“At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Nino Guerrero the infamous leader of Tren De Aragua, one of the most bloodthirsty Terrorist Organizations on Planet,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Friday evening.

“This action was coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well.”

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth posted on X that the strike was conducted earlier this week and that Guerrero “was confirmed killed during the strike.”

Venezuela’s information ministry said that during the operation there were clashes with members of criminal groups, in which the leader, Guerrero, was neutralized.

The operation involved specialized technological support and was carried out through cooperation and intelligence-sharing between authorities of both countries, the ministry said.

The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted Guerrero and other leaders of the Tren de Aragua organization with sanctions over alleged involvement in criminal activities such as illicit drug smuggling, human trafficking and money laundering.

The State Department has designated Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization.

Trump has claimed Tren de Aragua coordinated its U.S. activities with the Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro. The Trump administration has cited the alleged connection to justify deporting some immigrants in the U.S. to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.

Tren de Aragua is known for being involved in human trafficking and controls routes taken by Venezuelans and other South American migrants heading south to relatively prosperous Chile and other destinations in South America or Europe.

The group has also been linked to extortion, kidnapping, money laundering, contract killings, smuggling and organized retail theft from Panama to Brazil and along the Andean corridor, Latin American police officials say.

Guerrero escaped from the Tocoron prison in Venezuela along with other gang leaders just before a police raid in 2023.

The service is seeking professionals from the commercial sector and offering them direct commissions as an officer in the Navy Reserve in exchange for their expertise.

“This highly skilled unit will also include Navy Reserve sailors who will rapidly field, scale, and secure modern technologies for the global fleet,” the Navy said. “Prospect profiles will range from advanced expertise in quantum information, data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and autonomous and unmanned systems.”

Selected candidates can continue to serve in their civilian roles, but must demonstrate experience with open-source projects, patent applications, technology audits or published academic research.

Pentagon reveals preferred munitions for one-way attack drones

The program will also target individuals with experience in software engineering, cybersecurity, and offensive or defensive cyber operations, among other categories.

The Navy stood up the Navy Innovation Center in 2022 at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, with the goal of investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning as adversaries ramped up their own explorations of the integral fields.

The Marine Corps Reserve’s Marine Innovation Unit was created the same year to find and collaborate with individuals who have the technology skills to solve some of the service’s modernization problems

The Defense Department operates a similar organization, the Defense Innovation Unit, which was founded in 2015.

The unit seeks out commercial technology for military implementation, helping identify promising technology that can be used on the battlefield.

The mission capable rate, which measures the percentage of time aircraft can perform at least one of their tasked missions, dropped from 67% in fiscal 2021 to 44% in fiscal 2025, GAO found.

The full mission capable rate, the share of time aircraft can perform all assigned missions, slid from 38% to 25% over the same period.

Air Force officials attributed part of the fiscal 2025 drop to new jets that couldn’t perform their missions because of software delays, along with scarce parts and corrosion problems, according to the report.

“The F-35 is DOD’s most costly weapon system, but it hasn’t met performance goals and costs to sustain the aircraft continue to increase,” GAO wrote in a summary accompanying the report.

The F-35 Joint Program Office’s answer to the decline in readiness is what the office officially calls the Global Support Solution Reset. The strategy, launched in June 2025, aims for an 80% mission capable rate and a 65% full mission capable rate by 2030.

Getting there won’t come cheap: JPO estimates it will take $13.7 billion more than previously planned through fiscal 2031, money the services must request in their annual budgets.

The GSS Reset addresses concerns GAO has flagged for years, including spare parts shortages, maintenance problems and heavy contractor reliance, among other long-running issues.

Only about $2.2 billion of that total is for the GSS Reset, according to the report. The other roughly $11.5 billion covers the gap between what the services had budgeted and what F-35 sustainment actually requires.

JPO officials told GAO that readiness will likely worsen before it improves, and program documentation suggests improvements may not materialize until late 2026 or later.

GAO identified several risks that could keep the GSS Reset from succeeding.

“JPO will be reliant on the private sector to deliver more than $7 billion in additional parts and other material. But capacity constraints persist for key parts,” the report states.

A 2025 study by Lockheed Martin, which builds the F-35 and leads its sustainment alongside engine maker Pratt & Whitney, found 48 parts that the supplier base can’t produce enough of, including canopies, which GAO has previously identified as a top driver of grounded jets.

Costs keep climbing, too, threatening the services’ ability to pay for the Reset. By the mid-2030s, GAO projects the services will face a roughly $1.2 billion annual gap between what their F-35s cost to sustain and what they say they can afford.

Those estimates may understate the problem. GAO noted the fiscal 2027 projections were developed before Operation Epic Fury and may not capture the costs associated with additional flight hours.

Incentives spent on readiness haven’t delivered as intended, GAO found, echoing a Pentagon Inspector General audit published in December.

From 2020 through 2023, the program office paid Lockheed more than $114 million of roughly $269 million in available incentive fees meant to improve full mission capable rates and parts supply, even as both metrics generally stagnated or worsened.

Lockheed’s incentive fees were tied to readiness thresholds. In 19 of 39 performance periods, the JPO and Lockheed adjusted the recorded full mission capable rate upward, citing factors outside the company’s control, such as service-caused delays, which qualified the contractor for higher payments. Had fees been paid on the raw rates alone, GAO estimated Lockheed would have earned roughly half as much.

Pratt & Whitney, the program’s other prime contractor, has met its engine sustainment targets since 2022 after fixing problems GAO flagged in earlier reviews, the report noted.

“Lockheed Martin continues to partner with the Joint Program Office and our industry partners to ensure we are delivering efficient and effective sustainment for the warfighter,” a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said in a statement to Defense News. “We have recently invested more than $2 billion in advanced funding to accelerate spare parts to increase readiness rates across the F-35 fleet.”

The F-35 Joint Program Office concurs with the report’s findings and fully supports its three recommendations, a spokesperson told Defense News.

“Through our Global Support Solution Reset initiative, the JPO remains focused on achieving our 2030 readiness goals and ensuring strict fiscal accountability for every sustainment dollar spent,” the spokesperson said.

GAO also found the F-35 JPO could not produce consistent records of its incentive fee payments. It calculated fees using a formula that differed from the contract without documenting the change, and over the course of GAO’s review, provided three different versions of its incentive fee spreadsheet.

JPO officials told GAO they abandoned the contracted formula because it overstated Lockheed’s performance, and the corrected formula they used paid the company an estimated $3.7 million less than the flawed one would have.

GAO found the incentive problems extend to the current contract, covering 2025 through 2028, which includes no incentives tied to full mission capable rates at all, instead rewarding parts supply metrics with targets GAO found fall below the program’s own goals.

“Until JPO ensures the future use of incentives better achieves desired performance, it risks rewarding contractor performance that does not help meet program goals,” GAO stated.

GAO wants the Pentagon to do three things: build risk mitigation plans for efforts like the GSS Reset, covering technical data access, industry capacity, affordability and alignment with service goals; rethink how it structures contract incentives, possibly including penalties for poor performance; and build a reliable system for tracking what it pays in incentive fees and why.

GAO has now made 46 recommendations on F-35 sustainment since 2014. As of March 2026, the Pentagon had implemented 14.

The Pentagon did not provide formal comments on the report but said in draft comments that it agreed with the recommendations, according to GAO.

Despite the program’s readiness troubles, the F-35 remains the backbone of America’s fighter fleet. The Pentagon operates more than 800 of the jets and plans to buy about 1,700 more by the mid-2040s, with lifetime U.S. sustainment costs estimated at $1.6 trillion as of 2024.

The polymer-based material, described by researchers as having a “gummy bear” consistency, offers a way to weave the widely used and effective DEET insect repellent into fabric or onto patches or strips to provide long-term repellency for a minimum of six months without regular maintenance or reapplication.

But the Naval Research Laboratory, where the repellent was developed, has no timeline or funding to move the concept forward.

At the Sea-Air-Space symposium near Washington, D.C., earlier this year, the lab’s commanding officer raised the “gummy bear” repellent as one of many concepts in the lab ready for a moment in the sun.

“We have way too many things on the shelf that need to be moved,” Capt. Randy Cruz said. “A passive, long-lasting insect repellent … when I think about all my Marine friends and all my Army folks in the jungle, this is gonna be fantastic."

The technology has been in development at the lab since the early 2020s and was featured in a study published in 2024 in the Journal of Materials Chemistry B. A NRL team led by research chemist Javier Jimenez demonstrated that the resinous material remained effective for at least 30 weeks and suggested that it could be used to repel not only mosquitoes, but also flies, ticks, chiggers and other biting pests.

“Future advancements can pioneer a new lineage of insect-repelling materials that can be incorporated into devices void of direct skin contact (e.g., garments or shelters) to mitigate dermal absorption, thus eliminating the associated health hazards of aerosol sprays or topical lotions,” the team said.

But since then, it’s been largely crickets.

The technology still needs to be put through rigorous field testing and a demonstration period, according to officials, before it can ever be fielded to troops or incorporated into issued uniforms or outerwear. That all takes money, and there’s none earmarked for it at the moment.

“It’s in hibernation, waiting for funding at the moment. We’re definitely in contact with an array of different corporations to … try to see if there’s a potential for collaboration," Jimenez told Military Times. “We’re actively trying to push this forward.”

He explained that the passive nature of the repellent might be its most appealing feature, as compliance — reapplication of bug repellent or maintenance of other defenses — was often a sticking point.

“You won’t have that stickiness of insect repellent … a lot of the oily feeling is just really agitating, which seriously leads a lot of people to noncompliance,” he said.

He suggested the same material might be developed to diffuse in a room or behind a fan blade, protecting indoor space from bugs without requiring any body-worn repellent. Additional testing could also prove an early finding that adding more bug repellents, such as the tick repellent permethrin, into the resin material actually made everything work better, he said.

“What we saw is that this incorporation of these auxiliary pesticides actually formed this sort of synergistic response in the repulsion of mosquitoes,” he said.

“We’re looking steadily into not only just designing a long-term insect repellent, which is already shown by these details, but also tuning the recipe of the insect repellents to be more effective for a broader range of insects and ideally increase the potency of diffusing protecting barrier,” he added.

For a globally deployable military force that regularly conducts training in wooded and grassy areas, these findings are pertinent. A 2024 report from the Pentagon’s Military Health System found that nearly 6,000 cases of vector-borne diseases were diagnosed over a 12-year period, with Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, both caused by ticks, leading the pack.

Jimenez said researchers are eager for the chance to learn more.

“We haven’t been really able to dive into raising the [readiness level] of this technology,” he said. “It’s always in our back pocket whenever there’s a request for a proposal.”

This report contains discussion of suicide. Troops, veterans and family members experiencing suicidal thoughts can call the 24-hour Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 and dial 1, text 838255 or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net.

“Who knows what was going on in Cpl. Mobley’s personal life?”

The question hung in the air.

“Who knows if he had a girlfriend, fiancée? Who knows if they were having relationship issues? Who knows if his parents were having relationship issues?”

First Sgt. Christopher Rushton fired off the list of “who knows” questions as members of the Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting unit at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia sat in stony silence.

“Who knows if his sister was having relationship issues? Who knows if his favorite dog died? Who knows if his favorite teacher just got in a car wreck and died?”

“Who the fuck knows that?” demanded Rushton, a drill instructor for more than a decade. “Do any of y’all? So how are you going to sit here and try to tell me, or tell the CO, that this environment caused [the death of] Cpl. Mobley?”

On April 7, 2025, one of their own—Cpl. Drew Mobley—had taken his own life.

During an internal investigation after Mobley’s death, a number of his fellow Marines complained about the command climate, accusing leadership of ignoring Mobley’s declining mental health and tormenting him after an injury sidelined him from regular duty.

Now, three days after Mobley’s memorial service, the rest of his unit—known as ARFF— was getting grilled. Rushton and Col. Scott Warman had gathered the Marines, collected their phones, and were taking turns berating them. The closed-door meeting lasted more than two hours.

Secret audio recordings, later shared with The War Horse, reveal what happened inside.

A War Horse investigation into the events surrounding Cpl. Mobley’s death points to systemic failures before and after his suicide and an alarming disregard for protocols spelled out in 98 pages of Marine Corps Suicide Prevention System Procedures. After inquiries from The War Horse, the Corps said it is investigating.

In the secret recording, Rushton is heard reading aloud and mocking individual Marines’ written concerns with command leaders: “Oh, master sergeant yelled at me. I’m sad. Boo-the-fuck-hoo. You really think ISIS cares?”

At one point later, he tells them: “Call CNN. Call Fox News. See how that works out for you.”

And he insisted Mobley’s fellow Marines had no idea why he took his own life.

“He made a very personal decision,” Rushton sternly told the Marines, “to turn a temporary problem into a permanent solution. Very deliberate in what he did.”

“You can’t sit here and tell me that ARFF was the reason that he did what he did,” Rushton told them. “Do any of you have a suicide note from him?”

Again, silence.

“No, you don’t,” Rushton finally said. “You don’t know what was going through his head.”

‘Not Going the Way We Thought’

For years, the military has been struggling to come to grips with an alarming number of suicides among service members. Suicide rates have climbed in the military since 2011, but, in a glimmer of hope, declined in 2024, according to the most recent Defense Department report. Still, there were 471 suicides—more than one a day—in the U.S. military in 2024. And the Marine Corps has among the military’s highest rates. Studies and the Marines’ prevention protocols warn that exposure to suicide can lead to a higher risk for similar behavior.

In a social media post in February, Sgt. Maj. Carlos A. Ruiz, the Corps’ highest-ranking enlisted member, encouraged Marines to speak up if they are struggling with their mental health.

“This tribe demands that when you need help, you ask for help,” he said. “We bend together, and we don’t break together.”

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A post shared by SgtMaj of the Marine Corps (@usmcsgtmaj)

Despite its ‘suck-it-up’ image, veterans interviewed for this story say the Corps has made strides in looking out for troubled Marines in recent years. But what happened at Quantico last April provides a rare and unvarnished look into a culture that critics say can persist on the inside when unit-level commanders think nobody else is listening.

Over four months, The War Horse spoke to six Marines who worked in ARFF with Mobley. In interviews, they described working long hours for an understaffed unit, missing time with their families, and toxic leaders who dismissed their mental health concerns. The Marines who spoke with The War Horse also noted that Mobley’s death was the third suicide in the Marine Corps Air Facility, which includes ARFF, in less than two years.

The Marines who spoke out had hoped their feedback would hold ARFF’s leadership accountable for their perceived role in Mobley’s death, which Michael Snell, a former ARFF unit member, calls “horribly preventable.”

“The maltreatment had been going on forever and was getting ignored, and by literally everyone in the command,” Snell said in an interview with The War Horse. “And we basically all got told that we’re committing acts of mutiny.”

“We kind of all knew the moment they said, ‘Everybody put your phones outside’—we were like, ‘Oh, this is not going the way we thought it was going to go,’” said Malakai Standifer, another former ARFF Marine.

The War Horse reached out multiple times over a two-month period to four members of ARFF leadership—Warman, Rushton, Master Sgt. Jerry Chapman III, and Gunnery Sgt. Brian Tabares. Rushton and Warman directed inquiries to the Quantico communication office. The others did not respond.

After The War Horse submitted more than a dozen questions, detailing the allegations and sharing a number of Rushton’s and Warman’s comments from the closed-door meeting, Capt. Michael Kennedy, a Marine spokesman responded: “This incident is currently under investigation and no details regarding the investigation can be provided at this time.”

Rob Bracknell, a retired Marine officer and judge advocate, reviewed the recordings of the meeting at the request of The War Horse. He was not involved in the investigation.

“Berating Marines weeks after the third suicide in two years—that just sounds like the worst possible way to handle this,” Bracknell said. “Your first instinct should be, pull those guys into your arms and go, ‘Hey, let’s take care of you.’”

‘Be a Marine and Protect Earth’

When Drew Mobley ended his life at 22, he was working at what was supposed to be his dream job.

He’d known it since he was just a third grader. At Wallace Elementary in North Carolina, an hour’s drive west of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, he wrote an essay on what he wanted to be when he grew up.

“I am going to be a Marine and protect [E]arth,” he wrote. “No one is stopping me until I die or end the war.”

His essay won a contest for the Duplin County School District.

More than a decade later, Mobley was at Quantico on a Sunday afternoon. He updated his life insurance policy in the ARFF rec room. He played basketball for a bit with a few of his fellow Marines. He went to a sporting goods store, where he purchased a gun, and another store to purchase hollow-point bullets.

Then, he drove his Hyundai Sonata to the parking lot of the C.F. Phelps Wildlife Management Area. Around 6:30 p.m., he messaged some of his friends on Discord, a social app he liked to use, telling them he’d be offline for a while. His internet search history shows he was on his phone until after midnight.

Then, sometime in the early morning hours, he shot himself.

A few Marines who were sent to check on him discovered his body after friends tracked his location on Snapchat.

His mother later pieced together the last hours of Drew’s life from his phone log, receipts, and accounts from other Marines. In the months leading up to his death, Mobley was struggling, fellow Marines say, but they didn’t know how bad it was. He started isolating himself. His hair appeared unwashed. He arrived late to his shifts. He stopped wearing cologne.

“The boy loved cologne,” said his mother, April Mobley. “And always wore it.”

They checked in regularly on the phone, but he never told her how much he was suffering.

“My son was not a complainer,” she said. “He didn’t share his feelings.”

She remembers him telling her, after two other Marines’ suicides, that he didn’t understand why they would take their own lives. On their last phone call, he told her he was worried about his friend Cole McEachern, another ARFF Marine who was struggling.

Drew Mobley felt like he’d lost his purpose on base, Standifer said. At first, he’d enjoyed his job, April Mobley said. He made friends and had earned a nickname, Horse, because he’d “kinda just roam and graze and do [his] own thing,” said Snell.

It was random, but stuck. When Mobley left work, the other Marines would joke that they were “letting Horse out of the stable.” Later, Snell got a tattoo of a horse and the date of Mobley’s death on his shoulder.

In Sept. 2023, a year and a half out of boot camp, Mobley broke his leg and tore his ACL while playing football during physical training. In Feb. 2024, he had surgery to repair his ACL, but his leg didn’t heal as expected. He was eventually placed on limited duty.

It kept him from the airfield, where Marines trained for and responded to aircraft emergencies. Quantico is also home to Marine One, the president’s helicopter.

He was assigned to dispatch duty, and around Christmastime 2024 he was sent up to the “tower.” The shifts were punishing—12 hours, sometimes longer—and indeed, Mobley felt punished, he told his mom. Typically, dispatch shifts rotated among unit members, maybe up to six shifts a month, Standifer said. Mobley had been left on them full-time for three months.

Standifer said he witnessed Chapman, the master sergeant who was named 2024’s USMC Executive Fire Officer of the Year, berating and belittling Mobley on a regular basis.

He’d get flak for attending medical appointments that took him away from work, Snell said. Toward the end, the abuse got worse, he said.

“Basically, he was in Master Sgt. Chapman’s office, like, every day, just getting torn down, berated, basically getting told that he was garbage because he couldn’t work normally, like everybody else could,” Snell said.

McEachern, another former ARFF member, was also on dispatch duty because of an injury, alternating 12-hour shifts with Mobley. “They treated our injuries like we chose to get them and treated dispatch as a punishment,” he said.

“You’re a guy all alone, separated from your friends and family,” Standifer said. “Then you get injured. You can no longer do the job you’re passionate about. The people above you are now reminding you every single day that … you’re a piece of shit, and you know they don’t want you there.”

“Why didn’t they just kick him out?” April Mobley asked. “Why keep doing that to him every day?”

‘Felt I Had Let Him Down’

Months before Mobley’s death, ARFF unit members filled out what’s known as a Defense Organizational Climate Survey. Congress mandated the annual surveys across the military to service members to provide what is supposed to be confidential feedback about their command. The War Horse submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on March 31 for ARFF’s surveys but is still waiting for a response.

In the survey, Mobley explained that he felt he was being treated unfairly and said his shifts were isolating, according to a friend and fellow Marine who read over his submission. Mobley wanted “to ensure it would be taken seriously by the command,” the friend told The War Horse. He asked not to be identified because he is still serving in the Marines and feared retribution for speaking to a reporter.

Marines who spoke to The War Horse said many of their concerns about leadership were glossed over.

“We all felt completely unheard,” said the Marine who advised Mobley. When nothing changed, Mobley, in particular, took it hard. “I felt I had let him down by saying that the command would take everything seriously.”

Within a few months, Mobley was dead.

His death rattled his family.

April Mobley wasn’t one to coddle her kids, she said. “I am the toughest mama that you can find.” But Drew was such a good boy, she said. An easy, likable kid. Always the first person to ask how you were doing, always the last person to complain about his own problems. The chaplain at Quantico told her that Drew would often stop by and ask how he was doing. Nobody else ever did that, the chaplain said. (The chaplain didn’t respond to a LinkedIn message from The War Horse.)

“To see how they just pulled the life out of him, the happiness,” she said, her voice quaking.

At Drew’s memorial, Gunnery Sgt. Brian Tabares approached his mother and told her they knew Drew was struggling, she said.

“They knew,” April Mobley said. But she was too grief-stricken to ask Tabares: Why didn’t anyone do anything to help him?

“I just, I can’t understand that,” she said.

‘Maybe Your Feelings Need to Be Hurt’

Unprofessional. Lacking values. A disgrace to the uniform.

These are among the insults Rushton and Warman hurled at ARFF just weeks after Mobley’s death. When the doors shut, and the meeting started, Warman, a first-generation Marine with two combat deployments, made it clear not everyone was on notice.

Some of you will do “great things,” he told the group. “There’s a great deal of you who have such amazing future potential, not just in the Marine Corps, but in life.”

His focus quickly shifted.

“Some of you are selfish. You’re entitled. And you’re the most disloyal people I’ve ever met.”

After Mobley’s death, several Marines had specifically called out Chapman, the master sergeant.

Chapman had a “tendency to pick certain individuals he deemed not to his liking,” Standifer wrote in a statement he provided to investigators and later shared with The War Horse. “No matter the skills or actual work the individual does, they will always be bottom-tier low-lives to MSgt [Master Sergeant].” Drew was one of these, Standifer wrote.

“Cpl. Mobley was verbally and publicly ridiculed for his inability to work shift due to a major leg injury,” Standifer wrote. This “caused him to get put in dispatch over and over, locked in a hole with only the occasional visits from shift members to keep him sane until he was pushed too far and ended his life.”

Another Marine was “constantly accused of using his mental health appointments to get out of work,” Standifer wrote.

These statements were supposed to be kept confidential, Marines said—they were told they’d only be shared with Warman and other officers involved in the investigation. But now, here they were. Less than three weeks after Mobley’s suicide, Warman and Rushton were sitting in front of the entire unit, reading snippets from those same statements.

Marines had complained about limited time with family. Some hadn’t seen their families in weeks, they said. In response, Rushton reprimanded them for not being team players.

“You don’t want to switch shifts, because, ‘Oh, my wife’s schedule won’t allow it,’” he said. “Nobody gives a fuck about your wife’s schedule. Sorry if it hurts your feelings—maybe your feelings need to be hurt.”

Some Marines complained that leaders discouraged them from attending medical appointments—including mental health appointments—during work hours. Rushton insisted these appointments needed to happen on personal time.

As for those who didn’t agree with him, Rushton said: “They’re being fucking lazy. … That’s you being fucking selfish.”

“How many of you’ve ever deployed to a combat zone?” asked Rushton, who shared he had been three times. “Do you really think ISIS gives a fuck about your feelings?”

Rushton scolded the unit for blaming Mobley’s death on leadership. “Stop blaming the chain of command over your own personal problems.”

One after another, he read aloud and rejected the criticism.

“The work climate at ARFF, and I quote, ‘Will not improve if Master Sgt. Chapman remains in charge. I respectfully and tactfully request a review of Master Sgt. Chapman’s leadership and its effect on the unit.’”

Rushton was having none of it: “Know what that sounds like to me? There’s a naval term that that falls under. … What term am I referring to? Mutiny. It’s a fucking mutiny.”

‘Every Marine Feels Supported’

Capt. Michael P. Kennedy struck a different tone in the Marines’ official response to The War Horse about the unit’s claims and the closed-door meeting.

“The loss of even one Marine to suicide is one too many,” he wrote in an email. “Our prevention and postvention efforts are applied with equal commitment and seriousness across Marine Corps Base Quantico. At Marine Corps Base Quantico, we are dedicated to fostering a community where every Marine feels supported and knows that help is always available.”

But an examination of the Marines’ official suicide prevention procedures calls into question the response before and after Mobley’s death.

The latest version of the document from the Commandant of the Marine Corps—coincidentally issued four days before Rushton and Warman’s meeting with ARFF—lays out procedures, from suicide prevention training requirements to dispelling the stigma of mental health care.

“Command climate is a critical aspect of suicide prevention in the Marine Corps,” it reads.

Leaders should be “involved with every aspect of Marines’ lives in the unit” and they should “facilitate the discussion of life stressors between Marines and leadership without judgment or stigma.” It lays out potential warning signs that might urge a commander to order a mental health evaluation for a subordinate Marine, including “significant changes in performance” and “behavior changes that appear to be unmanageable by the Marine.”

It also offers guidance for how to respond in the aftermath of a suicide. Those left behind might experience guilt, anger, shame, and betrayal after a suicide, it says. It’s common for those left behind to “seek answers and assign blame,” the document says. Leaders can help by “fostering hope” and avoiding framing that causes shame or guilt. Trust in leadership is key, the document instructs. “Ask other Marines how they are and actively listen.”

Leaders should “foster a positive, safe command climate that promotes healthy stress responses.”

After a suicide, other Marines can be “at high risk.” These efforts help survivors cope with grief and prevent future suicides.

Bracknell, the former Marine judge advocate who is now an adjunct professor at William & Mary Law School, said Rushton and Warman’s response to ARFF does not align with these guidelines.

“First Sgt. Rushton’s comments seeking to shift blame off the unit and pointing fingers at their ‘unprofessionalism’ in the wake of a suicide—that’s not the ‘positive, safe command climate’ the Commandant expected when he approved that guidance,” Bracknell said. “Instinctively, their reactions are the opposite of what any professional, caring, thoughtful, engaged leader would do in that instance.”

Retired Marine Col. Don Wogaman, who was not involved in the investigation, appeared visibly troubled after he reviewed—at The War Horse’s request—how command leaders rebuked the Marines for raising concerns after Mobley’s suicide.

The subject is painful for him. Wogaman remembers how a fellow Marine who served in the Gulf War took his own life while Wogaman was responding to his Facebook post. It “tears me up,” he said. He called Rushton and Warman’s response to the ARFF Marines “horrible leadership.”

In the Marines, Bracknell said, leaders often “fail to discern the difference between tough and cruel.” The skills hardened military commanders rely on to lead a unit are not the same ones needed to help them cope after a fellow service member’s suicide, he said.

But at times during the closed-door meeting, Warman softened his tone, sharing lessons on leadership, and living and dying as a team.

At one point, he became contemplative over the suicides: “If anybody’s responsible, it’s me,” he told the Marines. “And I accept responsibility for that, because I’m the commander, and it’s happened under my watch. I own that, and those are the things I have to live with the rest of my life—that I had three, three Marines take their lives under my watch.

“Never once in my 23-year career have I ever seen that. Ever.”

The Third Suicide

Mobley’s death was the third suicide in the Marine Corps Air Facility, or MCAF, in under two years. A senior enlisted Marine in the MCAF command died by suicide in August 2023, and an ARFF Marine took his own life about three months later. While The War Horse was reporting this story, another former ARFF member took his own life in Feb. 2026.

The War Horse was unable to contact family connected to the most recent suicide, but did reach the spouses of the first two Marines who died. In a Facebook message, one of the women said her husband “never had any issues with higher-ups or colleagues” and that command leaders were there for her after his death, “especially MSGT Chapman,” the master sergeant whom Mobley’s unit members criticized.

The other said in a phone interview that her husband had a largely positive experience in MCAF at Quantico. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which stemmed from personal childhood trauma as well as his experiences in Fallujah. MCAF was one of the most supportive units he was in, his wife said.

He took his own life a little over a week after receiving an official PTSD diagnosis, she said.

“He knew that [seeking mental health treatment] would be career-changing,” she said. He reached out to a counselor during his time at MCAF, but the counselor told him she would have to notify his command if he came to her for help, which scared him off.

Military culture dissuades people from seeking help, she said. “It’s kind of like—you should get help, and then just know that your career might be over.”

The Suicide That Didn’t Happen

In the weeks around Mobley’s death, there was almost another suicide.

The story of Sgt. Cole McEachern’s is similar to Mobley’s in many ways. During an aircraft emergency, he sustained a labral tear in his shoulder. Like Mobley, he was put on limited duty and 12-hour dispatch shifts. He and Mobley would alternate shifts, and sometimes spend extra time in the tower to keep each other company.

Unlike Mobley, McEachern wasn’t new to the military and had seen some violent things. On 12-hour dispatch shifts, he had “nothing but time” to think about these memories, he said. When he sought treatment for his nightmares and post-traumatic stress at the Quantico mental health clinic, he was told he had insomnia, and they couldn’t do anything for him, McEachern said.

That’s when he began self-medicating with cocaine.

The drugs fought off the nightmares. He’d stay awake for so long, that when he crashed, his sleep was dreamless.

Some days, McEachern would be driving to the ARFF station from the barracks, and he’d turn around, filled with dread at the thought of another day-long shift spent in solitude. Then, he said he’d think of Mobley—I can’t leave him there alone, he remembers thinking. He’d turn around again and make it to work, where he’d sit in his car, trying to psych himself up to go inside.

Around shift changes, when both he and Mobley were present, he remembers that Chapman would regularly show up to chew them out. They were the “trouble kids” because they were injured, McEachern said.

He talked to his dad Ryan McEachern on the phone nearly every day, and his father said he had noticed a shift in Cole’s demeanor. Cole was always frustrated, his father said, and he’d become more negative, more withdrawn.

“When he would call, he just kind of had this depressed vibe about him,” Ryan McEachern said. He remembers one call where Cole said a member of leadership had told him he was “a piece of shit” and that “they didn’t really want [him] around anybody else” because he was a bad influence. Cole took a lot of pride in his work, Ryan McEachern said, so that hurt.

“There’s just a meanness in people that do that, even in the Marine Corps,” said the father, a Marine Corps veteran himself.

Around Jan. 2025, Cole’s calls home became sparser, and Ryan McEachern could see on the “Find My Friends” app that Cole was keeping erratic hours, sometimes out as late as 4 a.m.

Then on April 1, 2025, Ryan McEachern received a call he’ll never forget.

“I fucked up, I’m a piece of shit, everyone’s going to f-ing hate me,” McEachern remembers his son saying. Cole confessed he’d done drugs the night before. “He spiraled into this, just, whole conversation about how horrible he was.”

“I’m panicking,” Ryan McEachern said. “I was like, ‘Dude, where are you right this second?’”

Cole told him he was on base in his truck.

“I need you to drive to the mental health clinic,” Ryan McEachern told his son.

Cole resisted—the mental health clinic on base hadn’t been helpful in the past, so why would he go back there?

“I said, ‘Do not hang up your phone,’” Ryan McEachern said, his voice shaking as he retold the story. He stayed on the phone as Cole walked into the clinic and approached the front desk. From the phone, Ryan shouted a message to the receptionist. “Before he can say a word, I’m like, ‘Don’t let this guy leave!’”

As the clinic staff started to handle the situation, the gravity of what had almost happened hit hard. “I was like, holy shit,” Ryan McEachern said. “I think my kid was about to kill himself.”

On April 11, Cole McEachern was eventually admitted into a month-long inpatient mental health program, just days after his friend Drew Mobley died. Cole missed the memorial service.

Ryan McEachern said he wished Drew would have made a similar phone call.

“I think about that constantly. That phone call sucked, but I was sure lucky to get it.”

‘Feel Like I Owe Them’

Drew has been gone a year, but for his mother April, the pain is still fresh. Her voice is still raw with anger and sadness. Sometimes, she trails off mid sentence, choked by tears.

Drew, who as a third grader wanted everyone to “pray to God for the Marines that protected us and were willing to die,” is still with her. Once, after she visited Drew’s grave, she got in the car. The clock had changed to military time. “Never done that before,” she said.

April stays in touch with other Marines. She feels responsible for them, she said. She calls them on holidays, invites them to her home for dinners, sends their kids Christmas and birthday presents.

“Every boy that calls me, I feel like I owe it to them,” she said.

“I prayed to God. Like, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to have a purpose in all of this?” she implores. “What is my path?

“I truly feel like at this point, it’s to make all of these boys feel heard. To make them feel like what they went through was wrong and [for] somebody to acknowledge that.”

On the first anniversary of Drew’s death, April took a trip to the Grand Canyon with her family. On the way there, they stopped at a convenience store. April wanted to buy a Coke, Drew’s favorite drink. She didn’t know why, she just felt like she needed to. At the rim of the canyon, as they took in the view, she placed the glass bottle down on a post.

On the post, she spotted a sticker, left behind by another traveler. Its message astonished her: “Drew’s Crew.”

This War Horse investigation was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Video and audio editing by LiPo Ching.

The reevaluation applies to all active and reserve sailors with approved or pending religious accommodations for waivers allowing facial hair styles, as well as those looking to revisit requests for waivers that were denied previously and those submitting their first request, according to an administrative message.

“Commanding officers must objectively weigh the fundamental value of accommodating religious practices against the compelling, life-or-death interest of maintaining an absolute protective posture and ensuring the operational viability of our fleet,” the message says.

All sailors with approved or pending religious waiver requests have to resubmit those same requests now that the military is revising policy.

All Marines required to follow grooming standards within 12 months or face separation

The Defense Department released a memorandum in mid-March requesting proof of “sincerely held religious beliefs” if a service member is to qualify for religious exemptions.

In order to prove their faith, service members are required to provide written testimony regarding the sincerity of their religious beliefs, as well as how clean-shaven grooming standards conflict with those beliefs.

Sailors submitting religious accommodation requests for facial hair have 10 business days to inform their command that they plan to resubmit a new request.

Those requests will be processed by command and undergo a review by a chaplain, who will determine the veracity of the religious belief the sailor is claiming as their reason for the waiver.

Commands have 30 days from the time sailors submit their religious accommodation requests to reevaluate them.

The Navy said it will provide follow-up updated instruction on proper grooming standards for service members.

The Army this week added three more technology executives into the Executive Innovation Corps, more commonly known as Detachment 201, a newly created unit intended to bridge the gap between the commercial sector and the military.

Dane Knecht, the chief technology officer of Cloudflare; Sam Pullara, the managing director and chief technology officer of Sutter Hill Ventures; and Serkan Piantino, the co-founder of Facebook AI Research and former vice president of products at Reddit, were commissioned into the Army in a Wednesday ceremony.

The trio was commissioned by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Virginia.

They are the second batch of leaders to join the unit, which was launched in June 2025 with the direct commissioning of four executives.

Piantino said the program offers technology leaders a chance to apply their expertise to pressing military issues.

“As the character of warfare evolves, the armed forces must rapidly adapt to new domains and prepare for continued technological change,” he said in an Army statement. “Those who have the experience to contribute to that mission have a duty to offer their service.”

Detachment 201 was created to allow senior tech leaders to help the Army innovate by serving as advisors in the reserves.

The first cohort included Lt. Cols. Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer for Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, former chief product officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer for OpenAI.

The Army said the first group’s guidance included assistance on “munitions supply chain data analysis, Organic Industrial Base investments, and foundational strategies for autonomous systems and counter-drone technologies.”

The detachment’s ranks have increased, the Army said, as the service has revamped its direct commissioning program by cutting the onboarding timeline from more than 18 months to around six. The new system makes it easier for technology leaders to serve without leaving civilian jobs, according to the service.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Sam Pullara’s name and that Kevin Weil is the former Chief Product Officer of OpenAI.

Ukraine, in the fifth year of fighting a full-scale Russian invasion, is already using AI for a plethora of battlefield functions, from flying drones at targets to helping plan combat operations and crunching data on Russian missile attacks.

“AI will form a new paradigm of warfare. It’s already actively doing so,” Danylo Tsvok, the head of the defense ministry’s AI center, told Reuters.

He predicted AI systems would eventually be unified into a single network overseeing the battlefield, leading to a “war of operating systems” with Russia in the next three to five years, if the conflict continues.

“The system that possesses more data and better understands that data, proposes solutions — that system will gain the advantage over the other," he said.

The center was founded in March as Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov seeks to put AI and data-driven decision-making at the heart of Ukraine’s defenses.

Drones, still mostly flown by pilots, have already upended the way the war is being fought.

Ukrainian and Russian troops launch thousands of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) a day at each other. Kyiv is also trying to solve its frontline troop shortage with ground robots.

The ability of drones to constantly surveil the battlefield and hit targets with precision has accelerated the “kill chain” – the process of planning and executing a strike on the enemy. AI decision-making would speed this up even more, Tsvok said.

Technological arms race

Ukraine, whose military numbers around a million personnel, is already using AI tools in its command systems.

But Tsvok said the goal was to create a single operating system to recommend battlefield decisions all the way up from individual frontline units to strategic command.

This would significantly speed up the analysis of data from the 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) front line to allow recommendations to human commanders, he said.

The aim, Tsvok said, is to unite weapons and data systems into “one single living organism that can operate in a coordinated manner.”

The technological arms race launched by Europe’s largest war since World War Two, which lasted from 1939 to 1945, has attracted interest from foreign AI companies hungry for combat data to train their models and the opportunity to test their systems.

Some, such as U.S. company Palantir, have provided Ukraine with their systems. Kyiv has created Brave1 Dataroom, a project to share battlefield data with allied countries for training their software.

“This is the place where you can understand whether your system works,” said Tsvok, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans.

Moscow is also developing its artificial intelligence capabilities. A senior Ukrainian air defense commander told Reuters in April he was concerned by Russia’s increasing use of AI in planning drone and missile attacks on cities, which could significantly reduce the planning time for each strike.

“The question is,” Tsvok said, “how quickly we build our solutions and how practically we apply them and achieve the primary impact on the battlefield from our side.”

He added that the defense ministry was developing an AI-driven recruitment and HR system as part of Fedorov’s push for data-driven reform of the vast government department.

Ukraine operates on the principle of having a human in the loop on combat decisions, but Tsvok said AI systems could eventually outrun humans, whose presence would then slow decisions down.

“Then the question arises: how do we keep up with making decisions that autonomous systems propose?” he said.

The decision would limit NATO’s ability to launch long-range strikes and conduct surveillance, the report said.

The U.S. plan includes cutting the number of F-16 and F-15E fighter jets from roughly 150 to 100, reducing maritime reconnaissance aircraft from 26 to 15, and removing all eight aerial refueling tanker jets it previously made available to Europe, the report said.

The U.S. also aims to redeploy a missile-launching submarine and an aircraft carrier, along with several warships and scores of jets that join the carrier’s missions, the New York Times said, adding that one of two groups of bombers previously assigned for Europe’s defense may also be reallocated.

“Historically there has been an over-reliance on U.S. forces and capabilities,” NATO spokesperson Allison Hart told Reuters, adding that as Europe and Canada invest more in defense and develop greater capabilities, the balance of responsibility can shift.

This would strengthen NATO’s defense by reducing reliance on a single ally and reflect a broader change happening within the alliance, Hart said in an emailed statement.

The U.S. Department of Defense did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The U.S. European Command said in a statement last week that it would “rightsize” its contributions to the NATO Force Model, without providing further details.

Reuters reported in May that the U.S. planned to scale back the military capabilities it would make available to its NATO allies during a major crisis.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly accused European governments of underinvesting in ​their militaries and relying too heavily on U.S. protection, while urging both Europe and Asian allies ⁠to boost defense spending to 3.5% of GDP.

The name change is included in the committee’s version of the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in a Thursday statement, explaining why he chose to vote against the bill’s advancement.

Kaine criticized the proposed renaming and additional funding for what he called the “illegal and foolish” war in the Middle East.

“Rather than taking steps to end this deeply unpopular war, this bill rebrands the Department of Defense as the Department of War, a juvenile move that sadly describes the reality of a President who has abandoned meaningful diplomacy in favor of starting doubtful wars in multiple locations and threatening even more,” he said in the statement.

Though the Department of War and Secretary of War titles have not yet been legally established by Congress, the terms have been used by Pentagon and federal government officials as a secondary title since President Donald Trump’s September 2025 executive order declaring the reversal.

The Department of Defense was known as the War Department from its creation in 1789 until 1947, when President Harry Truman recommended the change.

A week ago, members of the House Armed Service Committee approved the name change, advancing the amendment included in fiscal 2027’s NDAA to the Senate, which has yet to release their version of the bill.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praised the House vote on social media, stating that “The Department of War will officially be restored soon.”

Critics say it is unnecessary to change the name at a time when they say other matters should take priority. Supporters of the change say it would send a signal to adversaries by projecting America’s strength.

A Congressional Budget Office analysis released in January revealed that the push to rename the department could cost taxpayers between $10 million and $125 million.

“Instead of prioritizing bringing down the cost of groceries or health care, Trump and his cronies are focused on vanity projects like renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War – potentially costing American taxpayers upwards of $125 million,” Ranking Member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., one of the lawmakers who request the CBO report, said in a statement following the report’s release.

“This move is performative government at its worst and does nothing to advance national security or help service members and their families,” he added.

In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote the United States would be hitting Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” adding that “at some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets.”

Kharg Island, located in the Persian Gulf, typically handles roughly 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. It has been central to the economic survival of the Islamic Republic for decades. A 1984 declassified CIA document called its facilities “the most vital in Iran’s oil system, and their continued operation is essential to Iran’s economic well-being.”

But Trump’s saber-rattling was quickly tempered by a note of caution. Speaking to the hosts of “Fox & Friends” shortly after his social media post, the president questioned whether America “has the stomach” for a larger military operation to take the island.

“I’m not sure the country has the appetite for it, as good as it is,” Trump said. “I think they’d like to see us come home.”

The White House told Military Times that all military options remain available to the president, including scenarios involving a significant number of ground forces occupying Kharg Island. On Thursday, however, Trump appeared to rule out that possibility.

“I don’t want to have boots on the ground. But if I wanted to, we could put a small group of soldiers and take over the whole place,” the commander in chief said, punctuating his remarks on Iran with “They’re finished.”

Trump’s political coalition has been riven with tensions since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Foreign policy hawks who insist Iran must be curbed are on one side, and isolationist-leaning, “America-First” voices are on the other. The latter group is vigorously opposed to the use of ground troops, fearing that such a deployment would pave the way for the U.S. getting sucked into a long and costly conflict, similar to those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The proposal to seize the island and establish control over Iran’s oil sector also diverges from the four objectives that bolstered Operation Epic Fury in the first place. The Trump administration’s stated war aims were to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, inflict serious damage on its Navy and Air Force, prevent nuclear development and curtail its support for proxy groups in the region, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

This all comes as hostilities between American and Iranian forces in the Middle East are on the rise, despite a ceasefire signed in April.

U.S. Central Command said that Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy assets conducted strikes Wednesday evening against Iranian military surveillance capabilities, communication systems and air defense sites.

Trump, during his interview with Fox News, claimed the U.S. “dropped $250 million worth of bombs on them last night.”

Tehran — which asserts it has launched a series of retaliatory strikes against American bases in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait — cast the nearly two-month ceasefire as “practically meaningless.”

“The illegal and criminal attacks perpetrated by the United States in recent hours not only constitute a flagrant violation... but also render the ceasefire practically meaningless,” Iran’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “Responsibility for the extremely serious consequences of the criminal act lies with the leaders of the United States.”

The airmen from the 492nd Special Operations Wing and 919th Special Operations Wing graduated recently from the Escuela Militar de Montaña in Bariloche, Argentina, according to a release. The school is set in Patagonia’s rough terrain and is intended to push students to their physical and mental limits.

“Nothing compared to the level of mountaineering we would endure during this course,” the 919th SOW airman said in the statement. “They took what I had previously considered intense hiking and went vertical. While I had some experience, this school introduced an entirely new element: multi-pitch rock climbing.”

The air commandos’ curriculum centered around high-altitude operations, cold-weather survival and mountainous landscape movements, per the release.

Over the course of several weeks, the airmen mastered advanced rock climbing, rope safety techniques and the use of single-rope bridges to cross mountain rivers.

The airmen successfully trained alongside members of the Argentine military, bolstering the relationship between the U.S. and Argentina and leading to one airmen earning the votes of their classmates for the “Best Teammate Award.”

Both air commandos also completed the school’s instructor course. The Argentine military invited the airmen to return as guest instructors for future courses.

“By mastering this course and becoming instructors alongside our Argentinean partners, these airmen are writing the next chapter of that legacy — tackling challenges that haven’t been touched by U.S. forces in decades,” Col. Zak Blom, 492nd SOW commander, said in the release.

While the course completion was the first of its kind in Air Force history, it also marked the first time since 2006 that any U.S. military personnel participated in the school.

The cancellation, first reported by Task and Purpose, was announced Wednesday by leaders of the Bipartisan Women’s Caucus in a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol.

Multiple Democratic lawmakers decried the circumstances, saying it was more evidence of attempts by the administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to minimize the service of female veterans.

“In plain terms, the very women the ceremony was created to honor were pushed out of it,” Rep. Emilia Sykes, D-Ohio, the caucus co-chair and vice chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said. “Honoring veterans should not be controversial. Recognizing the service and sacrifice of women who wore our nation’s uniform should be one of the easiest things for us to come together around. Yet, because of the decisions made by this administration, we are defending the basic act of honoring women veterans.”

A staffer for the Democratic Women’s Caucus told Military Times that the wreath-laying had been canceled June 10 after officials with the Department of the Air Force said they could not attend due to anti-DEI mandates published in January 2025, immediately after President Donald Trump took office.

An Air Force spokeswoman, Ann Stefanek, confirmed to Military Times via email that “The Department of the Air Force declined participation in compliance with Executive Orders … and DoW guidance.”

Officials with the Army and Navy declined to comment. But military sources with knowledge of planning indicated that the services were not coordinated in their response.

Sources claimed the Navy had been unaware of the event and their invitation to attend, while the Army faced scheduling conflicts related to Army birthday events following a rescheduling of the initial wreath-laying date. The Marine Corps did not respond to a query.

The caucus staff member confirmed the event had been rescheduled to June 10 from an earlier May date due to a conflict with votes. They also acknowledged that the Army had citing scheduling issues, but said Army birthday events had never been a problem in the past.

“The executive order and the DoD guidance, it’s for all the branches, so that’s ultimately why this event couldn’t happen,” the staffer said.

At Wednesday’s press conference, multiple speakers cited other recent moves they cast as diminishing the service of military women.

Sykes cited recent reports of Hegseth’s intervention to block the promotion of three female Navy officers to one-star admiral, leaving no women on the promotions list.

Kayla Williams, an Army veteran and former Department of Veterans Affairs official representing the Vet Voice Foundation, recalled Pentagon-driven directives that resulted in the services pulling down web pages honoring the achievements of women in uniform.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., a former Air Force officer, noted that her grandparents were buried in Arlington National Cemetery, which made the cancellation of the wreath-laying “so painful.”

“I keep coming back to a simple question for President Trump and for Secretary Hegseth and my Republican colleagues,” she said. “Which is, when did saying thank you to women who served their country become a controversial statement?

“Women have answered ... every call this nation has asked of them,” Houlahan continued. “They have flown combat missions, they have commanded troops, they’ve cared for the wounded, they’ve gathered intelligence and they’ve deployed into harm’s way alongside their fellow service members. They didn’t ask for special treatment, they earned our respect. And honoring their service should never be viewed as a political statement.”

Former Sgt. 1st Class Jane Crosby, 35, pleaded guilty to bank fraud and aggravated identity theft in federal court, according to a press release, after using the victims’ personal information to apply for $266,000 in loans and credit card accounts and to withdraw money and deposit fraudulent checks. Task & Purpose first reported on the case Wednesday.

Court documents and statements say that between around September and December 2023, Crosby used the prospective recruits’ personal information to apply for special credit union accounts intended for future service members, the office said. After creating the accounts without the victims’ knowledge, Crosby used their identities for loan and credit card applications and used the accounts for illegal banking transactions.

One document said that multiple calls from Crosby’s office phone number were made to a credit union, which was not named, where the caller impersonated two of the victims while trying to access their accounts.

At the time of the scheme, Crosby was assigned to a recruiting station in East Orange, New Jersey, and used would-be recruits’ personal documents that included passports, driver’s licenses and Social Security cards.

The recruiter faces up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for bank fraud as well as an additional two years with a maximum fine of $250,000 for the aggravated identity theft.

Military Times reached out to the Army to confirm Crosby’s current status.

In a study examining the Department of Veterans Affairs’ handling of disability claims filed for military sexual assault, a panel of experts found that the agency’s dual standards for related disability claims — which allow evidence such as behavior changes and outside observation for post-traumatic stress disorder claims but require proof of the experience for other disabilities — “results in inconsistent decision-making” during adjudication.

According to the report, disability claims related to sexual assault or chronic harassment were approved at lower rates than combat claims, with an 18.2% approval compared to 27.6% across a five-year period. Approval rates were also significantly lower for men and Black veteran.

Under the VA system, veterans who file a claim for conditions stemming from sexual trauma have separate burdens of proof depending on their disability. Those who file for related post-traumatic stress disorder may provide observational evidence but those seeking compensation for other mental or physical conditions connected to the assault must provide proof of the event.

Given that “elements of the military context pressure service members not to disclose” such assaults, showing evidence remains a “major barrier” to substantiating such claims, the report noted.

In 2024, the VA received 39,711 claims related to military sexual trauma. Nearly two-thirds were approved with the average disability rating of 80%. According to the report, the average monthly compensation rate was roughly $2,500 a month.

Roughly 1 in 3 women and 1 in 50 men report having experienced sexual assault or harassment during their service in the military.

The panel, made up of academics, think tank analysts and VA researchers, recommended that the department consider allowing lay evidence and behavioral observation to support PTSD and non-PTSD related claims.

“Congress should enact legislation directing the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to accept evidence from lay persons or other sources as sufficient proof of service connection of any condition claimed to have incurred or aggravated by experiencing MST, regardless of whether there is an official service record of the MST experience or an associated condition,” said Dr. Harold Kudler, who is a retired VA psychiatrist and panel member now with Duke University, during a briefing Wednesday on the report.

The VA’s process itself for handling sexual assault related claims is problematic, the experts said, because claimants must fill out disability questionnaires and attend compensation and pension exams that often are conducted by people who lack trauma-informed training. The panel said the process — including the possibility of having a claim denied — can be traumatic.

They recommended reducing the number of compensation and pension exams veterans must attend, creating a more supportive exam environment and making sure the examiners were trained in handling trauma-related cases.

They also recommended that the VA develop a specific disability questionnaire for sex-related trauma claims.

“We hope that our recommendations will reduce harms to veterans and improve their experience when making [military sexual trauma]-related claims, modernize and strengthen training, and improve accuracy and fairness in the disability compensation process,” Committee Chairwoman Hortensia Amaro, a community health professor at Florida International University, said in a statement.

The National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine was directed to conduct the study by Congress in 2023.

By now, it seems clear that the Navy approved, via a selection board, a list with 31 names on it. The final promotion list only contained 22. While this has not been confirmed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, it seems clear that the names were removed by the secretary himself.

This is a line that has never been crossed before; no defense secretary in the past several decades has taken such drastic action.

While it is true that promotions have been withheld in the past — in the case of the Tailhook scandal and Fat Leonard investigations, for example — those were tied to alleged misconduct. This is not the case here; all 31 of those selected met the approved, merit-based standards of the selection board.

Additionally, the group removed included all of the women and several minorities, as well as some white officers who were originally selected. No reason was given, but some reporting indicates that a past association with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives is a common denominator.

Regardless of the intent, the impact is clear: The makeup of this group of admirals will shape Navy leadership for decades to come.

To recap, the board president led his members to a decision under statutory guidance, a process that has been scrutinized and refined to the highest standard over the decades.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s actions effectively say that neither SECNAV nor a board of highly qualified flag officers are capable of delivering a list of the “best of the best” and that his judgment alone, without having reviewed records in the same detail, is better.

Hegseth has made it clear by his words and actions that he holds a strong presumption: If a woman or minority was promoted to a leadership position, it was solely because of their race or gender. The idea that it might have been based on merit is discounted.

If this new non-DEI standard imposed after the fact by the secretary is at the heart of the action, the trend will continue toward an all-white male admiralty that does not resemble or represent the force it leads. If nothing else, it creates a gap of nine flag billets while our nation is at war.

Many of us see this as a seminal moment for the Navy.

The actions of a single individual, taken without justification or explanation, demonstrate a dramatic and stark rebuke of Navy leadership, the Navy flag community, all of the individuals selected by the board for promotion and the board process, as well as its president and members.

If Navy leaders cannot decide who leads the service, how can anything they say or do be trusted?

This is a good spot to acknowledge a different perspective. A colleague with experience in such matters shared the following: “As a secretary, it’s one of the few levers you have to influence the future of the force ... Previous administrations placed much more emphasis on diversity … There are a limited number of flag positions. Choices have to be made. Promotions can’t be entirely objective. They never really have been ... Frankly, that is the Service Secretary’s and Sec War’s job.”

This may be true, but it this author’s opinion, it does not come close to justifying the recent unprecedented actions.

This situation transcends political alliances; even if the removals do not violate the letter of Title 10 and the secretary’s authority and responsibilities to Congress, it tramples on the spirit.

If the defense secretary wanted to shape the force in his image — white, male, straight, Christian — he could have duly inserted language into the precepts letter with transparency, and not hide behind the opacity of the office.

If he wanted to reduce the number of flag officers, as some have opined, Hegseth could have cut the number of available billets. I had hoped, perhaps naively, for a “Revolt of the Admirals,” some form of unified stand — or at least a louder hue and cry — from either the active duty or retired flag community, or even from the acting secretary of the Navy. But if there has been one, it has remained behind closed doors.

As many of those very flag officers have said many times (in person, in the same room as me), “When you walk past a discrepancy and do nothing, you have just established a new, lower standard”.

I agree. A lot of us are watching; recent articles and interviews have captured the pressures and fears expressed by female and minority active duty and retired service members. They also fall against the backdrop of other actions, such as the removal of high-ranking female and minority officers, a policy on shaving that impacts primarily Black service members and a drumbeat of questions about the suitability of women for combat roles.

As one officer said to me, “The cracks we put in the glass ceiling have now been repaired, and it’s more impenetrable than ever.”

Those words and the feelings behind them indicate a loss of trust in the integrity of the institution and those who lead it. These actions will filter down over time.

One Black sailor told me, “I submitted an officer package, but I feel my chances are now slim.” A very senior female officer told me that this action “chilled me to the bone. I cannot in good conscience advise young women to join a service where their opportunities are limited regardless of their talent.”

I feel especially bad for the 22 who were deemed “acceptable” for promotion. At some point they will be in the room with one or more of the other nine who met the exact same merit- and accomplishment-based standards. Will they look away? They should not be in this position; nor should the Navy.

I hope to see redress of this situation in some form, preferably the reinstatement of all 31 selectees. At a minimum, there should be a clear accounting for the reasons the other nine were removed.

It appears that Navy leadership is not prepared to die on this hill, which is disappointing but not unexpected.

There is still time for Congress to demand, and push for, answers. But the cement is setting, and this is starting to look like the new normal.

The foundation of the entire selection board process is cracked and may never recover. If so, it is a sad day for the Navy, the military and the country.

Dr. John Cordle is a retired Navy surface warfare officer (nuclear). He commanded the destroyer USS Oscar Austin and the cruiser USS San Jacinto during his 30-year military career and was recognized with the U.S. Navy League John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership.

Crafted by architect Kengo Kuma in partnership with the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation, the memorial’s design is the culmination of eight years of input from 20,000 Americans, including veterans from every branch of service and every conflict since World War II, according to a foundation release.

According to the memorial’s description, visitors will first encounter steel and stone relics recovered from the 9/11 attacks at each of the site’s three entrances, “marking where the journey began,” the release states.

In a primary section coined “the embrace,” a classically inspired amphitheater rises over the path below and features an arch made of reclaimed steel from the era’s combat operations.

The arch, which will also be adorned with native vegetation, is designed to filter light and will be oriented to align with Section 60 in Arlington National Cemetery, the resting place of roughly 1,000 service members killed in the post-9/11 wars.

Below the arch, a predominantly marble “path of honor” includes embedded boot prints “that represent the weight of war and the varied experiences of those who served and their families,” the release says. The path will also connect to adjacent memorials on the National Mall.

Extending from the footprint paths are shallow reflecting pools in which visitors can dip their feet before stepping back onto the stone to leave footprints of their own, an “interactive component [that] offers visitors the chance to walk alongside a loved one once more,” the foundation says.

“This design was shaped by history and held sacred from the beginning — forged by sacrifice and informed by the voices of warriors and their families,” Michael “Rod” Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation and a retired U.S. Army Green Beret, said in the release.

“Throughout history, societies have built sacred places to welcome their warriors home, places where a grateful people can say, ‘We see you. We honor you. You are not forgotten.’” Rodriguez added. “The GWOT generations deserve that same enduring tribute. Today, we take one step closer to welcoming them home.”

In addition to input gathered since 2018, a 23-member advisory council comprising Gold Star family members, veterans and their families worked alongside designers to craft what the foundation has called a “living place ... that will illuminate at night and invite reflection, healing and unity for generations to come.”

As the site’s architect, Kuma’s work on the memorial resonated on a deeply personal level, he said in a recent interview. The artist lost his close friend Yoichi Sugiyama, who worked for Fuji Bank, in the Sept. 11 attack at the World Trade Center.

“This memorial is not an abstract commission for our team, it is a sacred responsibility,” Kuma said in the release. “Our role was not to impose a design, but to listen. The voices of those who served and the families who stood beside them became our source of inspiration. We wanted to create a place of reflection and connection, a living memorial where nature, light and the materials of this war come together as an embrace for a grateful nation.”

Foundation officials are slated to meet over the coming months with various city planning commissions to finalize design approval, according to the foundation’s proposed timeline.

With approval, the foundation is aiming for a 2027 groundbreaking and a project completion date of late 2028.

The Cyber Mastery Incentive Pay, or C-MIP, initiative is meant to modernize how the department encourages the Cyberspace Operations Forces, the military and civilian units responsible for cyberspace operations, according to a June 10 release.

“To incentivize our cyber forces and meet both Department of War and Defense Industrial Base needs, we need to shed legacy incentive models and invest directly in our people serving on the digital front lines. C-MIP does this,” Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata said in the release.

The C-MIP program drops the previous incentive models to a more flexible system that aligns pay with skillset mastery and performance of demanding tasks, the announcement says. The program was developed in 60 days by the CYBERCOM 2.0 unit.

The program will feature two layers: skill incentive pay and special duty pay.

Skill incentive pay, or SIP, is considered the foundational layer that rewards an individual for skill level, whether it’s basic, senior or master.

Special duty assignment pay, or SDAP, is a monthly incentive for members who perform duties CYBERCOM deems “exceptionally demanding” and scale their skills by serving in roles such as trainers or more advanced cyber positions.

“By breaking down the bureaucratic norms of government incentives, this framework enables increased lethality by driving the skills, roles and duties most vital to mission success,” Katie Sutton, assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, who will lead the execution of the program, said in the statement.

The pay incentive program is slated to begin Oct. 1, per the release. The announcement did not specify the pay incentive amount for either program level.

This initiative follows a recent push from some lawmakers to advance the creation of an independent Cyber Force military service.

A report from two D.C. think tanks examined how a proposed Cyber Force could take over the “service-like” responsibilities that CYBERCOM is currently expected to perform.

However, it would take at least one year and $10 billion to stand up the new force.

Saturday’s rollout marks the second deployment this year to additional VA medical centers following a years-long pause prompted by implementation issues and safety concerns.

The FEHR, made by Cerner, was rolled out to four VA health care facilities and their associated clinics in Michigan in April, the first VA-specific facilities to receive it since 2022.

On Saturday, the VA activated the system at the Cincinnati VA Medical Center, Chillicothe VA Medical Center and Dayton VA Medical Center in Ohio, as well as the Cincinnati VA Medical Center-Fort Thomas in Kentucky.

According to the VA, more than 7,200 VA providers and staff members and 107,000 veterans will have access to the new system in southern Ohio.

VA Secretary Doug Collins told members of Congress in April that the resumption of the program, which was put on hold to address system issues, is going as planned.

“How I know this is working … is that I’m having center executive directors and employees at what is supposed to be next year’s facilities hearing [about it] from their colleagues, and they’re saying ‘We’re ready to go now. We’ve been training; we’ve been doing this — we’re ready to speed up our training,’” Collins told members of the Senate Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee.

The VA’s adoption of Oracle Health’s EHR was halted in 2023 following a year-long pause over safety and functionality concerns. The program was introduced to medical centers in Washington, Oregon and Ohio between 2020 and 2022 but experienced reliability and safety issues and cost increases.

VA officials said Monday the Michigan rollout — the first following the pause other than a 2024 “go-live” at the joint Department of Defense-Veterans Affairs James Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago — introduced more than 200,000 veterans and 10,000 staff members to the system.

It has received “exceptionally positive” feedback from users and hospital administrators, they said in a press release.

To achieve a smooth rollout, the VA hired additional staff, fixed “hundreds of problems” related to the initial rollout in the Pacific Northwest and streamlined the administration overseeing the implementation, according to Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence.

The VA’s fiscal 2027 budget request calls for $4.2 billion to continue deploying the system across 170 VA medical centers.

The department plans to introduce the system to three medical centers in Indiana in August and facilities in Alaska and Cleveland, Ohio, in October.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president declared, “We hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them hard again today.”

Trump initially claimed in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that Iran had shot down the aircraft, before revising his account a day later to say it was struck by an Iranian ordnance that failed to detonate on impact.

“That bomb was lodged in the helicopter, it didn’t explode. It was on fire but it didn’t explode,” Trump explained. “Those two guys, they knew how to fly, but they got very lucky.”

He then quipped: “You won’t believe the rescue, how cool it was.”

The crew members were retrieved by a remotely piloted Navy surface drone, in what Trump and military officials described as the first U.S. operation of its kind.

Still, the episode demonstrated one asymmetrical element of the conflict. U.S. officials said a low-cost Iranian Shahed-136 drone — estimated to cost roughly $20,000 — engaged the American attack helicopter valued at between $35 million and $40 million.

Describing the subsequent rescue, Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command, told Military Times that the unmanned surface vessel retrieved the downed aviators and ferried them to a rendezvous point at sea, where they were then hoisted aboard a helicopter for extraction.

“The surface drone that assisted in [Monday’s] rescue of the Apache crew off the coast of Oman was a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel operated by U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59,” he said. “The task force began fielding these drones in theater in late March.”

The 24-foot Corsair — built by Texas-based Saronic Technologies — can carry payloads of up to 1,000 pounds over a 1,000-nautical-mile range and reach speeds of up to 35 knots, according to the company’s website.

Soon after the U.S. began carrying out retaliatory strikes on Tuesday night, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in a social media post, wrote that “our powerful armed forces will leave no attack or threat unanswered.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps later announced, through a statement carried by Iranian state TV, that it had conducted 21 attacks on U.S. bases across the region, including in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.

But despite the fresh wave of attacks, Trump on Wednesday insisted that a peace agreement can be reached.

“We’ll see what happens with the deal. We were really close to a deal but they keep tapping us along, they keep playing us for suckers,” Trump said. “All they have to do is they have to start signing a paper, it’s fully negotiated.”

Given that negotiations are highly sensitive and secret, it’s unclear how close — or distant — the sides are from an agreement.

A delegation of Qatari officials arrived in Iran on Wednesday in an effort to broker a deal between Washington and Tehran, a source familiar with the discussions told Military Times, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matters publicly.

Stood up on May 30, NSA Stirling — part of the Pillar I segment of the trilateral AUKUS pact — will provide “services and programs for U.S. service members, civilian personnel, contractors and their families” assigned to Submarine Rotational Force–West, according to a service release.

Expected to be fully operational in 2027, SRF-West will support a rotation of U.S. and British nuclear-powered fast attack submarines aboard Australia’s HMAS Stirling installation near Perth.

The detachment is expected to assist submarine deployments by enabling expanded maintenance options and sustainment infrastructure in the region.

“Establishment of NSA Stirling with our AUKUS partners demonstrates our command mission to support the fleet, warfighter and family,” Vice Adm. Scott Gray, commander of Navy Installations Command, said in the release. “By providing essential services to U.S. personnel and their families, NSA Stirling will enhance rotational submarine force readiness.”

The first U.S. personnel assigned to SRF-West are expected to begin rotating through HMAS Stirling in late 2026, according to a May 30 Pentagon release.

The U.K. has also committed to a rotational presence with SRF-West.

“We are currently in the early stages of establishing NSA Stirling,” said Rear Adm. Ian Johnson, commander of Navy Region Japan, which began the process of standing up NSA Stirling in October 2024. “While there is still much work ahead, we are confident in our ability to accomplish this task through strong collaboration with our AUKUS partners.”

The NSA activation, meanwhile, came as U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attended a May 30 meeting at the U.S. embassy in Singapore alongside Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense Richard Marles and U.K. Secretary of State for Defense John Healey.

The three officials affirmed key AUKUS milestones continue to be met on schedule, with Australia on track to acquire a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine in the coming years.

The Singapore meeting also yielded the announcement of the first signature project of Pillar II of the AUKUS agreement, which will focus on developing — and delivering, starting in 2027 — cutting-edge tech for uncrewed undersea vehicles, or UUVs.

“This project is intended to significantly enhance AUKUS partners’ ability to protect critical national seabed infrastructure; deploy cutting edge surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike capabilities; conduct logistics operations; and bolster superiority in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, mine countermeasures, electronic warfare and contested littoral maneuver,” the Pentagon release stated.

The astronaut will be part of a four-man crew that will tackle a host of difficult tests within Earth’s orbit in preparation for NASA’s 2028 Artemis IV flight, which will be the first crewed mission to the moon’s South Pole.

Rubio’s mission is slated to serve as a proving ground for future lunar landings, as the team will evaluate how the spacecraft navigates toward and docks with commercial landing systems developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX.

“My Army training has been an integral part of the experiences that have enabled me to be ready for this mission,” Rubio, a former Black Hawk pilot-turned-flight surgeon, said in a Tuesday statement released by the Army.

“Serving taught me to lead under pressure, how to stay calm when the stakes are highest, and how to put the mission and the people beside you above yourself,” he added.

Rubio’s selection as a mission specialist for Artemis III comes after a record-setting 371-day mission aboard the International Space Station from September 2022 to September 2023, where he set the American record for the longest single spaceflight. The unexpected yearlong mission saw Rubio complete 5,963 orbits around Earth, travel over 157 million miles and complete three spacewalks that amounted to 21 hours and 24 minutes in total.

His previous journey was only meant to last six months, but a spacecraft coolant leak prolonged the mission.

Before he began eschewing gravity in pursuit of outer space, Rubio served nearly 20 years as an aviator and then physician. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1998 and logged over flight 1,100 hours — more than 600 in combat during deployments to Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq — before beginning medical school and training as a family physician and flight surgeon.

At the time of Rubio’s NASA selection, he was a battalion surgeon for the 3rd Battalion of the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Colorado.

Rubio is one of three Artemis III crew members with military backgrounds. Andre Douglas, who will serve as a mission specialist during the flight, graduated from the Coast Guard Academy before serving as a guardsman. Randy Bresnik, the crew’s commander, retired as a colonel in the Marine Corps.

Bob Hines, who was selected as backup crew member, is a colonel in the Air Force.

Nineteen Army astronauts have taken part in NASA’s space missions, but Rubio and Col. Anne McClain are the Army’s only active duty astronauts, according to the service. Chief Warrant Officer 3 Joseph Bailey, also on active duty, is an astronaut candidate and began his initial training in September 2025.

Across the branches, post-9/11 veterans are retiring, transitioning to civilian careers and stepping away from leadership and training positions. Their departures come as military leaders shift attention toward great-power competition, distributed operations and emerging technologies while preparing a force increasingly led by service members whose careers began after major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan ended.

For retired Marine Lt. Col. John Harman, the retirement of that generation raises a question that extends beyond doctrine or force structure: What, exactly, is worth carrying forward?

Some of the lessons forged during two decades of war remain relevant regardless of how future conflicts are fought, Harman said.

“Never take lightly the responsibility of sending others into danger,” he said, after a career that included nine deployments and six combat tours across Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader Middle East.

That lesson emerged during some of the most intense fighting of the post-9/11 era.

During the Battle of Fallujah, young and noncommissioned officers made life-or-death decisions under relentless pressure. The leaders who earned trust were not necessarily the most aggressive or outspoken, Harman said. They were the ones who remained disciplined, calm and committed to the service members under their charge.

“What separated exceptional leaders from average ones wasn’t bravado or chest-thumping rhetoric,” Harman said. “It was steady leadership under pressure.”

Military leaders have spent years adapting strategy and training for future conflict. Whether the next battle involves a near-peer adversary, proxy forces or a crisis no one has yet predicted, Harman said junior leaders will still face uncertainty, the weight of responsibility and the consequences of their decisions.

“Technology will evolve, but leadership fundamentals will not,” Harman said.

The Pentagon’s 2026 National Defense Strategy shifts the department’s focus toward deterring major powers, strengthening homeland defense and preparing for future conflict. Army University Press’s recent Lariat Advance report argues that future warfare will place greater demands on dispersed formations, decentralized decision-making and leaders operating with incomplete information.

Both describe operating environments that differ sharply from the counterinsurgency campaigns that shaped much generation that served after September 2001.

The topic of what gets passed on to future military leaders has surfaced across military education, training and force-development discussions as the services prepare for future conflict. Harman said he has seen that transition firsthand while working with younger Marines and officers after leaving active duty.

Many of the students entering today’s force are highly educated, technologically fluent and comfortable operating in environments shaped by artificial intelligence, unmanned systems and constant connectivity, he said. What they lack is not capability; it is the shared operational experience that defined their predecessors.

In his interactions with students, Harman said he occasionally finds himself sharing lessons that once required little explanation because entire units had lived through them together. Concepts such as trust, accountability and responsibility were reinforced by repeated deployments and combat experience.

For many younger service members, those lessons must now be taught in classrooms, training exercises and professional military education programs, rather than learned during wartime deployments.

“The challenge isn’t that this generation is unprepared,” Harman said. “The challenge is making sure they inherit the lessons that previous generations learned through experience without having to relearn them in combat.”

Leaders who attended SOF Week 2026 agreed.

This year, U.S. Special Operations Command leaders warned that training requirements continue to accumulate, even as demands on the force grow more complex. Leaders argued that future readiness will depend on both emerging technologies and preserving the adaptability, judgment and resilience needed to operate in uncertain environments.

The fundamentals of leadership

The discussion is unfolding as many members who served during the height of Global War on Terror reach retirement eligibility. Service members who entered the military in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are now approaching or surpassing 20 years of service — the benchmark for military retirement.

Many serve in senior enlisted, officer, instructor and training positions responsible for developing the next generation of leaders.

Retired Army Capt. Maxine Reyes, an Afghanistan veteran who served in leadership and command positions during her military career, said one of the most important lessons she carried from Afghanistan had little to do with tactics.

“Having the ability to build genuine relationships often mattered as much as tactical proficiency,” Reyes said. “We must never forget that every mission is ultimately about people.”

Technology, weapons and battlefield conditions will continue to evolve, she said, but the fundamentals of leadership remain remarkably consistent.

“The battlefield of the next conflict may look nothing like Afghanistan,” said Reyes. “But one thing remains constant: success and failure often hinge on human relationships, trust, and leadership.”

Future conflicts may involve artificial intelligence, cyber warfare and technologies that did not exist during much of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Reyes explained. Even so, leaders will still be required to make decisions under pressure, uncertainty and exhaustion.

“When conditions are at their worst, people rarely follow a rank; they follow a leader they trust,” she said.

For Harman, those qualities are directly connected to future conflict.

A fight involving a near-peer adversary could place greater responsibility on junior leaders operating with less oversight, degraded communications and fewer opportunities to seek guidance from higher-ups, he said. In those environments, leadership, judgment and trust become operational requirements.

Reese Rogers, a retired Marine officer who served in Marine reconnaissance and special operations units during deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, says gaining experience itself should be the goal.

“The first time is always the first time,” Rogers said. Training can prepare leaders for many situations, but some lessons are learned only when responsibility becomes real.

“We’ll always worry about how we should perform when it matters most, but you only learn by doing,” he said.

For retired Navy Senior Chief Stephanie Tankersly, who served in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom as a Fleet Marine Force corpsman, one of those lessons is judgment.

“Perfect information is a luxury leaders rarely have,” Tankersly said. “Most consequential decisions are made long before all the answers are available. Authentic leadership is the willingness to act amid uncertainty, guided by judgement, experience and a clear understanding of what is at stake.”

A new era

Military historian Erik Chapman said the retirement of the post-9/11 generation is influencing a broader discussion about what future leaders need to know.

As the military shifts from the wars that defined the last two decades to preparing for future conflict, Chapman said the challenge is not preserving Iraq and Afghanistan as case studies. It is determining which lessons remain relevant regardless of the battlefield.

“Every retirement represents more than a billet to be filled,” Chapman said. “It represents years of accumulated judgment, mentorship, and operational experience walking out the door.”

As military leaders redesign training, doctrine and force priorities for future conflict, Chapman said, “We can’t wait for the next conflict to rediscover what previous generations learned through hard experience.”

He continued, “The next generation doesn’t need to fight the last war, but they do need to understand the hard-earned lessons that war produced.”

Ensign Christopher Miller, a recent Naval Academy graduate, is part of the generation that will inherit those lessons and apply them to conflicts that may bear little resemblance to those fought after 2001.

“My generation may never fight the same wars our mentors fought,” Miller said.

The responsibilities that come with leadership, however, remain unchanged.

“We’ll face the same responsibility of making difficult decisions under pressure,” Miller said. “The technology will be different. The burden of leadership won’t be.”

A U.S. aircraft fired precision munitions at the engine room of the Palau-flagged M/T Settebello after the vessel refused to adhere to warnings from military forces, U.S. Central Command said.

The action marks the second U.S. strike this week against non-compliant vessels in the area.

On Monday, a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln fired precision munitions at the Palau-flagged M/T Marivex in the Gulf of Oman.

The vessel was attempting to sail to an Iranian port in violation of the U.S. Navy blockade, CENTCOM said, and military forces disabled the ship by launching a strike against its engineering and steering spaces.

US soldiers rescued by drone after Apache helicopter goes down near the coast of Oman

U.S. military forces also launched self-defense strikes against Iran after President Donald Trump said Iranian military forces were responsible for the downing of a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter on Monday near the coast of Oman.

Both crew members aboard the helicopter were safely rescued by a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel the same evening.

U.S. Central Command has disabled eight non-compliant vessels, redirected 134 compliant ships and allowed 42 vessels since the U.S. Navy blockade began on April 13.

The president’s aircraft, referred to as the VC-25B Bridge, is undergoing its final “government modifications,” an Air Force spokesperson told Military Times on Wednesday.

A photograph of the aircraft sporting its new paint job circulated on social media this week. It was taken by aviation photographer Travis Ghormley on Saturday and posted the following day.

pic.twitter.com/LAk8IqnLlR

— TGhormley Photography (@SkunkChaser25) June 7, 2026

The controversial gift from Qatar was donated in May 2025 after President Donald Trump aired his dissatisfaction over Boeing’s delays to deliver two new VC-25B aircraft. The replacement of the current Air Force One was originally slated for 2024, but now it is expected in 2028.

The Air Force provided an update on the Bridge aircraft at the beginning of May, saying it completed flight testing and is on track for a summer delivery to the Presidential Airlift Group. The service did not specify when the president will begin flying in the aircraft.

The spokesperson declined Wednesday to comment on what final modifications are being made to the aircraft.

To make the plane suitable for a president, the plane would require a reinforced defense with countermeasures, encrypted communications and other capabilities installed.

Currently, the president is flying in a version of the Boeing 747 aircraft, the VC-25A.