The Marine Corps did not welcome individuals like me,” Capers said. “But the hierarchy thought, ‘If he’s got the skills, at least give [him] the chance to try.’ That’s all I really wanted.”Capers rolled in his wheelchair alongside close friends and family members down a long Pentagon hallway as hundreds of friends, supporters, and distinguished guests gave a long overdue hero’s reception. As he stared up with a proud smile at a sea of applauding admirers, he reached out to shake hands and expressed his thanks with a sharp salute. When he reached the Pentagon Hall of Heroes, Capers located his name, newly printed on the wall. Afterward, Lt. Gen. Melvin “Jerry” Carter expressed how it felt to see Capers awarded with America’s highest honor and what his legacy means. “There would be no three-star African-American generals in the Marine Corps if it wasn’t for the leadership and contributions from men like [Maj. Capers],” said Carter, who currently serves as an advisor to the director of national intelligence. “I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, and our reconnaissance community certainly wouldn’t be as far as it is today without Maj. Capers. … We’re honored [and] pleased that he’s here today with us.”Theodore Roosevelt Britton Jr., a 100-year-old Montford Point Marine and former American ambassador to Grenada and Barbados, was elated to witness his good friend’s induction into the Hall of Heroes.“Maj. Capers epitomizes everything that we [Montford Point Marines] could have aspired to. … To see how far we have come is really wonderful,” Britton said afterward.For Capers, it was a proud and cathartic experience that was somewhat bittersweet. “I’m a little bit sad because there are a lot of my troops that are not here, but I’m here because of them,” he said in Washington the day he received the Medal of Honor. Yerman and Crepeau, who both testified to Capers’ unparalleled combat prowess and leadership in Vietnam, never lived to see their former platoon leader receive the medal they believed he deserved. “Had they not been along with me, I wouldn’t have made it.” When I asked Capers what finally receiving the medal means to him, he thought for a second and calmly breathed out one word. “Destiny,” he said, pausing for a moment. “It took a long time to get here. … It means a lot.”This War Horse article was edited by Paul Szoldra, fact-checked by June Strange and Paul Szoldra, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

[Category: Veterans] [Link to media]

— Thousands of soldiers now roam Washington’s streets. They seldom stop crime.

 

at 8/20/26 9:24am

Well past midnight one day this spring, three police officers pulled up to a nightclub where a man was stomping on a young woman lying on the sidewalk.The officers stopped the attack and arrested him, according to a police report. It was the kind of assault police might encounter on almost any night in almost any city.But one detail stood out to police officer Xavier Jimenez, who wrote the report: “There was approximately 15 national guard members in the area on routine patrol who did not take any action.”President Donald Trump deployed thousands of National Guard troops to Washington last summer as the centerpiece of what he describes as a no-holds-barred effort to combat crime, especially in cities run by Democrats. Every day, small clots of soldiers in camouflage and body armor patrol tourist-heavy areas of the U.S. capital, including national monuments, subway stations and the area around its professional baseball park.What the soldiers seldom do, Reuters found, is fight crime.Since their arrival last August, the National Guard soldiers Trump ordered to Washington have been mentioned in only a tiny fraction — about 1.3% — of the criminal cases filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which handles nearly all the city’s criminal prosecutions. In dozens of cases, the soldiers appear not as people making the arrests but as victims of crime.The roughly 4,500 soldiers currently deployed to Washington outnumber its 3,200 police officers. And they cost more: The Trump administration last year told Congress that sending guardsmen to the capital cost about $1.65 million a day — before officials doubled the number of troops this summer. The city’s most recent police budget was about $1.5 million daily.The administration told Congress it plans to keep sending soldiers to Washington — though it has not said how many — until the end of Trump’s presidency in 2029 at a cost of $1.4 billion.To gauge the impact of that deployment, Reuters reviewed every publicly available charging document filed in Superior Court and interviewed lawyers, residents, service members and others who are familiar with their work.The soldiers mostly responded to minor incidents in neighborhoods that are wealthier, whiter and less dangerous than the rest of the capital, Reuters found after comparing court records to the city’s demographics and crime information. Reuters could find no reference in court records to soldiers doing any kind of law enforcement in the neighborhoods where about 82% of the city’s 859 murders occurred over the past five years.The White House did not respond to questions about soldiers’ work. Spokeswoman Lauren Bis said Trump’s efforts in the city have “driven down crime, beautified the city, and improved quality of life for countless individuals.”D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has called the deployment “problematic,” declined to comment, as did the city’s police department.The National Guard task force managing the Washington deployment did not respond to questions about its work or its cost. A spokeswoman, Leona Hendrickson, said soldiers were too busy to be interviewed.Although soldiers have sometimes broken up fights or assaults, many of the crimes for which they detained people have been minor. In October, soldiers chased down a man who had taken two slices of pizza and offered $2 as partial payment, according to police records. A week later, they stopped a man who threw a rock at a bus. In April, they detained a man who allegedly stole two beef jerky sticks worth about $7 from a pharmacy, according to the report. Last month, six soldiers held a woman who drank a bottle of root beer without paying.The Rev. William Young, who lives in the Navy Yard neighborhood where soldiers patrol frequently, laughed when asked whether the troops made him feel safer. “It’s a way of keeping fear in all of us,” he said. “This is not how a capital of democracy should be protected, by having soldiers marching to protect the streets.”‘THEY COULD HAVE DONE MORE’Reuters found 217 criminal cases in Washington in which police mentioned the involvement of the National Guard. In about a quarter of them, 62 cases, soldiers single-handedly stopped people suspected of a crime, often for things like shoplifting or jumping turnstiles to avoid paying subway fare. In another 43 cases, soldiers helped police officers arrest someone.Videos obtained by community groups also show troops in groups of 20 or more stationed outside subway stations at night, blocking teens from descending the escalators to enforce a city curfew.“It’s like they brought people here from all across the country, just to be here. And they harass people a lot more than they are actually doing police work,” said the Rev. Norman Nixon, the pastor of the Union Temple Baptist Church.Although the guardsmen have been deputized as U.S. Marshals, according to government records, they have limited law-enforcement power. The Defense Department has described their work as “presence patrols,” a show of force meant to deter crime rather than respond to it. They can detain suspects, but then must call police officers to make a formal arrest.Court records describe 35 instances in which the troops were witnesses to crimes, sometimes simply watching until police officers arrived. They have told officers about a drug deal, a man urinating in public, another who exposed himself to a subway policeman and two men writing with chalk on a monument outside the city’s train station, one of them wearing a banana costume.Evelyn Jones said she wonders whether soldiers could have saved her nephew, Keon Jones, who was stabbed to death in April near a trendy strip of hotels and restaurants on the city’s waterfront.The soldiers called emergency services after finding Jones unresponsive after a fight. They later told police they thought Jones was merely intoxicated. They did not realize, until after officers reached the scene, that he had been stabbed so severely his intestines were spilling out. He died in hospital about two hours later.“They could have done more to help him,” his aunt said.The service members themselves have often been victims, a fact underscored last year when two soldiers from West Virginia were shot not far from the White House, killing one of them.Reuters found 62 cases in which people were charged with pushing, punching or threatening soldiers. Nine were accused of spitting on the soldiers. One man allegedly tried to grab a soldier’s pistol as the soldier tried to arrest him for stealing baseball caps in a subway station. Another man was charged after he told a group of soldiers that he wanted to “shoot you, in between your balls, with a bazooka,” according to a police report.And twice, police in Washington arrested off-duty soldiers for violating the city’s firearms laws, though the U.S. Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against both of them.This summer, they took on a new mission: guarding the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which the Trump administration spent millions of dollars to renovate, only to see it turn green with algae as its liner peeled away. Trump claimed the pool was sabotaged by vandals. But U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro eventually conceded that a government contractor “botched” the job.PATROLLING SAFER NEIGHBORHOODSThe U.S. has long used National Guard soldiers to respond to disasters, help secure major events like the Super Bowl and occasionally quell riots, but they haven’t been used for everyday crime-fighting. Trump also authorized smaller deployments in Memphis and New Orleans and has mused about sending soldiers to other cities.“You do not want armed soldiers on the streets of America,” said Gen. Randy Manner, who retired in 2012 as the second-in-command of the National Guard Bureau. He said soldiers are ill-prepared for police work and more expensive than hiring more police officers.Determining the soldiers’ impact on crime in Washington is not straightforward. In addition to the soldiers, the Trump administration sent hundreds of extra federal agents into the city, who largely functioned as local police officers.The number of murders in Washington fell for the third consecutive year. But homicide numbers also dropped in cities where the government has not sent soldiers or additional federal agents. And the total number of violent crimes — serious assaults, robberies and sex offenses in addition to homicides — reported by city police between January and mid-August is marginally higher than last year, about 4%.A study in May by the nonpartisan Niskanen Center found that sending soldiers into Washington led to fewer stolen cars but had no impact on violent crimes.Charles Stimson, a senior fellow at the pro-Trump Heritage Foundation, said the soldiers’ visibility served as a deterrent. “When you’re speeding and you see a cop, you slow down,” he said. “If those National Guard went poof and left town tomorrow, crime would go up.”The Reuters review of court records found little evidence of soldiers’ presence in high-crime neighborhoods where they might have responded to more serious crimes.Instead, the court records show soldiers were more likely to be mentioned in arrest records in city neighborhoods that have higher incomes, in which more people have college degrees, and where more people are white. Most of the arrests in which soldiers participated were either near the city’s core or its subway stops.Reuters used the location of incidents in court records to identify the areas in which soldiers were either assisting the police or seeking help from them, then compared those neighborhoods to the rest of the city. That does not account for places soldiers might have been sent if they did not interact with law enforcement there. But it suggests that their presence was not aimed at quelling the violent crime that had ravaged parts of the city in the past.Salim Adofo, an outreach coordinator with the Anacostia Coordinating Council, a nonprofit operating in a low-income part of the city, said that matched his experience.“I haven’t seen them all year,” he said.

[Category: / Your Military] [Link to media]

— Pentagon needs more resources to meet requirements for assessing blast exposure, GAO finds

 

at 8/19/26 10:32am

Under Defense Department guidance, the military services are supposed to provide baseline cognitive assessments to all service members who work in jobs that involve blast exposure and track them throughout their careers.But the services have been unable to complete those requirements because they are hampered by a lack of resources, including a shortage of staff and the technology needed to conduct such assessments, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.In 2024, after extensive reporting by The New York Times on the impact routine weapons training can have on the brain, including traumatic brain injury, the Pentagon issued several policies to protect troops from blast overpressure.The policies included restrictions on the proximity trainers should have to weapons at firing ranges. They also called for increasing the use of simulators in training, conducting cognitive assessments of all troops and monitoring exposure.The policies also required new recruits to receive cognitive assessments by the end of 2024. Screening for all active-duty personnel in “high-risk” specialties — such as those who handle howitzers, mortars, M 107 and MK 15 sniper rifles, breaching charges and other weapons — was supposed to be completed by the end of fiscal 2025.The GAO found that nearly 200,000 recruits were screened in fiscal 2025 and 86% of personnel in occupations at increased risk received assessments, with 87% of Army personnel, 81% of Air Force members and 59% of Navy sailors screened. But service officials told GAO analysts that they faced challenges fully meeting their obligations and evaluating personnel because of the tight timeline set in memos. They said they did not receive the resources or staff to conduct the assessments and relied on existing resources to meet requirements.In terms of monitoring service members at regular intervals following their initial assessments, the Defense Health Agency said it did not have enough specialists to meet requirements. Officials in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness told the GAO that insufficient industrial hygienists were the “primary barrier to DOD achieving its targets for exposure tracking.”The Pentagon announced in April that it will begin a one-year pilot program to test a new cognitive assessment tool, an app that service members can use to complete assessments. DoD officials said the app will be less “resource intensive” than current assessments and will help improve the services’ ability to track exposures.GAO officials also said the Pentagon has taken several steps to educate service members and ensure they receive care if they show symptoms. According to the GAO, the DoD now distributes informational material to service members on blast exposure, instructs leaders to schedule training breaks and encourages troops to seek treatment. The department is working to improve access to specialty care while also educating military doctors on blast exposure.“DOD has taken critical steps to prevent and mitigate service members’ exposures to blast overpressure, steps intended to help protect their brain health and the readiness of our country’s military forces,” the report stated.GAO made two recommendations, saying the department should complete an assessment of the resources needed to implement the policies and take steps to ensure the services have adequate industrial hygiene staff support.In response, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Keith Bass said the department is on its way to completing the resource assessment and has taken steps to meet the industrial hygiene staff requirements. “DOD estimates it will complete the actions for both recommendations by December 2026,” Bass wrote.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

— US, South Korea to cut length, scope of military drills after Trump order

 

at 8/19/26 9:23am

South Korea and the United States will cut short annual joint military drills to five days from 11 and scale back some field training, the allies said on Wednesday, after President Donald Trump ordered a substantial reduction in U.S. participation.The change in the drills comes as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visits South Korea on Wednesday and Thursday for regional security talks expected to cover developments on the Korean Peninsula.North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un, late on Wednesday dismissed the move, saying the nature of the exercises remained provocative and aggressive even if the scale and duration had been reduced, according to a statement published by state media KCNA.The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, which began on Aug. 17, will now run through Aug. 21, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Pentagon official said, instead of the original end date of Aug. 27. South Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said the allies were moving to cancel the drills’ second phase, media said, adding that it had been expected to involve counterattack operations after an initial defensive phase. At the suggestion of the United States, the countries agreed on partial adjustments to the duration and scope of the drills, the JCS said. Some combined field manoeuvre training would also be scaled back, although details were still being discussed. A Department of Defense official said the department had substantially reduced the exercise and associated live-training events, with some cancelled or switched to simulations. The changes would preserve essential readiness and training aims, with no degradation to U.S. training objectives, the official added.The changes follow Trump’s order on Sunday to “substantially reduce” the U.S. role in the drills, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. On Monday, Trump added that Kim had responded to his steps, without giving any details.Trump’s objectives in the order appeared to be to pressure Seoul over the pace of its promised U.S. investments under a trade deal, shift attention away from U.S. challenges in Iran and reopen diplomacy with Pyongyang, one analyst said.“Trump is trying to catch three birds with one stone here,” said Ellen Kim, senior fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America.Kim Yo Jong said she was unaware of recent communication between the two but added that Kim Jong Un held fond personal memories and feelings towards Trump.“The relationship between the two leaders remain excellent,” KCNA quoted her as saying.North Korea denounces drills North Korea had earlier on Wednesday denounced the drills and said it would continue exercising its right to self-defense against what it called military threats from Washington and Seoul, KCNA said. In a commentary, it called the United States and South Korea “warmongers” raising tension on the Korean Peninsula, but stopped short of mentioning Trump, his order or the scaling back. North Korea’s decision to issue the commentary, rather than a statement by a senior official or a military show of force, may signal an effort to leave room for diplomacy, said Hong Min, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification. Trump has pushed aides to arrange an in-person meeting with Kim as soon as this autumn, the Wall Street Journal said, citing U.S. officials. He has discussed holding talks during a possible November trip to Asia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen, the paper added. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on its approach to North Korea or the military exercises.Pyongyang routinely condemns joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises as rehearsals for invasion, while Washington and Seoul say they are defensive and necessary to ensure readiness against North Korea’s military threats.Neither South Korean nor U.S. officials knew in advance about Trump’s order, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.On Tuesday, President Lee Jae Myung said the Ulchi exercises were defensive and Seoul had no intention of using them to attack North Korea or heighten tension on the peninsula.China, North Korea’s only formal treaty ally, has not commented directly on Trump’s remarks, but Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Seoul that Washington should change its “hostile policy” towards Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap reported.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

— DARPA came close to finding a drone that can lift four times its own weight

 

at 8/18/26 10:41am

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) concluded its Lift Challenge last week, and although none of the participants achieved the desired goal of building a drone capable of lifting four times its weight, they came close. The agency announced that the company AVIDrone pushed the limits with its electric helicopter design that lifted an unprecedented payload-to-weight ratio of 3.84 to 1.In practical terms, that means the company’s Katana heavy-lift drone, weighing 29.3 pounds, lifted and carried a payload weight of 112.4 pounds across approximately five nautical miles. AVIDrone, a Canadian company with U.S. headquarters in Maryland, specializes in cargo delivery drones for the defense and commercial sectors. In a statement, the company called its first-place performance the “result of bringing together years of know-how, our proprietary autopilot and flight-control technologies, and decades of experience designing and flying aircraft specifically for heavy cargo lift.” With the DARPA Lift Challenge, the agency aimed to advance vertical lift in a small unmanned aerial system. Calling it the “heavy-lift bottleneck,” multirotor drones typically can only carry payloads equal to or less than their own weight. Phillip “Donna” Smith, the Lift Challenge program manager, described heavy vertical flight as the “next great technological inflection point that is economical for widespread adoption.” He explained that its application could revolutionize industries like agriculture, logistics, construction and more.By placing first, AVIDrone won $1.25 million in prize money. But the company also described the competition as an “outstanding environment for accelerating new ideas and turning them into real-world applications.” The second-place winner, Massachusetts-based MTech Operations, was awarded $750,000 for lifting 3.64 to 1; and the third-place winner, California-based Xtreme Aerial Concepts, was awarded $500,000 for lifting 3.45 to 1. And then DARPA issued awards for subjective categories, which were determined by a panel of program managers with deep aviation expertise. These included the University of Maryland team for the Most Revolutionary Aerodynamic Design, the Texas-based Portal Aircraft Company for the Most Revolutionary Powertrain Design, and the Utah-based DefendTex for the Most Promising Technology. For the latter, DARPA said it had the highest ratio in the competition, with 9.63 to 1, but it did not complete a scored run. Smith told Military Times that besides the prize money and the cool demonstrations, the Lift Challenge created a huge networking event that allowed inventors, investors and users to set new goals and create future projects. “So now, the challenges can get organized and the community that is built can start moving and (try) to solve problems that different organizations have across the United States or even the world,” Smith said. “Like we’ve seen in past challenges, the people here oftentimes combine forces and build the next generation of aircraft or whatever the challenge is.”

[Category: / MilTech] [Link to media]

— How US military funding propelled China’s robot dogs

 

at 8/18/26 10:01am

China’s Unitree Robotics — among the world’s biggest producers of humanoid and quadruped robots — based designs for its most successful robot dogs on innovations funded by the U.S. military, according to a former U.S. defense technology official and three top researchers involved in the project.Unitree’s $1,600 Go2 model, launched in 2023, helped the company rapidly dominate the global quadruped robot market — its Shanghai IPO has drawn frenzied demand. Another Unitree robot has been shown on Chinese state television, armed and accompanying People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops on an exercise. These robots draw on breakthroughs in quadruped movement financed by the U.S. DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and other military programs, the researchers and the former official told Reuters.The Army-funded project turned into, “basically, the first Unitree robot that had any kind of scale,” said Gavin Kenneally, a former University of Pennsylvania researcher involved in the program.Ben Katz, who worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Biomimetic Robotics Lab, among a consortium of universities financed by the military programs, said the dimensions of Unitree’s popular Go series were “to the millimeter” almost identical to a groundbreaking robot he helped develop called Mini Cheetah.Reuters is the first media outlet to detail connections between Unitree designs and the Army program. The episode underscores broader problems with the United States’ ability to compete with China’s state-directed manufacturing sector in high-tech strategic industries, including those critical to national security.Backed by subsidies, clusters of component factories, and a tolerance for heavy losses, Chinese companies have seized market share across industries such as solar panels, drones, EVs and quantum communications, many of which were first developed in the U.S. with government or military backing.Kenneally commercialized the U.S. breakthroughs through his company Ghost Robotics, which supplies U.S. special forces with advanced, ruggedized robots. But compared to Unitree, its production is small and costly.In June, the Pentagon added Unitree to a list of Chinese military companies, calling it a “contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base.” That designation falls short of a sanction but limits the U.S. military’s future use of Unitree’s technology. Unitree has said its robots are for civilian use. Unitree, China’s State Council and China’s defense ministry did not respond to requests for comment.Experts and robotics makers say China used Pentagon-funded work to design robot dogs and then proliferated them beyond U.S. capabilities to keep up.Unitree did nothing underhanded in using the U.S. Army research. The program’s findings were published openly to stimulate progress in the field, a common practice.ARL spokesperson Amanda Ligon said the research “strengthened the broader U.S. robotics ecosystem” and informed subsequent work across government and the private sector.ARL referred questions about Unitree’s commercialization of the technology to the Pentagon, which declined to comment.US companies versus China’s industrial policy Unitree sold more than 5,500 humanoids and 18,000 quadrupeds last year, company filings show, and it’s now valued at about $9 billion ahead of its stock market debut on Wednesday.By contrast, no U.S. company has mass-produced such robots, including Elon Musk’s Tesla, which has displayed prototypes of its Optimus humanoid for years. On a January earnings call, Musk called China “incredibly good” at scaling production.Boston Dynamics, the U.S. company whose 2019 canine, Spot, used different technology, recently argued in a Congressional hearing that China’s low pricing would drive U.S. firms out of the market.None of the U.S. robotics researchers who spoke with Reuters advocated for keeping such government-financed research secret. Instead, they said, U.S. policymakers should focus on enabling companies to quickly commercialize such advances to compete with China. ARL also said publication was important to scientific and technological advancement.The U.S. excels in innovation and software development but needs to ensure the capital, industrial base, highly skilled workforce and parts supply chains to scale up breakthroughs, said Vijay Kumar, dean at Penn Engineering. For now, U.S. authorities often protect companies with trade restrictions on innovative Chinese products. In July, the Federal Communications Commission banned imports of future models of foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots, including those from Unitree. China has threatened to retaliate against the FCC ban.China’s Washington embassy said in a statement its companies are making new technologies affordable and accessible internationally. It accused the U.S. of abusing administrative power, and of “market distortion and unilateral bullying.”Most of the experts who spoke to Reuters supported the U.S. ban but said the policy is not enough to build an industry to catch up with China.“This isn’t just a competition between U.S. and Chinese robotics companies,” said Kenneally, the Ghost Robotics founder. “It’s between private U.S. companies and China’s coordinated national strategy.”In 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping set out a 10-year plan to lead industries including green energy, electric vehicles and robotics. Since then, China has channeled capital into risky bets on low-margin 21st-century advanced manufacturing.Chinese robot manufacturers’ rapid reverse-engineering of products draws on the country’s dominance in refining critical minerals needed for magnets in robotics applications and the density of suppliers of motors, gears, ‘muscles’ known as actuators, and other components clustered near Unitree’s base in Hangzhou.Reyk Knuhtsen, a robotics analyst at SemiAnalysis, called the United States’ failure to commercialize domestic research a “dropped ball,” citing U.S. venture capital’s preference for high-return software startups. It would take more than trade barriers on China to boost robotics manufacturing, he said. “This is a very big hill for the U.S. to climb,” he said.The White House did not respond to requests for comment about U.S. industrial policy. An FCC spokesperson said the commission was protecting Americans from foreign threats and preparing the country “to deliver on President Trump’s vision to lead the world on the next generation of technologies.”Jaret Riddick, who as a former Army Research Laboratory director oversaw the Army-funded robotics project, said it did kick-start the U.S. quadruped industry. But in the end, without support for large-scale production, Unitree in China “just kind of consumed that space.”Teaching robot dogs new tricks The Army funded the Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance (RCTA) between 2010 and 2020.The RCTA gathered government, academic and industry researchers from UPenn, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston Dynamics, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and other research institutions. The alliance’s top commercial partner was General Dynamics Land Systems, the Michigan-based defense manufacturer that makes Abrams M1 tanks.In 2016, UPenn researchers, including Kenneally, eliminated heavy central gearboxes and placed motors in robots’ legs, enhancing the ability to sense and respond to terrain. UPenn’s progress built on the MIT lab’s work funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA.In 2019, the MIT lab presented the Mini Cheetah, building on UPenn features with increased strength – and the ability to do backflips.Months earlier, Katz published his MIT masters thesis, detailing Mini Cheetah’s actuators. Within six months, he found Chinese companies manufacturing actuator copies “you could buy on AliExpress,” he said, referring to the Chinese online retail giant. Unitree had been founded three years before by Wang Xingxing, then 26 years old. In his 2016 master’s thesis from Shanghai University, which Reuters reviewed online, Wang cited the work done at MIT, including on earlier iterations of the Cheetah, and set out principles consistent with those developed at the U.S. lab. He acknowledged the lab’s “pioneering” contributions.In his thesis, Wang explored design tweaks to speed up development, saying his findings could have future “defense, security, family and education” applications. He referenced Kenneally’s ARL-funded UPenn paper.On its website, Unitree says the company “independently developed the motors, reducers, controllers, and even some sensors of the quadruped robot.”Katz told Reuters he decided against taking his actuators into production, thinking there would be no market. He said China’s ability to move fast had broad benefits: Robotics “has advanced a lot because of the availability of actuators.”Joao Ramos, who did research at the same time as Katz at the MIT lab, said Unitree copied the Mini Cheetah shape, structure and design. But he credited the company with doing “proper engineering” to perfect a mass-produced robot.“The actual practical implementation, bringing it to real life, that’s all on them,” Ramos said.Gun-totting robot dogsWalking robots aren’t yet widely deployed on battlefields, but the United States and Chinese militaries have both explored the prospect. In October, another Chinese company’s “Robot Wolf” quadrupeds featured in Chinese media coverage of the PLA conducting mock beach landings.Unitree has said in public statements that its products are intended for civilian use. In 2022, the company signed an open letter along with U.S. companies pledging not to weaponize robots, citing risks of harm and serious ethical issues.But Chinese state television has featured Unitree’s Go2 model robots alongside Chinese troops and a modified version of the firm’s B1 series robot firing a mounted assault rifle. In September 2023, the U.S. Army secured a federal waiver from laws requiring government agencies to prioritize American-made products, in order to purchase two Unitree Go2s, according to procurement records that described the devices as crucial tools in the absence of sufficient commercial quantities of U.S.-produced alternatives “of a satisfactory quality.” Reuters could not establish whether the purchases went ahead.Later that month, U.S. Marines conducted an exercise attaching a rocket launcher to a Go1 to enable remote firing.Kenneally’s Ghost Robotics has shipped about 1,000 of its Vision 60 robots, mostly to military and government customers for surveillance and search applications in harsh environments. The company’s first customer was Navy Special Warfare Command, which oversees Navy SEAL teams. Some components for the Vision 60s, which sell for upwards of $165,000, are built in China, though the company has sought to move its supply chain. By comparison, Unitree lists its B series robot for below $100,000 in the U.S.Ghost Robotics shifted its motor supply from China to South Korea two years ago, though it still finds it difficult to eliminate Chinese magnets and some metal components, Kenneally said.The only way to escape China’s chokehold on the robotics supply chain, he said, is to secure supplies from other countries that have the manufacturing capacity that the United States lacks. In 2024, South Korea’s LIG Defense & Aerospace acquired a 60% stake in Ghost Robotics for $240 million. The company is exploring production in Taiwan, Kenneally said.“We need to work closely with our allies,” he said. “There’s absolutely no path forward without them.”

[Category: / MilTech] [Link to media]

— US Air Force looks to acquire target drones that can mimic stealth jets

 

at 8/17/26 12:19pm

The U.S. Air Force wants target drones that can mimic the performance of a variety of aircraft, from stealth fighters and heavy bombers to large and small drones.The goal is to create a family of drones that can “represent the full range of airborne threats, spanning from inexpensive ‘hobby drones’ to the most advanced adversary fighter and large-scale aircraft,” according to the Air Force’s Request for Information, which has a deadline of Sept. 28.At the same time, the Air Force desires next-generation target drones that are so inexpensive and easy to manufacture that they can be “treated as attritable or expendable when required.” As with drones and other new technologies, the Pentagon is turning to private industry for fresh ideas, “including commercial, modified commercial, dual-use, and non-developmental solutions,” the RFI said. “The government is particularly interested in non-traditional, commercially derived, or dual-use solutions that offer advantages in cost, scalability, and simplicity over legacy systems.”The new target drones are expected to simulate a wide array of capabilities.For fighters, the drones should have “supersonic capabilities (up to and exceeding Mach 1.6 at 40,000 feet), high-agility/high-G combat maneuvers, precise low-observable Radar Cross-section (RCS) profiles, multi-spectral Infrared (IR) signatures, active RF emissions, and integrated Electronic Attack (EA) capabilities,” according to the RFI.To simulate C-130-sized multiengine aircraft, the focus is less on high performance and more on “matching the physical scale, slow subsonic flight envelopes, and propeller or turbofan propulsion characteristics of larger multi-engine aircraft. These platforms must prioritize representative physical volume, basic RF/IR emissions, and realistic radar returns to verify missile seeker guidance, and warhead lethality against large-frame targets.” For even bigger aircraft, such as strategic bombers and AWACS planes, the key is “replicating the massive physical dimensions, multi-spectral thermal signatures, and heavy-aircraft radar strategic threats.” To mimic big Group 5 unmanned aerial vehicles, the target drone should be capable of flying at 50,000 feet. For Group 3 and 4 UAVs, the targets should be capable of flying at Mach 0.5 to 0.8, and maneuver at 3 to 6 Gs. For small Group 1 and 2 drones, the targets should fly at speeds of less than 150 knots and be capable of drone-swarm operations. Remote-controlled target drones have been used for nearly a century, including Britain’s Queen Bee — a converted Tiger Moth trainer — in the 1930s. More recently, the U.S. Air Force has relied since 2007 on the subsonic — and subscale – BQM-167A. At 20 feet long and with a wingspan of 11 feet, it hardly resembles a 67-foot-long Chinese J-20 stealth fighter or a 108-foot-wide Chinese H6 bomber. The Air Force also has the QF-16, a converted F-16 that can play the role of a full-sized target, such as a fourth-generation fighter. While a practical way to make use of retired jets, they aren’t meant to simulate fifth-generation stealth fighters or large aircraft, nor are they cheap enough to be expended in quantity.

[Category: / MilTech] [Link to media]

— Former Air Force secretary to join others in lawsuit against White House to regain security clearance

 

at 8/17/26 12:15pm

Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall will sue the Trump administration in an effort to regain his security clearance, alongside others whose clearances have been revoked since President Donald Trump took office for the second time.Kendall, who served as secretary from 2021 to 2025 under the Biden administration, announced last week on CNN that he will be suing the White House after the Pentagon alleged he shared classified information regarding Air Force One capabilities with a media outlet. The former secretary said that Mark Zaid, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who specializes in security clearance and whistleblower cases, would represent him.Zaid previously took on the Trump administration after his own security clearance was revoked in March 2025, calling it “retribution against an attorney for representing clients adverse to the government.” His access was fully restored in January.Zaid told Military Times that he and his law firm are preparing forthcoming litigation that will be part of a larger lawsuit involving a number of individuals whose security clearances were allegedly unlawfully revoked without due process since January 2025, the beginning of Trump’s second term.Since January 2025, the Trump administration has revoked a slew of security clearances from high-profile political figures, former cabinet officials and intelligence personnel. In March 2025, the White House announced the revocation of clearances from nearly 20 people, including former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris.Then, in August 2025, the then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released the names on social media of 37 more individuals whose clearances would be revoked. Zaid did not specify which individuals would be joining Kendall in the upcoming litigation.In a live interview with CNN, Kendall claimed that the allegation was baseless since he did not reveal any classified information and that the revocation lacked due process. He argued that his vocal criticism of the Trump administration could explain why the Pentagon revoked his clearance. “Under the circumstances, there is a legitimate question as to whether this was a malicious and retaliatory decision,” Zaid told Military Times when asked if the revocation could be the result of political retribution.Kendall has been an open critic of the Trump administration since he left his post in January 2025, writing in a July 2025 opinion piece published in the New York Times that Trump uses fear as a way to suppress dissent in groups such as the military, civil service and law communities in particular. “Fear is the universal tool of authoritarians, and it is a clear sign that our democracy is in danger that so many Americans now have reason to fear their government,” he opined. “Fear has come to our country, and unlike Sandburg’s fog, it isn’t moving on any time soon.”More recently, Kendall was quoted in the Times and Wall Street Journal expressing concern over the quick timeline in which the Qatari-donated jet was modified for presidential use, prompting the Pentagon to revoke his clearance.Kendall did not return multiple requests for comment from Military Times.Zaid said that the Pentagon did not specify which classified information about Air Force One capabilities it believes Kendall revealed, adding that the only contact thus far with the Department of Defense was the social media post announcing the removal of Kendall’s clearance.Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, posted Aug. 7 that Kendall’s access to classified information and his ability to hold any “sensitive” position were void effective immediately. “This action follows his unauthorized disclosure of classified information regarding Air Force One’s capabilities to a media outlet,” Parnell said in the post.“Safeguarding classified information is a non-negotiable duty,” he continued. “Those who violate that trust forfeit the privilege of access and any role requiring it.”The Pentagon denied a request to comment from Military Times, instead referring the publication back to Parnell’s social media post.Zaid said that Kendall’s clearance revocation differs from the standard procedure. Usually, a revocation of a defense contractor’s security clearance requires the issuance of a Statement of Reasons, which is a formal written notice from the government outlining why it plans to revoke the clearance and allows the party to respond and submit evidence in their defense.Since leaving his role as secretary, Kendall now serves as a national director on the Air & Space Forces Association board and as a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

— Pentagon scrutinizes foreign research ties at 30 US academic institutions

 

at 8/17/26 11:23am

The Pentagon ordered 30 U.S. academic institutions to audit their research and financial ties to certain foreign entities or risk losing eligibility for future federal research funding, it announced Monday. The institutions must review partnerships with international entities identified under federal law, as well as organizations associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes, and evaluate whether they may have revealed sensitive or export-controlled information. Institutions have until Aug. 31 to report their conclusions and any mitigation efforts, including discontinuing collaborations deemed troublesome, to the Defense Department. The department did not name the 30 institutions publicly.“The Department of War has zero tolerance for academic partnerships that compromise our national security,” said Emil Michael, the Pentagon’s top research and engineering chief, in a release. “Institutions that receive funding from American taxpayers must uphold the highest standards of research security, and these mandated audits will ensure accountability across the board.”The audits target ties to foreign entities identified under Section 1286 of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which established a Pentagon standard for identifying international organizations that pose national security issues. The fiscal 2025 list of institutions the Defense Department deems problematic includes 130 organizations from China, Russia and Iran, ranging from electronic measurement laboratories to scientific research centers. Starting in fiscal 2026, the Pentagon cannot fund “fundamental research” involving a partnership with any organization on the list, including collaborative research or equipment use. The ban also extends to employees of a listed entity. Though the Trump administration in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act downgraded China to the U.S.’s second-ranking threat, the crackdown comes as the Pentagon increasingly scrutinizes how American research and technology can be used to better China’s military capabilities. Reuters in June published a review of how Chinese military researchers used outputs from U.S. artificial intelligence models to train their domestic systems.In 2004, China established Confucius Institutes around the world as nonprofit groups dedicated to sharing Mandarin language and other cultural touchpoints, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Linked to the country’s education ministry, these organizations numbered in the hundreds in 2018 and often partnered with universities, typically providing at least $100,000 in programming support. A 2023 government watchdog report found that almost all institutes had closed after Congress restricted federal funding to associated U.S. schools. Many replaced the institutes with education from academic departments, U.S. government-sponsored language programs or programs affiliated with Taiwan, but some schools continued to receive support from Chinese partner organizations associated with the former institute.

[Category: / Your Military] [Link to media]

— US awards Raytheon $22.9 billion deal to boost Tomahawk output

 

at 8/17/26 8:35am

The U.S. military, scrambling to rebuild depleted stocks of high-tech weaponry, on Monday said it had awarded RTX unit Raytheon a $22.9 billion contract to dramatically boost the output of Tomahawk missiles.The U.S. ‌has supplied large amounts of arms to allies while also using munitions in the Iran conflict, raising concerns about inventories of air defense and precision-guided weapons.“We called on industry to rapidly scale up munitions output, and RTX is delivering,” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said in an X post. “This landmark Tomahawk contract ensures our warfighters continue to have the lethal firepower they need.” In a separate statement, Raytheon said the contract would run for seven years and would allow annual Tomahawk production to increase to more than 1,000 missiles. The company currently makes just 60 a year.The sea-launched Tomahawk, a mainstay of the Navy’s surface fleet, provides long-range precision strike capability against land targets from ships and submarines.The formal announcement firms up a framework agreement that the U.S. military and Raytheon signed in February.The administration of President Donald Trump is brokering multi-year deals with the biggest U.S. defense contractors, giving the companies confidence to invest billions of dollars in new facilities and equipment.Earlier this month, the military signed deals to ramp up production of Patriot and THAAD interceptor missile parts.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

— ‘Everybody loves a winner’: US-Ukraine intel sharing surges as Kyiv racks up wins

 

at 8/17/26 8:00am

KYIV, Ukraine — U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine has rebounded to full strength as Kyiv’s mid- and deep-range strikes continue to hammer Russia’s oil industry.The CIA has worked closely with Ukraine’s intelligence services since Russia’s 2014 invasion, growing a partnership built on assistance and training into a two-way exchange of intelligence, according to Forbes. However, the relationship nearly collapsed in February 2025, when a contentious Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended with Washington temporarily cutting off the flow of intelligence and weapons to Kyiv.But Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking member, said this month that the two countries have moved past previous hurdles and returned to a strong intelligence partnership.“I don’t want to get into any specifics, but it has improved,” Warner told Politico. The CIA has spent more than a decade and millions of dollars training and equipping Ukrainian intelligence officers, building around a dozen secret forward-operating bases along the Russian border, ABC News reported in January 2025, citing former U.S. officials.The senator said the current arrangement has helped Kyiv gain an edge, with long-range drones and missiles now hitting targets far inside Russia.Russian troops survive just 20-30 minutes on Ukraine’s front lines, CIA director saysWhile American weapons deliveries have taken the spotlight in what Washington gives Ukraine, intelligence is the one U.S. asset Kyiv cannot replace, especially for the long-range strikes now making headlines.That intelligence reaches directly into the strike campaign, including “the targeting packages for strikes on Russian-troop positions in Ukraine and on energy infrastructure inside Russia,” The Atlantic reported, citing American and Ukrainian sources.Those sources called intelligence “the one thing the United States still provides free of charge,” crediting CIA Director John Ratcliffe with keeping it that way.Zelenskyy seems to have risen in Trump’s estimation as Ukraine increasingly fights on its own terms, redefining modern warfare by crafting new tech and strategies, clawing back territory and taking the war deep into Russia — leaving Kyiv looking less dependent and more like an ally with something to trade.“Trump doesn’t like losers,” one Western intelligence official told the outlet. Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, another intelligence committee member, and Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Politico they see a direct connection between the White House’s view of Ukraine’s battlefield successes and Kyiv’s access to intelligence.“It sure seems like that,” Cornyn said. “Everybody loves a winner and looks like Ukraine has turned the tide.”The strengthening relationship between Washington and Kyiv is apparent on multiple fronts.Trump’s negotiators to end the war, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, plan to head to Ukraine for the first time later this month, a trip that coincides with the country’s independence celebrations, according to Radio Free Europe.The intel trade is going both ways, with Zelenskyy stating publicly as early as March that Kyiv had proof of Moscow passing intelligence to Iran that he later promised to put in front of Trump.“We have irrefutable evidence that the Russians continue to provide intelligence to the Iranian regime,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “Russia is using its own signals intelligence and electronic intelligence capabilities, as well as part of the data obtained through cooperation with partners in the Middle East.”

[Category: / Ukraine] [Link to media]

— Pentagon inks deals with Boeing, RTX to boost production of SM-3 components

 

at 8/14/26 1:57pm

The Pentagon signed two framework agreements Friday with Boeing and RTX to expand production of critical components for the Standard Missile-3, the Navy’s primary ship-launched interceptor against ballistic missiles. The deals cover avionics and ejector assemblies Boeing supplies to prime contractor Raytheon, an RTX business, for both the SM-3 Block IB and the newer Block IIA. Both variants operate with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System to destroy incoming missiles outside the atmosphere. “These agreements ensure our Warfighters get the munitions they need to win,” Michael P. Duffey, under secretary of war for acquisition and sustainment, said in the Pentagon release. “We are stabilizing our supply chains, expanding munitions production and putting our entire defense industrial base on a wartime footing.” The frameworks run for seven years and allow Boeing to start building components before a contract is in place, while the three sides negotiate a multiyear deal. The long-term commitment is intended to give suppliers enough certainty to invest in added capacity. Neither the Pentagon nor Boeing released dollar figures or quantities. “This gives us a clear demand signal to build and deliver SM-3 interceptors at the levels needed to counter threats,” Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems, said in a company statement. “The SM-3 is an essential part of the layered air and missile defense architecture that protects the U.S. and its allies worldwide.” The approach mirrors a seven-year deal Boeing struck in April to triple production of PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement seekers, part of a broader Pentagon effort to lock in supply from key subcontractors alongside the prime contractors. Earlier this month, the Missile Defense Agency awarded Raytheon a $745 million contract to produce fully assembled SM-3 Block IIA interceptors for the United States and Japan. Demand for the interceptor traces back to April 2024, when Navy destroyers first fired SM-3s in combat, helping to thwart an Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel. Far more interceptors have been launched since, including those fired in Operation Epic Fury. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated the SM-3 inventory at 414 as of December 2025. A May analysis from the center put wartime expenditures between 130 and 250 missiles and warned that replenishment will take years. Congress has stepped in to keep the Block IB line open, the cheaper of the two variants covered by Friday’s agreements, after the Missile Defense Agency proposed ending new purchases in the fiscal 2025 budget request.

[Category: / MilTech] [Link to media]

— Patriot makers hedge on Ukraine production deal as officials question cause of hold-up

 

at 8/14/26 11:40am

KYIV, Ukraine — Though U.S. President Donald Trump promised Kyiv a license to build Patriot missile interceptors last month, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have begun putting the brakes on a joint-production deal as executives weigh what is “feasible” and the licensing runs into Washington’s red tape.American officials are backpedaling too. Trump on July 20 told the Financial Times that the U.S. has to be “a little bit careful of who we license to.” Despite that, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday posted on X that the two sides have “now reached an agreement.”The glacial progress may reflect American defense giants’ fear that Kyiv could become a defense industry competitor — rather than posing risk to technology or intellectual property — a Republican official on Capitol Hill told The Atlantic.“Their real worry is that the Ukrainians will find a way to improve the Patriot and then produce them at scale faster and for much less money than what the existing production lines in the U.S. could do,” the official said, adding that the companies will publicly frame their concerns around “IP theft and tech transfer” instead. Ukraine’s weapons industry, honed by nearly five years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, has been booming since the U.S.-Israel war with Iran began in the spring. The conflict with Iran has drained an estimated two-thirds of America’s pre-war Patriot interceptor inventory, sparking discussion about inventory and strategy.Some defense partners are eager to work with Ukraine, a country with rare recent experience fighting a large-scale land war, and have shown strong interest in collaborating with Kyiv to develop and field cheaper, faster-to-produce alternatives to million-dollar weapons.The race toward competition is problematic for the defense giants, the official said — not because Ukraine might steal the Patriot — but because the country’s partners might outbuild it, cutting into the current monopoly on antiballistic capabilities and profits.Trump first pledged the license at the July NATO summit in Ankara, promising Ukraine permission to produce Patriot missiles for the first time.“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool. This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving ‘em enough,” Trump said, adding that the companies had not yet been consulted on the plan.Zelenskyy said the next day that the question had been “resolved politically,” telling reporters that technical teams needed to start work “without delay, so that we can get licenses very quickly and start production in Ukraine as soon as possible.”Five days after Trump’s pledge, Ukraine, nine European countries and defense heavyweights including Eurosam, Leonardo, Thales and Saab launched a coalition in Paris to field Freyja, an entirely new antiballistic system built around a Ukrainian interceptor priced at roughly one-fifth of a Patriot round.A week after that, Lockheed unveiled its own cheaper, faster-to-produce Patriot missile at the Farnborough International Airshow, advertising the PAC-3 ACE at roughly $2 million a round – less than half the price of the round Ukraine fires at Russian ballistic missiles today.The Patriot line rarely moves that fast. Its current top round, the PAC-3 MSE, was first accepted by the U.S. Army in 2015 and took until 2018 to reach full-rate production, per the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.On July 21, one day after the ACE debut, Tim Cahill, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, described production talks with Ukraine as simply “early,” telling reporters the company will “support the US Army and the [Trump] administration on what they want to go do,” according to Breaking Defense.Raytheon’s process “has just started,” with the company working with the U.S. government “to determine what is feasible and what is best for Ukraine,” its president of land and air defense systems, Tom Laliberty, said at the same show.Two days later, Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X that he was “grateful for the company’s readiness to take our partnership to an even higher level, where Ukraine would co-produce, together with Raytheon, some of the most vital air defense assets – Patriot interceptors,” after meeting representatives of the group. But when Zelenskyy asked Trump for “several hundred” interceptors at a July 28 Oval Office meeting, the president refused, citing America’s shrunken stocks, The Atlantic reported.Three days later, Trump reversed course on the license entirely.“We have not agreed to that,” he said at a Camp David Cabinet meeting. “We’re talking about it, but it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology.”Then, U.S. NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker dampened expectations further on Aug. 3, telling Fox News that “we do not allow anybody but US manufacturers to make those in the United States,” adding that a long-term production agreement “will not be concluded before this winter,” per Euronews. The deal’s current status is unclear.“The decision has been made,” Zelenskyy said during an interview on Ukrainian television over the weekend, according to United24. “It was made by the President of the United States and other important American government institutions.”American officials have yet to respond to Zelenskyy’s latest comments.

[Category: / MilTech] [Link to media]

— White House national security official to depart administration

 

at 8/14/26 10:42am

White House deputy national security adviser Andy Baker will leave the Trump administration in the coming weeks, marking the latest change to a national security team that has undergone a shake-up in recent months.National security officials in Washington widely view Baker, who also served as a national security adviser to Vice President JD Vance, as a low-key but influential figure inside the White House.A former State Department official, academic and Vance adviser when the vice president was in the Senate, Baker had historically advocated for a more restrained American foreign policy that questioned the wisdom of long-term foreign conflicts.He was also among the figures who helped craft Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference last year, during which the vice president warned European leaders that alleged censorship and democratic backsliding posed risks as severe to the continent as external threats, like those posed by China and Russia.“I’m proud of everything we’ve achieved and, of course, am incredibly grateful to the President, Vice President and Secretary Rubio,” Baker wrote in a statement provided to Reuters. “I’ll never be far away.”In separate statements, Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the outgoing deputy national security adviser, whose departure was first reported by Axios.Staff ChangesBaker, who has a young family, stayed on at the White House months longer than originally planned to help with some key staff transitions, according to a person close to him.Mike Needham, a high-ranking State Department official close to Rubio, joined the White House in late May as another deputy national security adviser alongside Baker, the person noted. Cliff Sims, a White House and intelligence official during Trump’s first term, succeeded Baker as national security adviser to Vance at around the same time.There have been additional staff departures at lower levels of the White House’s national security team in recent months. The top officials on the National Security Council overseeing Europe and Latin America both departed in June.The broader significance of the turnover is unclear. While Baker was present at some high-level talks and was considered far more influential than some of his peers, the Trump administration has often dealt with its biggest foreign policy challenges at the principal level, delegating relatively little responsibility even to its highest-level staff.Outside the national security space, the White House has in recent days announced the impending departure of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and White House counsel David Warrington.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

— CENTCOM launches multinational attack drone task force

 

at 8/14/26 9:09am

U.S. Central Command will stand up the inaugural task force focused on multi-domain, multinational attack drones.Task Force Falcon Strike will utilize one-way attack drones composed of unmanned systems from above, on and below the sea, managed by U.S. military support staff and regional partners, according to a Thursday release.The move to launch this unit follows CENTCOM’s establishment of Task Force Scorpion Strike in December 2025, a Middle East-based task force equipped with one-way attack drones as the military strived to integrate drone technology across the services. “Task Force Falcon Strike will expand on Scorpion Strike’s success given the tremendous innovation happening among our regional allies and partners,” Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, said in the release. “Integrating and deploying our new capabilities together will help us rapidly realize the new possibilities that are on the horizon.”Scorpion Strike was the first to launch an aerial attack drone from a U.S. Navy warship last December, the month of its announcement. The unit also deployed one-way unmanned aerial systems during Operation Epic Fury and during strikes on Iranian port facilities in July with unmanned attack vessels at sea, the statement highlights.CENTCOM began consulting with and officially inviting regional partners to join Falcon Strike, aiming to expand attack-drone capabilities across the Middle East into a “unified multi-domain, multinational deterrent.”“The United States military has a lot of strong partnerships and friends in the region,” Cooper said. “We are collectively stronger when we integrate and deploy new capabilities together.”The release did not specify which regional partners CENTCOM is working with on the unit.Personnel from the U.S. Special Operations Command Central, located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, will lead Falcon Strike’s staff of U.S. and regional representatives after it launched Scorpion Strike, the release states.The announcement comes as the U.S. continues its war with Iran, which has depleted the U.S. munitions stockpile and caused military leaders to weigh the possibility of developing cheaper anti-drone technology at a faster pace.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

— Bill seeks nationwide concealed carry for special operators

 

at 8/14/26 6:00am

Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., a former Navy SEAL who told police that he accidentally shot himself while visiting a national park, filed a bill this week to allow special operations veterans and service members to carry concealed firearms nationwide, bypassing state restrictions. In an announcement, Sheehy said the Special Operations Forces Concealed Carry Act would align the status of special operators with active and retired law enforcement officers, who are permitted under federal law to carry concealed weapons across state lines. “Our elite warfighters never stop serving, and this bill ensures the law reflects the trust they’ve earned through a lifetime of sacrifice,” Sheehy said, adding that “Special Operations Forces spend their careers protecting the American people with unmatched discipline, judgment, and professionalism.”According to Sheehy’s office, when Congress passed the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act, or LEOSA, in 2004, lawmakers recognized that active and retired officers may need to respond to violent crime or terrorists while off duty. They also recognized that officers face ongoing threats from individuals they previously encountered while on duty. Sheehy’s office explained that his bill would build on the framework created by LEOSA because individuals in special operations “have completed rigorous selection and possess firearms training that meets or exceeds professional law enforcement standards.” Congressman Pat Harrigan, a Republican from North Carolina, filed a companion bill in April. In a statement, he said that “it makes no sense that an active or retired SEAL or Green Beret, someone who spent a career mastering firearms under the most demanding conditions in the world, has no equivalent recognition under federal law.” While the bill would extend concealed carry privileges, it would also require participants to complete annual active-duty-level firearms qualification tests, as well as a Justice Department concealed carry class. During Sheehy’s bid for a Senate seat in 2024, The Washington Post published an article about an incident in which Sheehy was cited at Glacier National Park for illegally discharging a firearm. According to the report, the park ranger investigating the incident interviewed Sheehy at an emergency room in Kalispell shortly after the shooting in October 2015. “(Sheehy) stated he was arranging gear in the back of his vehicle, and that the gun (Colt Revolver, .45 long) had slipped down the pile of gear, hit the ground and fired. The round hit him in the right forearm and did not pass through,” the ranger wrote in a narrative with the citation. The ranger also told The Washington Post that the revolver that Sheehy said had accidentally discharged was loaded except for a single missing bullet. When confronted with the details, Sheehy told reporters that he lied about accidentally discharging his firearm and that the shooting injury actually occurred during a deployment in Afghanistan. He said he didn’t report it because a teammate’s negligent discharge caused the injury, and he didn’t want to get his teammate in trouble. “I guess the only thing I’m guilty of is admitting to doing something I never did,” Sheehy told the newspaper. He added: “It was a small price to pay to make sure that a whole team of really great Americans didn’t get dragged through the mud over this.”

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

— Trump swaps planes via catering truck after Iranian threats, reports say

 

at 8/12/26 9:13am

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he secretly switched planes in Turkey last month at the direction of the Secret Service, but that the plane he ultimately flew on was still more vulnerable than Air Force One.Following a NATO summit in Ankara, Trump was transferred from Air Force One to a military plane via a catering truck in an extraordinary deception prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, U.S. media reported.The White House did not disclose the change, and it remained a secret until The Washington Post first reported it on Monday. Some media commentators questioned whether the operation left Trump’s aides and journalists traveling with him at risk aboard the plane presumed to be carrying the president.“I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane I think that they would be more likely to go for.”Trump was accompanied by several close aides when he secretly transferred from Air Force One to a smaller military aircraft in Turkey last month, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, executive assistant Natalie Harp and Oval Office operations director Walt Nauta made the move in the catering truck with Trump, along with several lower-profile aides, the Post reported. No Cabinet officials joined Trump in the truck, according to the newspaper.After a day of social media memes portraying Trump as hiding out in the catering truck, the image-conscious president, who often promotes memes of himself as a bold and courageous leader, said he was following the direction of the Secret Service, the agency that protects the president.“Well, it’s only up to Secret Service. I just follow what they’d like to do, so I go by Secret Service and the military,” Trump said.“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask too much about it. I get a lot of threats,” Trump said.The White House said at the time that the president was flying aboard Air Force One from Turkey to Britain. But moments after Trump boarded the plane, he left it in secret via the catering truck and boarded another aircraft for the flight to Britain, the Post said on Monday, quoting unnamed sources.Trump had taken a newly renovated Qatari-donated jet to Ankara for the NATO summit but unexpectedly announced he would use an older Air Force One when departing the country, a move that prompted questions about the newer plane’s security.The trip to NATO was the first international travel for the new plane, whose speedy upgrades triggered questions over its cost and security, and took place as hostilities escalated with Iran, which borders Turkey.

[Category: / Pentagon & Congress] [Link to media]

As of 8/26/26 10:36am. Last new 8/24/26 8:51am.