According to Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz, the service is in talks with the Office of the Secretary of War to create a portal or marketplace where separating troops can advertise their availability and get snapped up by certain kinds of employers without ever having to translate the acronyms in their resume.

Speaking at a senior enlisted leaders’ forum hosted by Military Officers Association of America earlier this month, Ruiz said the concept was inspired by the success of the Marine to Guard program, which lets separating Marines transition to National Guard contracts in their home state.

“That’s the most successful thing we’ve ever done, I think, for transitioning Marines, because it’s a direct hire,” Ruiz said. “There’s no in-between.”

The Marine to Guard program, begun in 2018, advertises bonuses of up to $20,000 for troops who take that path, and promotional materials highlight the 60 Marine Corps military occupational specialties that translate directly to Guard jobs. They also note that appointments to the Guard can be made up to 180 days ahead of EAS. In 2021, 435 Marines took advantage of the Marine to Guard program, the most of any year for which data is available.

Ruiz said the direct-hire market now being considered would include employers representing first-responder organizations, federal entities and defense industrial base companies.

“I don’t need a middle person,” he said. “I want the Marine to go into the website, put in, ‘I am giving you access to me,’ and directly work with the company looking to hire you a year out from exiting the service.”

Ruiz added that preparing Marines for the realities of struggling to land a first civilian job and adapt their expectations to a competitive market continues to be a challenge for the Corps.

“We pump you up so much: you are a Marine, right? Because we need you to believe,” he said. “And I don’t know that we do a good enough job of bringing you slowly to that thought that you’re gonna have to work, you’re gonna have to start from the bottom at times, when you exist … the expectation of starting up with a $200,000 a year job is not reality.”

The veteran unemployment rate tends to compare equally or favorably to the unemployment rate for civilians. In June, the Department of Labor reported a 4.1% unemployment rate for all veterans, compared with a 4.0% unemployment rate for civilians. The unemployment rate among female veterans, 3.6%, was lower than that for female civilians, at 4.1%.

But a 2024 Penn State study showed that perceived underemployment remains a significant problem among veterans. One-third of post-9/11 veterans reported being underemployed, and 10% said they were both underemployed and unsatisfied with their pay rate.

The direct-hire marketplace Ruiz mentioned might address some of that dissatisfaction by matching Marines up with employers who understand the skills they offer and know how to best use them. Ruiz did not say when the proposed pipeline might come online, but added that the Marine Corps could afford to help land good jobs for those seeking their next chapter after service, even as it sought to retain talent where possible.

“We’re going to keep who we’re going to keep, and the rest — there’s going to be so much more of America to work with,” he said. “We can do both.”

The Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer USS Sampson was at the Vigor Shipyard on Harbor Island in Seattle, Washington, undergoing defueling operations when an estimated 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled into the surrounding water.

“The Navy is working with shipyard contractors and spill response partners to resolve this quickly and responsibly,” the Navy said. “Active, 24-hour on-site recovery operations are underway and most of the fuel has been recovered.”

Initial estimates said the amount of oil spilled was closer to 5,000 gallons, but the number had decreased significantly.

The exact volume of the discharge is still being assessed, the Navy said.

The exact cause of the spill is under investigation.

Prior to the incident, the Navy installed an oil containment boon per Navy regulations, which helped to keep the spill contained.

Teams are utilizing three portable skimmers and a skimmer boat, along with oil-absorbent materials, to clean up a majority of the spill.

The containment boom and absorbent materials will remain until all recoverable oil is removed and the ship is moved to dry dock, the Washington State Department of Ecology said.

The U.S. Coast Guard determined that the U.S. Navy was at fault for the spill, according to the department.

Last August the Navy deployed the USS Sampson to the Caribbean in support of counter-narcotics operations.

The vessel returned to Naval Base San Diego, California, in September after being replaced in the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility by the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Stockdale.

The Anduril-made YFQ-44A executed an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target during a live-fire test at Edwards Air Force Base, California, according to a company social media post Wednesday.

The YFQ-44A opened fire on a digital target using an inert AIM-120, which is an advanced medium-range air-to-air missile, an Air Force spokesperson told Military Times.

“We’re one step closer to getting [collaborative combat aircraft] to the warfighter with this live fire test!” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in a Wednesday social media post.

The Air Force conducted hands-on testing with the YFQ-44A over a series of sorties in April. The aircraft first began its flight testing in October 2025. The CCAs are jet-powered, semi-autonomous aircraft meant to fly alongside crewed fighter jets, such as the F-35 and F-47.

The weapon was fired in a secluded airspace over the Mojave Desert with the 412th Test Wing’s Air Dominance Combined Test Force as part of a phased test progression that began with inert carriage evaluations earlier this year, according to a release.

Even though the aircraft are semi-autonomous and unmanned, the CCA will not autonomously deploy weapons, as the decision to release any remains with a human operator who has command and control of the platform at all times, per the statement.

To verify the aircraft’s handling, the previous inert weapons captive carry flights concentrated on collecting in-flight data, while following evaluations confirmed the data link integration between the aircraft and weapon system.

“Moving from inert carriage earlier in the year to this weapon release demonstrates program maturity, allowing us to validate our digital integration models with actual data,” Gen. Dale White, Department of Defense direct reporting portfolio manager for Critical Major Weapon Systems, said in the release.

The Air Force awarded the first CCA production contracts to Anduril and General Atomics last month for their YFQ-44A and YFQ-42A, respectively.

General Atomics’ YFQ-42A live-fire testing is slated for this fall, an Air Force spokesperson said. The YFQ-42A began its flight testing in August 2025.

For the CCA program, the service’s fiscal 2027 budget request included $996.5 million in procurement funding, $150 million in advanced procurement for the following fiscal year and $1.37 billion in continued research and development, for a total program request of $2.37 billion.

The Pentagon announced Wednesday that Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata will draw from military personnel and civilian employees to create the panel, which is tasked with reviewing “the official decisions, coordination, planning, and execution of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate from January 2020 through January 2023.”

In a statement, Tata said the effort will help “establish permanent safeguards against future mandates.”

“By having members of the affected community lead the internal after-action review and further analyze how the COVID-19 vaccine mandate influenced decision-making and readiness — and making the findings public — we will ensure that the Department learns from the past and does not repeat these mistakes in the future,” Tata said.

In addition to Tata’s announcement, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pledged to declassify and release materials related to the mandate, which he said were “essential to learn the lessons of this national security event to ensure we do not make the mistakes of the past.”

The National Academy of Public Administration, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that studies management and organization, is responsible for conducting the after-action review.

According to NAPA, its report is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Hegseth said he would publish the organization’s findings by February 2027.

The COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, spreading globally across the world in a manner of months, infecting more than 779 million people in the years since and killing 7.1 million worldwide.

In the U.S., 103 million individuals have been infected and 1.2 million have died. Within the Department of Defense, 704,000 contracted COVID from March 2020 until December 2022, when the DoD stopped posting updated numbers.

Nearly 700 DoD-affiliated people, including 96 service members, 36 dependents, 417 civilian employees and 141 contractors, died.

To stop the spread of the evolving virus, the first Trump administration worked with private industry to develop a vaccine for the illness. The effort, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, fielded a vaccine within seven months, and over the course of the following year, 2 million U.S. service members were vaccinated.

But some personnel refused to get the vaccine, citing personal or religions reasons. Some felt that since they already contracted the virus, they didn’t need the vaccine, while others took issue with the relatively new technology behind the vaccines. The vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer both use messenger RNA to instruct the body to produce a piece of the virus protein to provoke an immune response.

Still others said they objected to the vaccines because they were created using cell lines developed from fetal tissue obtained in the 1970s and 1980s, although the vaccines themselves contain no aborted fetal tissue.

More than 53,000 filed for exemptions and at least 8,400 were discharged.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that allowed service members who refused the mandate to rejoin the military. From early 2023 through June 2025, 126 service members who had refused to receive the shot had returned to service.

At least 56 members of the U.S. Coast Guard who left service as a result of the mandate have returned to duty, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Although the Trump administration was at the forefront of developing a vaccine to stop the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the second Trump administration has taken steps to alter the long-accepted vaccine schedules for children and adults.

The Department of Health and Human Services has crafted a new vaccine recommendation for children that removes flu and COVID vaccines from the regular schedule as well as rotavirus, meningitis and hepatitis A and B.

In April, Hegseth canceled the Defense Department’s mandatory flu vaccine program for service members, saying it was “just overly broad and not rational.”

The military services began drafting requests for exceptions to the liberal policy, with Tata telling members of Congress in May that the services wanted the requirement to remain in place for personnel in close quarters, including basic training, ships, submarines and training schools.

In June, influenza swept through Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, infecting 285 airmen and hospitalizing six. One recruit, Keon McDaniel, died. The Air Force has not publicly stated his cause of death.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, and seven other Democrat lawmakers wrote Hegseth Tuesday demanding answers regarding McDaniel’s death.

Castro said earlier this month the Air Force told him McDaniel’s death was a result of the outbreak.

“Politicizing the administration of lifesaving vaccines has led to the death of a service member, the hospitalization of numerous trainees, and an expensive race to retroactively provide our service members the health care they need and deserve,” the group wrote.

The Defense Department did not respond by publication regarding questions on the cost of convening a panel to review the mandate.

The deals fall under the U.S. Air Force’s Family of Affordable Mass Missiles program, or FAMM. The Defense Department said it reached agreements with Anduril for its Barracuda-500, CoAspire for its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile and Zone 5 Technologies for its Rusty Dagger.

The move boils down to cost-effectiveness. The Air Force is betting that low-cost weapons can do the work the service once reserved for far more expensive munitions.

Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, designed to be fired at heavily defended targets from a safe distance, cost more than $1.3 million apiece. The service wants its new missiles for a fraction of that, closer to $218,000 per round, cheap enough to shoot many for less than it once cost to shoot one.

The FAMM program splits into a lugged variant carried by fighters and bombers (FAMM-L) and a palletized variant dropped from airlifters (FAMM-P), both with ranges of 250 to 500 miles.

Anduril said its framework agreement runs seven years, with deliveries starting in 2027. According to the company, the Air Force intends to buy up to 8,000 FAMM rounds a year across both variants and all the competing vendors.

The deals are framework agreements, not orders for missiles. They set the terms and promise the companies steady business, giving them a reason to invest in bigger production lines.

The Defense Department said the missiles still have to complete testing and qualification, and that the actual buys depend on Congress approving the multiyear deals the Pentagon is seeking.

Anduril pitched its missile as proof that cheaper weapons can be built at volume.

“Barracuda-500 is specifically designed to expand the United States’ stand-off strike capability,” Anduril said in its release. “By augmenting existing critical munitions inventories with a more affordable, producible, and flexible option, Anduril is enhancing America’s arsenal of munitions, ensuring that we have the capability required to deter our adversaries.”

To keep the vendors competing, the Pentagon is splitting the work among all qualified suppliers under firm fixed-price terms with a minimum order floor, and companies that beat their production schedules become eligible for additional orders.

Budget projections call for 28,000 missiles across all vendors over five years for $12.6 billion, reaching 7,990 rounds in the final year.

The agreements stem from the Acquisition Transformation Strategy, the Pentagon’s push under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to buy weapons faster and from nontraditional suppliers.

Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael P. Duffey said the FAMM deals showed the department “expanding the defense industrial base, fielding capabilities faster, and attracting private investment.”

Zone 5 runs its U.S. operation from California but was acquired in June by Kongsberg, a Norwegian defense company. Anduril and CoAspire are based in California and Virginia, respectively.

The agreement comes on the heels of a May announcement that tapped the same three companies, along with Leidos, for the Army-led Low-Cost Containerized Missiles program, a parallel push for ground-launched affordable missiles.

Years of bipartisan work on the Major Richard Star Act and dozens of other veterans bills could take a different path if it doesn’t get the votes needed on the senate floor this week.

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., ranking member on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, told Military Times on Wednesday that Congress should abandon the omnibus package and instead advance the Major Richard Star Act and other bipartisan veterans bills individually rather than risk losing them over the funding dispute.

“If Congress cannot reach agreement on the funding mechanism, I think we can pursue each of these provisions individually,” Takano said. “I believe the Major Richard Star Act would pass in a heartbeat.”

The conflicted legislation includes the Major Richard Star Act, and the Love Lives On Act, along with expanded caregiver support, survivor benefits, community care improvements, education reforms and mental health initiatives affecting millions of veterans, military families, caregivers and survivors. While many of those measures have broad bipartisan support, disagreement over how to pay for them has become an immovable fencepost blocking forward movement of the package.

Moran defends omnibus strategy

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, R-Kan., defended the legislation, saying “It takes no benefit away from anyone who is receiving those benefits,” referring to veterans already receiving VA disability compensation for tinnitus or obstructive sleep apnea.

Moran said VA had already indicated it planned to update the disability rating criteria for those conditions and argued Congress should redirect the projected savings into veterans programs rather than allowing the money to return to the broader federal budget.

“If we don’t get out ahead of that business,” Moran said, “the reduction in spending … will not be used for veterans.”

Veterans of Foreign Wars National Commander Carol Whitmore has publicly rejected that approach. “When some suggest that veterans’ benefits are too expensive, let us be clear: This is the cost of war,” Whitmore said during a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees.

Whitmore has argued that disability compensation reflects the actual cost of military service and has opposed using projected savings from future disability rating changes to finance new veterans benefits. Moran, by contrast, argues those projected savings should remain dedicated to veterans programs instead of returning to the Treasury.

Takano says bipartisan bills should move on their own

For Takano, the funding dispute should not determine the fate of legislation that has spent years building bipartisan support.

At the center is the Major Richard Star Act, which would allow certain combat-injured medically retired service members to receive both military retired pay and VA disability compensation without the dollar-for-dollar deduction. Even with broad bipartisan support, Congress has repeatedly failed to advance the bill because lawmakers have been unable to agree on a funding offset.

“We don’t need to know the pay-for at the outset,” Takano said. “That could be subject to negotiations.”

Asked what alternatives Congress should consider, Takano pointed to unobligated Department of Defense funding and other federal budget offsets.

Two paths forward for veterans legislation

The funding dispute has morphed into a massive debate over legislative strategy. Moran argues the omnibus gives Congress its best opportunity to enact one of the largest veterans legislative packages in years while preserving projected savings for veterans programs. Takano agrees many of the same bills should become law but argues they should not remain tied to a financing plan that has divided lawmakers and veterans organizations.

If Congress cannot reach agreement on the omnibus, lawmakers may face a choice: continue negotiating a single package or begin advancing many of the same bipartisan bills one measure at a time.

For Takano, the question is not whether Congress should expand veterans’ benefits. It is whether one group of veterans should shoulder the cost of another’s gains.

“All veterans have sacrificed. We shouldn’t be asking one group of veterans to sacrifice for the other.”

Under the new program, the secretary said service members aged 30 and older will be tested yearly for testosterone deficiency as part of routine health assessments. Troops under 30, meanwhile, will have the option to be tested, he said.

The decision to receive testosterone replacement therapy — if recommended by a medical professional — will remain up to the individual service member.

“It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight,” Hegseth said in a video posted to X.

The video did not specify if the testing and treatment would be gender-specific and appeared to connect the directive to mental wellness.

“As we know, the modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting,” he said. “It requires and demands maximum psychological and mental readiness. And by addressing these health markers early, we’re keeping you on the leading edge of lethality and giving you the same level of support that you give this nation — the absolute best.”

The requirement marks the latest policy shift under Hegseth, whose tenure at the Pentagon has included a ban on transgender troops.

“Expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for Military Service,” a 2025 memo signed by the defense secretary reads.

Hegseth also directed the military to develop gender-neutral physical fitness standards for troops in ground-combat roles.

“At my direction, each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS [military occupational specialty], for every designated combat arms position, returns to the highest male standard only,” he said in an address in Virginia last year.

Military Times asked the Pentagon whether DoD will also give female service members annual hormone screenings and access to testosterone replacement therapy to raise levels to those of a typical male service member, if desired.

The Pentagon declined to provide additional details beyond Hegseth’s announcement.

While the two maneuvers answered different security-related activities by U.S. allies in Asia, experts say China used both to try out new, attention-grabbing and long-term ways to deter others from challenging its territorial claims.

The Chinese Coast Guard vessels in waters east of Taiwan since May are meant as police activity rather than more provocative four years of sporadic naval or air force drills around the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own, analysts said. China has threatened to take Taiwan by force, if needed.

But a white-hulled vessel formation’s continued presence 54 nautical miles (100 kilometers) from Taiwan shows signs of becoming a long-term exercise – something that hasn’t been tried before – rather than a quick pass-through by armed forces, they said.

“That China uses the coast guard instead of the navy and air force is probably to reduce the threat profile of the exercises, so as to be able to claim restraint rather than escalating to the level of the formal military,” said Brian Hioe, a non-resident fellow at the Taiwan Research Hub of the University of Nottingham.

“Nevertheless, China increasingly integrates civilian and military forces, making it harder for other countries to respond to grey-zone activity,” Hioe said.

Large coast guard ships are designed for “longer deployments” than what naval vessels normally do, said Joshua Arostegui, chair of China studies and research director of the China Landpower Studies Center at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute.

“That’s kind of the big takeaway,” Arostegui said.

The rotation between two vessel formations on July 4, China’s description of the mission as a sustained one and its stated intent to keep strengthening patrols “all point in one direction”, said Sophie Wushuang Yi, postdoctoral teaching fellow with Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University. That, she said, is “routine.”

Beijing’s Taiwan.cn website said on July 10 its coast guard was sustaining “routine law enforcement patrols” as the new vessel formation took over.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, a government ministry, said on July 4 that the vessels were violating international law and “damaging regional stability”.

China’s initial patrols responded to maritime boundary negotiations between Japan and the Philippines, both of which are near Taiwan, experts said. They pointed to a Chinese government condemnation of the talks.

Taiwanese and Chinese coast guard units may find “confusion” along their respective routes if China keeps up its patrols, said Enrico Cau, an associate researcher at the Taiwan Strategy Research Association think tank.

Taiwan and Japan, maritime neighbors and historic de-facto allies, may respond with their own coast guards, Hioe said, while the United States could carry out “freedom of navigation” operations with other militaries in the Asia Pacific.

Those operations mean sailing warships through disputed or restricted international waters to indicate that Washington considers the channels open to all.

Meanwhile, the July 6 missile test, China’s first submarine-launched strategic missile into international open waters, drew statements of protest from Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the United States and some South Pacific island leaders.

The missile carried a simulated training warhead for 7,300 kilometers and likely overflew parts of the Philippines, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said in July 7 commentary.

Though the test took place on the same day U.S. ally Australia signed a defense treaty with Fiji, analysts said Beijing set out mainly to warn multiple countries of what it could do in case of a nuclear attack in the disputed South China Sea.

“I don’t think it’s a new strategy as much as demonstrating its ability to have a nuclear triad basically,” Arostegui said. The triad includes land-based ICBMs, long-range bombers and submarine missiles, he said, with subs hard to detect and intercept.

The ballistic missile test specifically warned of what could happen if other countries build up military positions in the Indo-Pacific, Cau said.

“In particular it might be aimed at curbing any intention of regional powers harboring the ambition to either develop or host nuclear capabilities, Japan in primis,” he said.

Beijing also hoped the launch of its JL-2 or JL-3 ballistic missile would help test equipment and prove to other countries it has nuclear strike capability, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said.

It probably timed the sub launch for the 13th China-Russia Joint Sea 2026 exercise, “broadly consistent with China’s desire to portray Sino-Russian strategic alignment through coordinated military activities,” the think tank’s report says.

Expect more, Yi from the Schwarzman College said.

“I would expect such launches to become periodic but rare,” she said. “What the navy is proving, in my assessment, is that its sea-based deterrent is not merely symbolic but operational.”

The tests would be “consistent with the PLA-wide requirement of being ‘able to fight and win,’” she added.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency called the missile test part of an annual military training program and said the government had notified “relevant countries” in advance.

Trump is scheduled to participate in a roundtable discussion capping a two-day Defense and Innovation Summit hosted by Republican Senator Dave McCormick at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania. The event gathers senior military leaders, defense contractors, investors and technology executives to discuss strengthening the U.S. industrial base and speeding the delivery of advanced weapons systems.

Trump’s appearance underscores a broader focus by the administration on defense production as prolonged conflicts have consumed large quantities of missiles, interceptors and other weapons, while highlighting the limits of the U.S. military supply chain and production capacity. Trump is expected to make several Pennsylvania-based defense investment announcements.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Caine urged defense companies on Tuesday to accelerate production and innovation, saying the military needs industry partners to help deliver capabilities faster as warfare evolves.

“What I need you to know, and I know this is simple for me to say, but hard to do, is to go faster. Please go faster. Think bolder,” Caine said.

Broader industrial strategy

For Trump, expanding defense manufacturing has become part of a wider economic strategy to revive U.S. industrial capacity, with the Pentagon increasingly viewed as a catalyst for factory investment, advanced manufacturing and domestic supply chains.

In late June, Trump met with munitions makers at the White House to urge the industry to move faster.

The United States has supplied large quantities of weapons to allies while also using munitions in its own military operations, raising concerns about inventories of key air-defense and precision-guided weapons and increasing pressure on contractors to boost output. Soaring demand for rocket motors used to power missiles and other weapons has spurred new thinking about supply chains.

Seeking big returns, Silicon Valley-style startups are now taking on defense companies that have long dominated the industry, pulled into the competition by a need for production speed, high volume and lower costs. Legacy solid rocket motor makers Northrop Grumman and L3Harris say they have been pushing their own research and development to pull in new technologies like 3D printing and new mixing technologies.

Michael Duffey, who oversees buying for the Pentagon, told the summit audience that the department is using long-term procurement contracts to give defense companies the confidence to invest billions of dollars in expanding factories, citing roughly $20 billion in private investment tied to plans to boost production of Patriot missiles and other high-demand weapons.

“The global environment now demands that we produce at this scale, at this speed, at this volume,” he said.

The strikes mark the latest escalation of attacks and counterattacks launched by the two sides as they vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz, which carried about a fifth of global oil and gas shipments before the war.

“At 6 a.m. ET today, U.S. Central Command forces began launching a wave of strikes against Iran,” the U.S. military said.

“The strikes are designed to further degrade military capabilities Iranian forces have used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”

There were no immediate reports of attacks in Iranian media. U.S. Central Command said in a statement the military had targeted coastal defense systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites on Iran’s Greater Tunb Island, and had completed the wave of strikes within around 90 minutes.

Late on Tuesday the U.S. military said it had hit dozens of military targets near the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian coastal areas in strikes lasting seven hours.

In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Wednesday it had struck U.S. military targets in the region, including in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.

It also threatened on Wednesday to shut off more regional energy exports, saying the U.S. “must brace for the closure of all other export corridors that benefit the U.S. and its allies.”

Hostilities have intensified since Iran said late on Saturday it had closed the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. says Iran had attacked seven commercial ships over the last week, leaving nearly a dozen crew members killed, missing or injured.

‘END OF AMERICA’S EVILS’

The war, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, triggered Iranian attacks on Gulf states that host U.S. bases and caused major disruption to global energy supplies, raising fears of a surge in inflation.

Oil prices extended gains by about 1% on Wednesday, after settling on Tuesday on a new one-month high.

An interim ceasefire deal in the conflict signed last month was meant to lead to further negotiations including on Iran’s nuclear program, and to a permanent truce, but a return to talks has faltered.

Analysts say that while the U.S. and Iran have gone back to sparring as they did before the interim ceasefire deal was signed, they are unlikely to return to full-scale war, though a risk of further escalation remains.

They say Iran is signaling it may use its Houthi allies in Yemen to shut Bab el-Mandeb, opening a new front against Washington and putting two of the world’s most vital energy arteries at risk.

As a result of the war, Iran has been trying to assert permanent control over shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and to impose fees on vessels passing through it, in what would be a major shift of the balance of power in a region where the U.S. has long acted as guarantor of security.

The IRGC said on Wednesday that the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed until what it described as “the end of America’s evils.”

TRUMP THREATENS TO HIT ENERGY TARGETS

U.S. President Donald Trump, who faces domestic pressure to avoid a full return to war, on Tuesday threatened to hit Iranian power plants and bridges next week unless Tehran resumes negotiations.

“I’ll save the energy targets for last, but ultimately we’ll hit energy targets,” Trump said.

U.S. negotiators had been in touch with their Iranian counterparts to tell them “you better make a deal,” Trump added.

As tensions escalated, Trump on Monday floated the idea of a 20% fee on shipping through the strait. On Tuesday, he scrapped the idea and said, without providing details, that he would instead seek investment deals with Gulf states.

The war has killed thousands of people and displaced millions, mainly in Iran and in Lebanon, where conflict was reignited between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said at least 30 civilians had been killed in recent days due to the U.S. strikes on southern Iran, state media reported on Wednesday.

Iran’s army said at least seven active-duty and conscript personnel were killed in overnight U.S. strikes on the Bampur military base in the country’s southeast.

As troops look toward a future when their service might be welcome once again, individuals affected by the policy told Military Times that the year and a half time period upended their lives.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in a June 1 ruling regarding Talbott v. USA that the Pentagon’s transgender military ban was unconstitutional and that the 30 enlisted plaintiffs involved in the case could continue to serve.

That ruling, which upheld an earlier preliminary injunction and is set to go into effect July 16, applied only to those plaintiffs.

Shortly after, on July 1, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a motion to certify Talbott v. USA as a class action lawsuit, meaning the protections would extend to all transgender service members enlisted in the military.

But not yet.

Before more than the 30 can rejoin, the certification must be complete and the district court must extend the preliminary injunction to the class. The timing of those actions remained uncertain Wednesday.

The U.S. government can fight the ruling and attempt to stall it by petitioning for a rehearing or asking the Supreme Court to intervene, but as of Wednesday, neither have happened.

Transgender civilians looking to enlist are still barred from joining the military.

Cast out

Though transgender troops were optimistic after the June 1 ruling about the future of their service, their path to get right back where they started — being allowed to do their jobs — was grueling.

Military Times spoke with 10 transgender service members who described how the forced separation process and the ensuing administrative leave pipeline pushed them into a perilous mental space.

With their lives on hold, these service members felt depression, anxiety and disillusionment over why an institution to which they had pledged their lives suddenly cast them out, swiftly and seemingly without regard for their psychiatric and professional well-being.

Service members also felt betrayed that the Defense Department used their “gender dysphoria” diagnosis to justify their separation. The term was assigned to service members during previous administrations as a medical diagnosis that allowed them to serve openly as transgender and receive gender-affirming care.

The DoD declined in an email to Military Times to comment on the situation.

Life in limbo

In 2025, after 15 years of service, one transgender U.S. Navy lieutenant was envisioning full retirement, a deserved pension and the health benefits that came along with it.

Just five more years.

Instead, they found themselves at the psychiatric ward at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after checking themself in for suicidal ideation, something they said was abnormal for them.

Eventually, they regained their footing, but the effects were lasting.

“My mental health has just been a dumpster fire,” said the lieutenant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intimate psychological struggles. “This trans ban has made me a completely different person.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 27, 2025, that paved the way for the ousting of any transgender service members with a history of “gender dysphoria.”

Sweeping DoD policy followed shortly thereafter, with service members given the opportunity to either apply for voluntary separation — which incentivized service members through bonus pay to leave on their own accord — or wait for likely involuntary separation through the new policy.

A Feb. 26, 2025, Pentagon memo said that troops with a history of gender dysphoria have medical, surgical and mental health constraints “incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”

Service members saw it as a thinly veiled attempt to get rid of them.

Some transgender service members — the Pentagon has declined to say how many — were placed on administrative “absence,” or Permissive Temporary Assigned Duty (PTAD).

The administrative leave process, which had no precedent in the military for medical conditions, paid service members to not work and barred them from serving while they awaited their separation date.

The lieutenant was able to medically retire on May 22 after their mental health decline triggered a medical board review that deemed them eligible. They spent 16 years in the Navy, just four shy of the 20 they had aspired to serve.

Petty Officer Second Class Jaylen Joubert, a sailor who served about three years, said he was denied administrative leave altogether.

Joubert’s gender dysphoria diagnosis was given to him in October 2024, and his gender-affirming care was set to begin in February 2025. The transgender military ban executive order halted the process.

After expressing frustration to his commanding officer for being denied PTAD, he said he was involuntarily separated on April 17, 2026, due to conditions not amounting to a disability, but related to mental health and mental turmoil.

A loss of direction

Senior Master Sgt. Jamie Hash joined the military to be a part of something bigger than herself.

In 2025, with 13 years in the U.S. Air Force already under her belt, she had planned to serve at least 20 years and retire. So when Trump rolled out the ban and DoD policy ensued, she decided to reject the voluntary separation process and fight to remain.

“I don’t want to leave based on something that’s not specific to my performance or capability,” Hash said.

She has been on administrative leave since June 2025, and the leave has impacted her professional goals.

Hash had been awarded a prestigious three-year legislative fellowship in summer 2024 that allowed her to work as a liaison between the Defense Department and Congress, but the opportunity was jeopardized with the ban.

Though technically enrolled in the fellowship program, she wasn’t allowed to show up and take advantage of any its resources or perform any duties during her forced leave.

This loss of direction and purpose was commonplace for many.

For Master Sgt. Sabrina Bruce, who served in the Air Force for eight years and the Space Force for four, the military provided a second lease on life, as well as a support network that made her feel whole.

She’d realized her worth. But now that community was gone.

“Joining the military was the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Bruce. “Before the military, no one saw potential in me.”

Depression and suicidal thoughts plagued her for several months during the administrative leave process, which finally ended in December 2025 when she officially voluntarily separated.

Army Maj. Erica Vandal, who separated on Jan. 1, after nearly 15 years of service, described the administrative leave process as a “state of limbo.”

Vandal said she was still figuring out who she was as a person outside of the military. She was currently filling the void with advocacy work, she said, and continuing to search for something that fulfilled a sense of purpose similar to what the military offered.

Nicolas Talbott, the lead plaintiff in Talbott v. USA — the high-profile case challenging the ban — joined the Army National Guard in March 2024 and commissioned as a second lieutenant.

It took him nearly a decade to enlist after legal battles and the shifting policies of different presidential administrations, including both of Trump’s.

Talbott told Military Times that serving his country was the best job he’d ever had, combining every field of study he was passionate about: national security, counter terrorism and high-stakes environments that require precise decisions.

But after serving less than one year, his future in the military was once again cast into doubt.

“Stuck in a constant state of limbo has become the norm for me,” Talbott said.

The process wasn’t only grating for his mental health, but difficult for those around him too, including family members. They’d witnessed him work hard for everything he’d gotten, and then they watched as he found himself in what they viewed as an unfair situation.

Grooming, uniform standards

Several service members described administrative leaves and separation processes that felt designed to disrespect and humiliate them, as it barred them from donning the uniform they’d worn since their transitions.

The military made them adhere to the grooming standards of their gender assigned at birth during retirement ceremonies and graduations from prestigious military schools, they said.

U.S. Space Force Col. Bree Fram officially retired on Dec. 31, 2025, after serving for nearly 23 years. She opted to voluntarily separate once she realized the Trump administration would no longer allow her to serve.

Fram was the first openly serving transgender service member to be promoted to the rank of colonel. Despite the momentous achievement, she wasn’t allowed to wear her uniform during her retirement ceremony on Jan. 8, 2026.

Inexplicably, the DoD changed her military records on Dec. 1, 2025, to reflect her gender assigned at birth, not her actual gender, Fram said. Had she walked across the stage in the female uniform she’d been wearing for years, she would’ve been brought up on charges because it would now violate Uniform Code of Military Justice regulations barring opposite-gender uniforms.

Instead, she wore a business suit.

“These were the uniforms that we bled into, that we sweat into, that we were denied even that small dignity of wearing,” Fram said.

Her service dress uniform and boots were placed on a table off to the side as she walked across the stage.

About two weeks before her gender was denied publicly, she dealt with what she said was another slight. She was summoned to the Pentagon by a lieutenant general deputy chief of space operations.

In the meeting, which lasted 15 minutes, the lieutenant general told Fram that the official support she’d requested for her retirement ceremony — which included an honor guard and a band, both very common for ceremonies — would not be granted because there were concerns it would have the appearance of being political.

The officer then reminded Fram that she was still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which Fram found unusual.

“I took this very much as a warning or a veiled threat, to be be silent, to not talk about these things,” Fram said.

Army Infantry Major Kara Corcoran has served for over 18 years and is currently involved in the involuntary separation process.

In May 2025, she graduated from the School of Advanced Military Studies after completing an esteemed one-year master’s degree program that trained her to become an operational planner.

But she was informed by her chain of command that senior leadership had prohibited her from crossing the stage with her peers during graduation unless she adhered to male regulations and standards, in keeping with the new DoD policy.

“Cruelty was the point,” Corcoran said of the rule.

She was given an option to have a separate ceremony, or just be given her diploma instead.

She borrowed an old friend’s male uniform, cut her long hair into a pixie cut the day before the graduation ceremony and walked across the stage.

“You’re not gonna take away something I’ve earned,” Corcoran said. “If you think that cutting my hair is going to affect my identity, you don’t understand the strength and resilience of transgender service members.”

Bait and switch

Nearly all of the transgender service members who spoke to Military Times transitioned after joining the military, but in order to begin gender-affirming care, they had to receive a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” from a doctor.

Gender dysphoria is defined by the Mayo Clinic as a “feeling of distress that can happen when a person’s gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth.” But the clinic also notes that while some transgender people experience gender dysphoria, others feel comfortable with their bodies and gender identities.

“Not all transgender or gender diverse people experience gender dysphoria,” the clinic says.

The diagnosis was now being used to cast out transgender troops.

Many of the service members who spoke to Military Times said they either never had gender dysphoria but agreed to the diagnosis as a way to receive gender-affirming care, or they had experienced the feeling in the past but had not after transitioning.

Using the diagnosis against them was an unfair bait and switch, many said.

Staff Sgt. Athena N. Knight served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 14 years and opted for voluntary separation. She was honorably discharged on June 30, 2026.

Knight said she never had clinical gender dysphoria and didn’t meet the criteria for the ban.

“I don’t have gender dysphoria, I’m just transgender,” Knight said.

She was given the diagnosis under Defense Department Instruction 1300.28 “In-Service Transition for Transgender Service Members,” but explained it was because it provided the only path to receive necessary gender-affirming care.

The difference was similar to the distinction between someone being depressed and clinically depressed, Knight said. They’re not the same.

Someone could experience symptoms of gender dysphoria and not have clinical gender dysphoria.

Using gender dysphoria to expel someone from the military not only confused the service members it affected, but it also didn’t make sense legally, advocates said.

“There’s not one other medical condition that results in automatic discharge from the military,” said Shannon Minter, who works for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and is the lead attorney in the Talbott v. USA case.

Master Sgt. Logan Ireland, who’s served for 15 years in the Air Force, said he’s never felt dysphoric about his gender.

But based off DoD policy under the Trump administration, he faced separation despite wanting to continue serving.

Ireland initially applied for retirement after the Air Force extended the possibility of early retirement for transgender service members with 15 to 18 years of service.

He received retirement orders from the Air Force in June. But then, several months later, the Air Force issued a memorandum saying his application for early retirement was denied. Voluntary separation was offered, but Ireland didn’t want it at that point.

He is suing the Trump administration with other service members from the Air Force and Space Force over what they say is a loss of early retirement benefits.

“I had to get the diagnosis of gender dysphoria in order to continue serving in the military authentically as male,” Ireland said. “So for me it was a checkbox.”

Even though he had the diagnosis, it was easily curable through hormones and living as his authentic self, which he said he was doing.

“I’m a male,” Ireland said. “I live happily, healthfully as a male. There’s zero issue with me having a gender dysphoria diagnosis in a past medical history, because it’s already been corrected.”

Question of return

The Talbott v. USA ruling is set to go into effect Thursday, but if the class action is certified, it remains unclear what the protections mean for service members who voluntarily separated but want to return now that the ban was ruled unconstitutional.

Regardless, transgender troops have expressed mixed feelings about returning to an organization that rejected their service to their country.

“I don’t think I’ll get back in uniform unless something drastic happens,” Knight said.

She expressed concern about having to return the money she was given by the military as an incentive to voluntarily separate. She also wasn’t sure about going through a potentially complicated reenlistment procedure, given the disability rating she received upon exiting the service.

The Navy lieutenant who sought help at Walter Reed said they didn’t want to rejoin the military after it turned its back on them. But at the same time, serving another four years would get them to 20 and allow them to receive a significant upgrade in retirement benefits.

As of last week, they were considering all their options.

Corcoran was unequivocal in her commitment to returning — if given the chance.

“I want to finish out my 20 years and do my job, and be able to be a productive teammate,” Corcoran said. “The whole point of why I joined the military was to serve my country.”

The sea service “is exploring the industrial base’s capacity to deliver highly capable, autonomous platforms optimized for operations from Ford-class and Nimitz-class Nuclear Aircraft Carriers,” according to the RFI. The response deadline has been set for Aug. 13.

The drones the service is targeting, part of the Air Wing of the Future Family of Systems, can be designed as “a single-role platform, a multi-role platform, or a modular FoS [family of systems],” according to the service.

But whatever the solution, the Navy wants the platforms to be capable of performing eight different missions: strikes against surface ships, strikes against land targets, anti-submarine warfare, air-to-air combat against enemy aircraft and missiles, electronic warfare, ISR, aerial refueling, and resupply flights for a naval task force.

The service is soliciting “industry expertise to identify a mix of platforms that can provide affordable mass, risk-tolerant platforms that can perform the above missions to counter current and emerging threats,” the request states.

The RFI lists a few specific requirements, including a minimum 1,000-nautical mile range for strike missions.

Drones must also possess “flight autonomy (e.g., carrier pattern, taxiing) and mission autonomy (e.g., dynamic tasking/retasking, threat evasion, automated aerial refueling) maturity.”

Additionally, they must be compatible with existing Unmanned Carrier Aircraft control systems, according to the RFI.

Significantly, while the RFI mostly focuses on carrier-based drones, the Navy also wants vertical-takeoff UAVs that can operate from other types of vessels, such as destroyers and mobile sea bases.

“The Navy is interested in novel concepts that can operate from any air capable platform in addition to the CVN (e.g., DDG, ESB) using Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL),” the RFI said.

The RFI is indicative of the Navy’s desire to eventually move on from fourth-generation carrier air wings to an air wing composed of fifth- and sixth-generation manned and unmanned aircraft.

The new drones “must demonstrate increased combat effectiveness over current fourth generation platforms at a given spot factor.”

The Air Wing of the Future, as designed, appears to be modeled for an old-fashioned battle of attrition, in which combat is waged by affordable — and expendable — drones rather than a handful of expensive platforms.

Contractors responding to the RFI are asked to “detail how your production approach supports rapid scaling and elasticity in a surge scenario,” and what techniques they will use to “keep unit recurring flyaway (URF) and sustainment costs within sustainable limits.”

Companies should also explain how their proposed designs will minimize maintenance requirements and fit into existing naval supply chains, according to the RFI. Potential manufacturers should also submit “planned capital investments (CAPX) or Internal Research and Development (IRAD) commitments to mature the solution.”

The Air Wing of the Future Family of Systems is part of the Trump administration’s Golden Fleet expansion plan for the Navy.

Existing family-of-system drone projects include the MQ-25A Stingray tanker and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA.

Four thousand soldiers in Area North Barracks are opening windows, turning on fans or using other tools to beat the heat while the base grapples with pump issues.

On July 10, deep-well pumps supporting Army installations in central and northern Oahu started experiencing problems.

According to the garrison, only one pump is currently pushing water to the surface. To maintain essential water services, water chiller systems have been turned off. Without the chiller systems — which make up almost 40% of the daily water use — the barracks do not receive central air conditioning. The incident was initially reported by Task & Purpose.

According to the National Weather Service, temperatures for the remainder of the week range from the mid-70s to the upper-80s.

Units are able to move troops to MWR facilities with central air conditioning, according to the service, but as of Sunday, no units had done so.

Repairs are underway, but an exact timeline for when the pumps will be fully functional again was not provided.

The cause of the issues has not been definitively identified, however “age and extreme heat due to ventilation system repairs are believed to be part of the cause,” said Nathan Wilkes, the garrison’s external communications chief.

The installation is prioritizing keeping safe drinking water available.

Barracks and residential housing have access to drinkable water, and plumbing and sanitation systems are operational. Wilkes also said the installation has paused irrigation systems pulling from Area North water supply.

Family housing still has air conditioning and water access, Wilkes added.

The garrison’s commander, Col. Rachel Sullivan, was scheduled to host a town hall on the installation’s Facebook page on Tuesday.

The Space Development Agency selected L3Harris Technologies and Sierra Space Corporation for the delivery of a total of 36 space vehicles across four orbital planes, with an expected available launch by the end of 2028, according to a Monday release.

The 36 Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3, or AMDT3, space vehicles will be made up of 18 missile warning and tracking variants and 18 missile defense variants, per the statement, as part of the Tracking Layer for Tranche 3 of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, or PWSA.

“These awards align with the Program Acquisition Executive for Missile Warning and Tracking’s plans for a hybrid missile defense architecture to pursue global stereo coverage and access of missile warning/missile tracking and missile defense capabilities,” the release reads.

L3Harris is responsible for providing 18 hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor-like missile defense variants across two orbital planes, and Sierra Space is charged with providing 18 missile warning and tracking variants across two orbital planes.

The companies’ agreements are valued at approximately $955 million and $798 million, respectively.

“With these awards, SDA is accelerating the deployment of the Tracking Layer to provide the homeland, our deployed forces, and allies with global, persistent indications, detection, identification warning, tracking, and defense against advanced and evolving missile threats,” GP Sandhoo, the SDA director and Space Force portfolio acquisition executive for missile warning and tracking, said in the release.

The AMDT3 award is meant to boost the SDA’s Tracking Layer, which is a global constellation of satellites aimed at detecting and targeting advanced missile threats, with increased coverage and access, the release says.

The award initiates the accelerated proliferation of missile defense sensing to support homeland and theater defense, the announcement states.

Each space vehicle will be interoperable with all SDA Tranche 1, Tranche 2 and Tranche 3 space vehicles and will operate through a “common ground” system.

The Marine Corps commissioned the new Medium Landing Ships, or LSMs, with an eye toward potential conflicts with China in the Indo-Pacific.

Measuring around 100 meters, the smaller, more agile ships were designed for island hopping with troops, equipment and supplies in tow.

Under the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress directed the Navy to select a VCM outside of the military to manage the contract to procure no more than eight additional LSMs.

The VCM approach is supposed to speed up construction of simplified ship designs by borrowing commercial shipbuilding practices.

TOTE Services will manage subcontracts with Bollinger Shipyards for the construction of one LSM, while Fincantieri Marinette Marine will construct four of the vessels.

The VCM will determine the award strategy for the remaining three vessels, the Navy stated in a press release Monday. Construction is set to begin later this year, with the first LSM scheduled for delivery in the fall of 2029.

The LSMs are part of President Donald Trump’s “Golden Fleet” initiative, an undertaking that envisions keeping the Navy’s legacy ships and adding new manned and unmanned vessels.

Last December, the Navy tapped Dutch shipbuilder Damen Naval to design the Landing Ship Transport 100 (LST-100) for the initial tranche of LSMs.

The ship boasts a range of 3,400 nautical miles and can beach itself to deliver over 800 tons of cargo, according to a Marine Corps video released in April.

The Nigerian Navy already uses the LST-100 and the Australian Navy selected Damen’s design in 2024.

“We’re taking a proven design and leveraging congressional authorities to move with urgency and approach shipbuilding differently,” Christopher Miller, the Navy’s portfolio acquisition executive for maritime, said in a press release Monday.

In a senior enlisted leaders forum hosted last week by Military Officers Association of America, Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz discussed the pilot and the Corps’ hopes of getting away from the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, which is administered prior to enlistment and determines what jobs troops are eligible for.

“Is the ASVAB … score the only indicator of success? We say it’s not,” Ruiz said.

He added that the Marine Corps had “almost seven years’ worth of data” assessing the comparative value of another test, the Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment System, or TAPAS. When young people come in to take the ASVAB at a military entrance processing station, he said, they can stay seated and take the TAPAS.

“What are the traits, the characteristics of a young person that make them more likely to succeed in the Marine Corps?” Ruiz said, adding these can include performance in high school, sports experience, family background, place of origin.

These data points, he said, can potentially tell the Marine Corps not only how well a prospect will do in the Marine Corps, but also the best time to ship them out and even who they might bring into the service from their own community.

“We can probably, pretty much invest in you a lot more, because we likely know you,” Ruiz said.

Ruiz added that the assessment of the personality test will be longitudinal, tracking outcomes over the scope of a career.

“We’re going to pilot that for a little while, follow these Marines through their whole career, and see, how did someone like me who barely passed the ASVAB test end up here?” he said. “Is it the institution … is it because I have certain characteristics? I have no idea, right? I just know that the ASVAB test isn’t the only indicator of success, and we should explore that a little more.”

According to a 2023 Air Force Research Laboratory report, the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps are all currently offering TAPAS at MEPS alongside the ASVAB. The Marine Corps, according to the report, first asked in 2014 for a version of TAPAS to be administered to their applicants for research purposes, and got the test up and running at MEPS in late 2015. By 2019, the report states, some 1.2 million applicants from the three services had taken the test.

That report concludes that the data appears to support tapping into the pool of military applicants who might score poorly on the portion of the ASVAB that qualifies one to serve in the military, but do well on TAPAS.

“Research has also shown that placing individuals into a [military occupational specialty] consistent with their personalities can yield improved performance,” it adds.

The military has for years pursued noncognitive tests and success predictors as a way to determine an individual’s potential to thrive in military environments, from making it past entry-level training to staying in for subsequent enlistments.

A 2017 Naval Post-Graduate School study zeroed in on the now-closed Marine Corps Scout Sniper Course, noting that some 55% of trainees dropped out before graduation, at significant expense to the service. The study used “grit” screening and personality analysis to predict Marines’ ability to make it through the end of training, finding statistically significant evidence that it did.

“We recommend the Marine Corps develop and standardize noncognitive measures to facilitate job matching, such as in the preselection of the most suitable scout sniper candidates,” that study concluded.

It’s not clear, though, that a personality-based test could ever replace a standardized achievement test entirely, and the Marine Corps has yet to release any data on what they’ve learned so far.

On Monday, the service announced the launch of its Initial Enlisted Bonus Pilot program, running July 1 to Nov. 30. The first-come, first-serve program will offer a $25,000 bonus to enlistees who commit to eight-year contracts until the cap of 100 bonuses is reached. The incentive is available to new signers regardless of their chosen specialty.

In a conversation hosted by the Military Officers Association of America, Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna explained that the service was looking to move to an eight-year enlistment model for all contracts and testing the feasibility of doing so.

“If you want to become a cyber defender, it’s going to take me a little time to be able to train you and give you the experience,” Bentivegna said. “I can’t do it in four years — maybe not even six — but in eight, I can give you training, experience, exercises and get you to become a noncommissioned officer where I need you.”

The Space Force remains the smallest service in the Department of Defense by far, with an authorized end strength of 10,400 for fiscal 2026. Bentivegna said that the service’s current-term enlistment goal was 850, with a target of reaching a force of 11,000 by the end of the fiscal year. While Space Force officials have said they’ve had no difficulty recruiting for a small and highly specialized mission, Bentivegna’s comments reveal the challenges of growing proficiency in technical fields with a lot of required qualifications and training.

The service, he noted, only has three major career fields: space operations, cyber and intelligence.

“In addition to just any basic enlistment, physical and background checks and everything associated with it, [guardians] have to be able to pass a single school background investigation because every single enlisted member has a [Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information] clearance,” Bentivegna said. “So that’s an additional filter that we have to go through.”

While Space Force has seen strong retention since it activated in 2019, Bentivegna emphasized that the time needed to build the time and talent the service needs — while holding off civilian head-hunters — has been a challenge.

“We know we are fighting against industry and the commercial market. When you think about what the commercial industry in the space domain is doing, there’s a lot of desire for somebody who knows orbital mechanics and has done launch to go work for some of the big corporate companies that are trying to take advantage of it,” he said.

While the current pilot program offers financial incentives to get guardians to commit to longer contracts, Bentivegna emphasized that cash alone is unlikely to build the bullpen of experienced and committed troops that the Space Force is after.

“Another zero at the end of a paycheck isn’t necessarily going to equate to the experience of what it means to wear the uniform,” he said. “So I focus a lot on the guardian experience … and keeping them challenged and interested is really important.”

He added that he’d recently sent a message to the force encouraging enlisted guardians to take advantage of the space test program, a 40-hour master’s degree program available to 24 troops per year through the Air Force Flight Test School at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

“So we’re giving enlisted guardians opportunities to do things like that, to say, ‘Hey, stay with us,’” Bentivegna said. “We taught you some things, we gave you a clearance, we got you opportunity … let me build on your potential to do other things you may not be able to do anywhere else.”

Until now, the Space Force has employed four- and six-year enlistment terms. According to this week’s announcement, the $25,000 bonus will be disbursed upon successful completion of technical training, which varies by specialty but can take up to the first two years of an enlistment.

The aircrew of a UH-1N helicopter assigned to the 1st Helicopter Squadron, located at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, made the precautionary landing after noting “vibrating mechanical sounds,” an Air Force spokesperson confirmed to Military Times.

A Joint Base Andrews spokesperson told Military Times that the crew was conducting a routine training flight.

The helicopter landed near the Georgetown Reservoir, owned and operated by the Washington Aqueduct, on Monday at approximately 9:26 p.m. local time.

“Joint Base Andrews takes the safety of the aircrew and our surrounding community seriously,” a Tuesday statement from the base reads.

The four crew members returned safely to the Maryland base, and there was no damage to the aircraft or property damage after the landing, the release reads.

The helicopter landed on Washington Aqueduct’s property near Foxhall Road NW, about a mile away from the German Embassy.

Washington Aqueduct did not immediately return a request for comment.

Pictures of the helicopter after its landing and the crews that responded have circulated social media, including from a D.C. freelance photographer Andrew Leyden.

Pilots of the USAF helicopter that made a precautionary landing in NW DC reported to air traffic control some unusual noises and virbrations prior to setting down on top of an underground reservoir. The pilots have left the scene and mechanics are now inspecting the aircraft. pic.twitter.com/ea0YVoxRTo

— Andrew Leyden (@PenguinSix) July 14, 2026

A maintenance crew has been assessing the aircraft since Tuesday morning to investigate the cause of the vibrations heard by the helicopter unit.

Andrews and the Air Force declined to comment on when the aircraft can be moved from its landing spot.

The Bell UH-1N “Huey” aircraft, which began service in 1970, are light-lift utility helicopters used in various missions, such as disaster relief response, medical evacuation and security and surveillance of off-base nuclear weapons convoys.

As the Air Force moved to modernize its rotary-wing capabilities, it began officially retiring the aging aircraft in 2025 when the Hueys left bases it was stationed at, like Yokota Air Base.

Years prior in 2018, the service announced that existing UH-1N locations would receive replacement aircraft sometime between 2020 and 2032.

Andrews, one of the bases with the aging aircraft, was selected in 2022 to receive 25 MH-139 Grey Wolves to replace the base’s 21 UH-1Ns, but the plans were later scrapped.

Instead, the Air Force opted to reallocate some of its budget to modify 26 HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters in fiscal year 2026.

Earlier this month, the UH-1Ns from Andrews participated in the flyovers in D.C. over the National Mall for America 250 celebrations.

Despite a goal of 100,000 rounds per month by October 2025, the Army had only managed to produce 36,000 rounds per month as of March 2026, according to a report published this month by the Department of Defense Inspector General.

Shell production requires first building the projectile at a metal parts factory, followed by packing the shell with explosives at another facility. But this means “projectile metal part production is the limiting factor for reaching the 100,000 round-per-month goal for 155-mm artillery rounds,” the report noted.

The Army has not been able to forge enough metal parts to ramp up production of projectiles. In particular, “at a contractor-owned, contractor-operated facility in Mesquite, Texas, the contractor has been unable to produce any projectile metal parts that meet contract specifications,” the report reads.

After investing $469 million, the Army opened a modular metal parts factory in Mesquite, Texas in 2024. The Universal Artillery Projectile Lines facility — operated by General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems — was supposed to use “modern manufacturing practices, high levels of automation and digital data capture ability” to forge large numbers of large-caliber metal parts for shells, the Army announced at the time.

That optimism proved premature.

Officials at the Army’s Capability Program Executive Ammunition & Energetics, or CPE A&E, “issued the contract and accepted the risk associated with purchasing and adapting unique production equipment which had not been proven to meet U.S. specifications,” the IG report said.

To save time, the Mesquite factory tried to adapt manufacturing lines originally designed to make parts for the M107 155-mm shell — which dates back to 1958 — rather than the newer M795.

CPE A&E “accepted the risk associated with the contractor’s plan to purchase and adapt M107 metal part production equipment to produce a newer variant of the 155-mm projectile metal parts at different specifications,” said the report.

The report noted that some Army officials had concerns regarding an older ammunition plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that included “separate ongoing problems with the contractor in terms of responsiveness, equipment maintenance, and timeliness. Those officials expressed concern to the evaluation team that ACC [Army Contracting Command] did not open the contract for the Mesquite facility to competition from other contractors.”

The bottleneck at the Mesquite plant left the Army’s three existing plants in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and Ingersoll, Canada, to try to pick up the slack.

Amid voracious expenditure of 155-mm rounds by Ukraine that depleted U.S. stockpiles, DoD issued a congressionally-mandated plan in 2022 to modernize howitzer ammunition production. DoD’s 2025 National Defense Industrialization Strategy Implementation Plan aimed at churning out 100,000 155-mm shells per month by October 2025.

The Army’s efforts have borne some fruit, with production nearly tripling to 14,000 shells per month to 36,000. By modernizing the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant and creating two new facilities in Kansas and Arkansas, the Army hopes to load, assemble and pack 140,000 155-mm rounds by December 2027.

In the meantime, the IG suggested the Army could get a refund.

The report recommended that the Army review the contract for the Mesquite facility to determine how the money was spent and whether the DoD can recoup any funds and also “determine whether the Mesquite contract was appropriately issued.”

The restructuring will also create the Army’s first operational unmanned aircraft system, or UAS, battalion at Fort Hood, where new hangars will support the larger HADES jet aircraft.

The move will begin in Fiscal Year 2027, when the brigade headquarters and two battalions relocate to the installation, followed by the remaining battalion and companies the following fiscal year.

The Army said the relocation stems from a 2018 operational gap analysis that found its legacy aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or AISR, fleet lacked necessary range and sensor capabilities.

“HADES will enable the Army and Joint Force to conduct long-range sensing to enable the execution of long-range precision fires,” said Maj. Gen. Timothy Brown, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command.

HADES is a crewed, next-generation AISR system that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to process data, the release said. The system will be fielded aboard new jet aircraft.

The service plans to purchase up to 11 custom Bombardier Global 6500 jets for the HADES program, Military Times reported in January. According to an Army Request for Information, the new jets must be able to fly at a sustained speed of 450 knots at an altitude of 51,000 feet. They must also be able to carry a minimum payload of 14,000 pounds for at least 12 hours.

HADES’s introduction follows the Army’s retirement of approximately 60 turboprop ISR aircraft. The Army said it is “pursuing” ATHENA-R/S jet platforms in the interim until HADES is fielded.

According to the Army, the changes will increase personnel at Fort Hood by 1,228. It will also decrease personnel at Fort Bliss, Texas, by 242; Fort Gordon, Georgia, by 638; Fort Stewart, Georgia, by 186; and Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, by 162.

As military leaders prepare for wars shaped by drones, artificial intelligence and rapidly shifting battlefield conditions, however, defense experts say the Pentagon still struggles to answer a more difficult question: How do you know whether a force can adapt when the unexpected happens?

Future conflicts are widely expected to unfold faster and with greater uncertainty than the wars the United States has fought in recent decades. Communications may be disrupted, battlefield conditions may shift rapidly and long-held assumptions about how wars are fought could prove wrong almost overnight.

The military has spent decades refining how it measures readiness.

Yet, many of the qualities defense experts say will matter most in future wars — judgment, initiative and the ability to adapt under pressure — remain difficult to define and even harder to quantify.

Adaptability matters more than ever

Military leaders have long understood that no plan survives first contact unchanged. The challenge, according to defense experts, is that rapid technological change is making future conflict increasingly difficult to predict.

The Pentagon has acknowledged as much.

The 2022 National Defense Strategy describes a security environment undergoing profound strategic and operational change shaped by evolving threats, emerging technologies and growing uncertainty. That uncertainty presents a dilemma for military planners.

Militaries must make long-term decisions about doctrine, force structure and expensive weapon systems years before conflict begins, said Nora Bensahel, professor of practice at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“You have to train your forces to fight in a particular way, but the odds are you’re going to be wrong,” she said. “Any prediction for the future at any point in history has always been difficult, and now with the really exponential pace of change, the odds that you get it wrong are even higher.”

Lessons emerging from Ukraine have intensified those concerns.

Bensahel said the proliferation of drones is fundamentally reshaping warfare and forcing military organizations to reconsider longstanding assumptions about ground combat. The rapid evolution of unmanned systems, she said, demonstrates how quickly the character of warfare can change.

Military leaders across the services have responded by expanding experimentation and accelerating modernization efforts.

U.S. Army leaders have cited lessons emerging from Ukraine as they adapt formations and concepts for large-scale combat operations, while the Navy has expanded experimentation with unmanned surface and undersea systems. The Air Force continues pursuing autonomous aircraft concepts and collaborative combat aircraft programs.

The limits of readiness metrics

The military tracks everything from personnel strength and training proficiency to equipment readiness and mission-capable rates. Those metrics remain essential for determining whether units can perform assigned missions.

Current readiness systems are largely designed to assess whether military units can execute assigned missions using established criteria. Army unit status reporting, for example, tracks personnel levels, equipment on hand, equipment readiness and training proficiency, while broader Defense Department readiness systems focus on resource levels and mission capability.

Military officials can readily determine whether a unit is manned, trained and equipped. Predicting how that unit will respond when battlefield beliefs collapse is more difficult.

“Readiness indicators are very important, but they can’t tell you anything about adaptability,” Bensahel said. “They’re not designed to do that.”

Current readiness systems primarily assess personnel, equipment, training and mission capability, while qualities such as adaptability, judgment and cognitive flexibility are addressed more indirectly through doctrine and leader development.

Bensahel defines military adaptability through three interconnected elements: doctrine, technology and leadership. All three, she argued, must evolve as conditions change if military organizations are to remain effective.

What adaptive leaders look like

Army doctrine offers one institutional answer. Although adaptability is not formally measured, military doctrine incorporates many of its core characteristics through the concept of mission command.

Mission command encourages subordinate leaders to exercise disciplined initiative, accept prudent risk and adapt their actions to changing conditions while operating within a commander’s intent. Rather than prescribing exactly how tasks must be accomplished, mission orders are intended to maximize freedom of action and enable leaders to respond when battlefield conditions change.

Mission command doctrine also teaches many of the behaviors associated with adaptive leadership. Leaders are expected to think critically, exercise disciplined initiative, accept prudent risk and empower subordinates to make decisions when circumstances change unexpectedly.

Military leadership frameworks describe adaptive leaders as individuals capable of critical thinking, learning agility, decentralized decision-making and operating amid uncertainty while building trust and empowering subordinates to act independently when conditions demand it.

Embedding those qualities across a force of more than two million service members and civilians presents a different challenge.

Bensahel argued that the U.S. military has not always adapted quickly enough during recent conflicts. Although junior leaders frequently demonstrated adaptability during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, she said senior leaders and institutions were often slower to adjust to changing battlefield realities.

Lessons emerging from Ukraine have heightened concerns about whether military organizations can adapt quickly enough to rapidly changing battlefield conditions. Battlefield innovations can now emerge, proliferate and alter combat operations in a matter of months, rather than years.

Technology alone won’t improve adaptability

Much of the debate surrounding future warfare focuses on emerging technologies. Bensahel argued that adaptability ultimately depends less on hardware than on mindset.

“The most important thing for military leaders up and down the chain of command need to have in order to be adaptable is flexibility of thinking” and the ability to try new solutions when existing approaches fail, she said.

Developing that mindset requires organizations to tolerate experimentation and, at times, failure.

“If you want to get leaders in the habit of trying new things that might or might not work, you have to have some tolerance for failure,” Bensahel said.

That can be difficult inside large military institutions, where bureaucratic processes, oversight requirements and organizational culture often reward certainty and discourage failure. Without experimentation, adapting to changing conditions becomes significantly more difficult, Bensahel said.

The Defense Department has spent decades building lessons-learned systems and preserving operational experience through archives, after-action reviews and institutional repositories.

Collecting information is no longer the central challenge, according to Ben Connable, a retired Marine Corps intelligence officer and former RAND researcher. Instead, he said, the problem is turning information into knowledge and embedding those lessons throughout the force.

“There’s almost a belief that knowledge now exists in this kind of ether,” Connable said. “We don’t really have to do much with it anymore.”

Organizations can accumulate enormous amounts of information while still struggling to translate that information into institutional learning, Connable said.

“The more digitization we have ... the worse we’re actually doing at synthesizing it for knowledge,” he said.

Connable explained that military education often relies heavily on historical examples while placing less emphasis on extracting lessons from more recent conflicts.

“We’ve done a particularly poor job of transmitting recent cases into modern knowledge,” he said. “The lessons that you fail to learn, you wind up repeating.”

He first said a coalition of allies would work together to build the complicated weapon at last week’s NATO summit in Ankara, where U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to let Ukraine build its own Patriot interceptors after recognizing that, in Zelenskyy’s words, Ukraine is “a country that is ready to do this.”

The initiative was launched as a result of a global shortage of anti-ballistic interceptors, as the war in Iran and nearby countries carries on into its fifth month and allied partners across the world push to stock up on defensive weapons.

Nine European countries joined Ukraine as founding members in Paris: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

“We believe that the protection of Europe requires a global solution of integrated missile defence architecture to deter and defeat future missile threats — developed through collective effort, technological openness, and trusted industrial cooperation,” officials wrote in the joint statement formalizing the new coalition.

Although the United States has increased Patriot output and Europe has expanded production of the surface-to-air missile systems SAMP/T, IRIS-T and NASAMS, the shortfall between demand and supply is still wide.

“By bringing together our defence industrial base, our research, and our operational experience, we aim to build a shared antiballistic missile capacity for Europe and support relevant contributory activities. We do this not against any people, but in defence of our own,” the signatories said.

For Ukraine, gaining antiballistic capabilities would enable better protection of its cities and frontlines, both which have increasingly been targeted by Russian ballistic missiles that cannot be taken out by air defenses — and free them from completely depending on allies for this type of support.

For Europe, the coalition offers a fast-tracked path to resolving weapons shortages, strengthening their own defenses at a discount and benefiting from the battlefield expertise Ukraine has gained over years of full-scale war.

The group’s current priorities are to “establish common operational requirements, joint technical working groups, clear governance mechanisms, and a roadmap towards the Coalition’s first operational capabilities,” the announcement said.

In statements about the new coalition posted on social media on Monday, the president explained why Kyiv and Europe need their own anti-ballistic system.

“The threat of ballistic missiles in the world is only going to increase. This is one of the main consequences of the wars in Russia and Iran,” Zelenskyy said. “Therefore, FREYJA must become a reality.”

Ukraine will head the project, supplying the interceptor itself, with partners providing the radar, tracking and command-and-control systems it lacks, Zelenskyy said last week.

“Europe needs more protection against ballistic threats. Together, we can create such a system,” he said. “It is important to politically confirm that FREYJA is our joint project, serving the interests of all of Europe.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa also attended Monday’s meeting in Paris, in addition to representatives from several European defense companies, including: Destinus, Diehl Defence, Eurosam, Fire Point, HENSOLDT, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, Leonardo, MBDA, Saab, Safran, Thales and Weibel Scientific.

“Everyone present here is a vital part of what we need to create this system,” the Ukrainian president said. “I am grateful to the companies for their willingness to work together.”

Although the partnership’s nuts and bolts are still in the works, each country in the coalition will retain a certain degree of autonomy, Zelenskyy said.

“Europeans themselves will be able to decide how many systems Europe needs and where they should be located. This would create a strategically new situation,” he said. “Each European system would add to the overall strength and provide different parts of Europe with a strategic foundation for defense.”

Like Patriot interceptors, Freyja is an entire system that will rely on allies for production support, centering on Fire Point’s FP-7.X interceptor, designed to hit a ballistic target at roughly 15 miles altitude.

But while Patriots take 24 months to build, Zelenskyy said he wants Freyja flying much sooner.

“Each of us holds a crucial piece of the puzzle: we in Ukraine have the missiles, but these are only parts of the system,” he said. “Together, we can create this comprehensive system – FREYJA – within the next twelve months.”

In a letter to one beneficiary dated July 2 and provided to Military Times, TriWest officials said they had discovered a security incident April 16, in which an unauthorized person gained limited, unauthorized access to TriWest information and downloaded it.

“We are unaware of any misuse of your information,” officials stated in the letter, but they went on to say TriWest is offering a free credit-monitoring service for those who feel it’s needed.

The unauthorized person obtained health-related and other personal information, specifically names, Department of Defense Benefits Numbers and beneficiaries’ ZIP codes. Officials said that in fewer than five instances, the information also included Social Security numbers, addresses and dates of birth.

About four million beneficiaries are covered by TriWest, the managed care contractor for the Tricare West Region. Active duty, retired, National Guard and Reserve, and their family members, survivors and certain former spouses receive their health care under DoD’s Tricare program, with eligibility determined by the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, or DEERS.

TriWest is notifying each beneficiary about what information was involved in their specific case.

The timing of the notifications was unclear, since at least one letter was dated July 2, about two and a half months after the incident occurred.

“With regard to timing, as soon as the incident was discovered, TriWest took immediate action to prevent any further unauthorized activity and worked diligently with the government to notify affected individuals, consistent with applicable law and notification timelines,” TriWest officials said in an email response to Military Times.

The company hired a third-party forensic expert to review what information was accessed during the incident.

Beneficiaries who want to use the free credit-monitoring service, offered through Experian for 24 months, should enroll by the deadline provided in their notification letter, using the activation code and instructions included in the letter.

Those who find suspicious activity should notify the TriWest Healthcare Alliance Breach Response Line, at 1-833-918-1296. Beneficiaries who believe they are victims of identity theft should file a report with the Federal Trade Commission at identitytheft.gov.

The company has taken steps to prevent any other such incidents, officials said, including increasing security controls related to password resets, strengthening system access monitoring tools and providing additional employee education on identifying and mitigating the different types of cyber attacks.

Reuters first reported on March 5 that an initial, internal U.S. military investigation showed U.S. forces were likely responsible for the fatal strike in Minab on the opening day of the war with Iran.

The group of more than two dozen U.S. senators, including the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed, requested in a letter the U.S. military finalize its investigation, brief Congress and present a plan to ensure such a mistake does not happen again.

“There is no justification for withholding an unclassified accounting of what happened, what went wrong, and what the Department is doing to prevent recurrence,” their letter said.

Asked for comment, a Pentagon official told Reuters: “The investigation is ongoing. We do not have any updates to announce at this time.”

The strike killed more than 175 children and teachers, Iranian officials say. The lawmakers’ letter notes that would make it the U.S. military’s largest civilian casualty incident since 1991, when it mistakenly bombed a shelter in Iraq, killing more than 400 civilians.

Deadly Iran school strike casts shadow over Pentagon’s AI targeting push

Archived copies of the Iranian school’s official website show the school is adjacent ‌to a ⁠compound operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the military force that reports to Iran’s supreme leader.

Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter, has reported that U.S. officials responsible for creating targeting packages appeared to have used out-of-date intelligence.

U.S. Admiral Brad Cooper, head of ​Central Command, which is directing the war effort, testified in May that the investigation was “complex” given ‌that the school was located on an active Iranian cruise missile base.

Trump, however, has cast doubt on whether the U.S. military will ever know what happened given the amount of military activity at the start of the war.

“Somebody said it was our missile, maybe ​it wasn’t our missile but I have seen nothing to lead me to believe ‌it ⁠was.” Trump remarked on June 24, adding: “I don’t think it was us.”

Iranian officials have pointed to the strike on the school as a U.S. war crime. The U.S. has said it never intentionally targets civilians.

In the letter, the lawmakers ask Cooper and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit an unclassified version of the findings to Congress and the U.S. public. They also ask for a prevention and remediation plan “that identifies the specific corrective actions the Department will take to ensure this does not happen again.”

“The United States military has a legal and moral obligation to take all feasible precautions to prevent civilian harm,” the letter said.

“When a U.S. strike kills civilians, the Department owes Congress, the American people, and the victims’ families a clear accounting of what happened and a credible plan to prevent future failures.”

In the letter, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach argued that every airman needs to focus on fitness and appearance standards in an effort to strengthen the service’s readiness and should familiarize themselves with the updated physical fitness rules.

“Fitness remains essential to every Airman’s ability to execute the mission under challenging conditions,” he wrote.

Unless medically exempt from the waist-to-height ratio component of the force’s fitness assessment, airmen are required to upload their current ratio into myBodyComp by July 31 for active-duty service members and August 31 for air reserve component members.

The waist-to-height ratio assessment is a large part of the force’s overall fitness program and showcases the readiness and health of the service to commanders, Wilsbach wrote.

Wilsbach said that meeting the responsibility of deterring aggression for the country begins with upholding high standards since they are the “foundation of discipline and readiness.”

“Consistently holding ourselves accountable builds trust within our formations, reinforces confidence in our teammates, and ensures we are prepared to answer our Nation’s call,” the letter reads.

Wilsbach also drove home the dress and appearance standards upheld by the force, saying that a professional image reflects discipline, pride and attention to detail and can push excellence.

The letter comes in the wake of a series of stricter standards executed across the military branches since Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth began pushing for more rigorous grooming and fitness standards.

“It’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops,” Hegseth said in a September 2025 speech. “It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.”