Barrett was commissioned through Navy ROTC in 2000 and spent four years leading infantry and scout sniper Marines from 2000 to 2004.

When most of his platoon headed to sniper school, he went with them.

It was a “pretty unusual” move for a Marine officer, he told Military Times.

The Marine Corps has since trained its final scout snipers and moved sniper training into reconnaissance and Raider units under Force Design 2030.

After the Marines, Barrett built a business, sold it and started farming. When a friend asked him to join an aid convoy to Ukraine, he had four kids in school and a harvest underway. His first answer was no.

That night, he read about pastors killed and churches destroyed by Russian forces. As a Christian, he wondered how he’d missed it. He made the trip, then kept going back.

Now, despite declaring that he is “not a filmmaker,” Barrett has produced two series on the war in Ukraine: A Faith Under Siege and Faith in War. Within that series is Safe Ground, the story of a Green Beret who removes landmines in Ukraine.

During those trips, Barrett heard about a sniper with the call sign of Lektor, a special forces sniper from the Department of Active Measures with Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence, who, in December 2024, hit a moving Russian soldier at 2,069 meters using a single .338 Lapua Magnum round from a Sako TRG M10. He fired standing in a trench, nearly level with his target, and hit on the first shot.

Lektor is still running missions and only reluctantly agreed to press, Barrett said. Soon, however, Barrett’s time with Lektor will become a short documentary.

Barrett’s crew spent a morning on the range with his unit testing whether American M118 ammunition could match its costly hand-loaded rounds. Lektor said there was “practically no difference,” so the unit stuck with the M118 it already had.

“I was struck by just his humility,” Barrett said.

Lektor, a former gamekeeper, waved off the praise.

“Honestly, I don’t consider myself a super expert,” he told Barrett’s crew in an interview translated from Ukrainian. “This is my job for the duration of the war.”

Before the shot, his team had spent two weeks on the zero line watching for a Russian assault, under orders not to fire. When the situation changed and the team was set to move, Lektor asked for one more chance.

“So I simply begged the commander: give us a day or two for free hunting,” he said.

He spotted a soldier whose gear set him apart from ordinary infantry. The man was walking a tree line at a steady pace and a workable angle. As Lektor prepared to fire, his partner called a wind correction in the wrong direction.

“I managed to shout: recalculate, something’s wrong,” Lektor said. They fixed it in seconds while the target was still moving.

Barrett pointed to the longest confirmed .338 Lapua kill — British Cpl. Craig Harrison’s 2,475-meter shot in Afghanistan in 2009 — which came after several sighting rounds. Shots like that, he said, are “really more like competition shooting.” Lektor is skeptical of the rankings for the same reason.

“Two shots maximum: if you didn’t hit, that’s it,” he said. “That’s how you should compare.”

Within half an hour of the shot, drones were overhead.

“The only thing that saved us was that the enemy didn’t expect a shot from such a distance,” Lektor said. The Russians shelled an area about 500 meters out. His team waited a full day in a dugout before slipping out.

Now, thermal cameras hunt for heat.

“After a shot, a simple suppressor can give you away, because it’s hot, it glows,” Lektor said.

Early in the war, Lektor said, the walk to a firing position was about a kilometer. He now walks eight.

Barrett asked him whether snipers were even relevant anymore. Lektor admitted the role is “a little outdated” but not finished.

“Snipers, in my opinion, are the neurosurgeons,” he said. A sniper team can watch a sector almost continuously, he explained. “Drones have to return to recharge, they get shot down.”

Near Bakhmut, Lektor’s team killed a Russian sniper. A neighboring unit then told them he was the fifth one killed at that position.

“They have absolutely no regard for the lives of their own men,” Lektor said.

Barrett sees Ukraine’s regard for its own people as an advantage, along with its speed in adapting to new technology. Russia, he said, treats the war like a meat grinder: “If I just put so much meat into it, that it breaks the grinder, then we’ll win.”

Lektor’s son enlisted first, and the two have served together most of the war.

“He’s my child, I have to be there,” Lektor said.

Once, while Lektor was hospitalized with wounds, his son was fighting with another team in Chasiv Yar. He was the only one of four men in his group to come out unharmed.

On his own team, Lektor keeps one rule.

“I [am] the first to go in and the last to come out,” he said. “That’s our unwritten rule.”

The extent of the drone war is underestimated, with Ukraine and Russia each using roughly 10,000 drones a day, the former CIA director and onetime commander of U.S. Central Command said, speaking at an American Primary Aluminum Association event in Washington.

“This is an unmanned systems war,” Petraeus said. “Tanks aren’t survivable there anymore.”

For Ukraine, drones and unmanned weapons have become central to how the country has leveraged a smaller, outgunned force against a much larger, better-financed adversary for almost five years.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of a new Unmanned Systems Forces military branch in 2024, and the Defense Ministry has said time and again that developing more autonomous weapons is a top priority.

But for the rest of the world, Petraeus said, the fighting in Ukraine is a window into the future and a warning about the dangers of being underprepared for the battles to come.

“Really, no NATO country and not even the United States is undertaking yet the urgent revolutionary institutional change that should be taken based on what we see in Ukraine, which is the future of war,” he said.

The U.S. needs a new concept of warfare that runs through force structure, training, procurement, personnel policy and bases, the general said, replacing much of the legacy, heavily manned equipment with unmanned systems that are cheaper and far more numerous.

“What’s going to happen is we’ll see the introduction of autonomous systems really for the first time in warfare,” Petraeus said.

Washington is making “some commendable steps” toward developing these weapons, according to Petraeus, including establishing a new Autonomous Warfare Command that requires each military branch to stand up its own component command.

“But my hope is that they will not just create an unmanned systems force in terms of force structure, but that they will also spur the initiation of true institutional change,” Petraeus said.

That includes how the U.S. buys weapons, Petraeus said, calling for “very, very substantial manufacturing capacity but not necessarily producing all the time.”

“You want it to be able to make software changes every week, hardware changes every few weeks, which is what’s going on in Ukraine because the enemy continues to evolve and Russia’s been innovating very substantially as well,” he said.

Ukraine will produce as many as 20 million unmanned systems this year, Zelenskyy said in a July speech, with a shortage of trained operators and the acquisition of some weapons components — including optics, gimbals, brushless motors and fiber-optic cable — becoming the domestic industry’s production bottleneck.

The general also rejected the idea that the U.S. war with Iran has hurt Washington’s ability to help Kyiv, though he acknowledged the U.S. has used “a fair number of missile interceptors,” which “makes it more difficult to share those with others around the world.”

The war has consumed between one-half and two-thirds of the U.S. inventory of certain missile-defense interceptors, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released in September.

“We can help the Ukrainians in any way in which we decide to assist them,” Petraeus said. “These are policy decisions.”

On Saturday, Tech. Sgt. Ian Patterson, a Tactical Air Control Party instructor assigned to the 6th Combat Training Squadron, Detachment 2, at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, fell from a football stadium’s rafters during a rappelling demonstration before a game between the University of Texas at San Antonio and the U.S. Naval Academy.

During UTSA’s annual Salute to Armed Forces & Veterans game, videos show Patterson wearing combat fatigues and rappelling down to midfield from the Alamodome’s rafters before falling onto the field at full speed, feet first. Subsequent videos show medical personnel assisting the airman on the field before transporting him to a local hospital.

Later Saturday night, Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, which houses the 6th Combat Training Squadron, announced Patterson had died at the hospital from the injuries sustained during the demonstration.

Members of the 6th Combat Training Squadron are trained in rappelling from heights of 100 feet or more. The football stadium’s rafters are around 170 feet above the stadium floor.

“Tech Sgt Patterson’s squadron, 6th Combat Training Squadron, has paused all rappel and ropes training events and demonstrations until further notice,” an Air Force Warfare Center spokesperson told Military Times.

The spokesperson declined to comment on when the suspension began and who enacted it. The comment did not include when the office expects the events and demonstrations to continue.

Rappelling and ropes are a large aspect of the Tactical Air Control Party’s skill base, with familiarization training designed to give service members basic information and techniques needed to conduct live operations, according to an Air Force description.

Patterson was from Fort Stewart, Georgia, and served in the Air Force for 15 years. His decorations include the Air and Space Commendation Medal with three oak leaf clusters, as well as the Army Commendation Medal, Air and Space Achievement Medal and Army Achievement Medal, each with one oak leaf cluster.

He was named the Air Force Special Warfare Enlisted Instructor of the Year at the headquarters level in 2022.

The incident is currently under investigation, according to a release at the time of identification.

Skerritt, a Detroit native whose Hollywood career spanned from the 1960s to the 2020s, died on Wednesday of natural causes, his family said in a statement.

“While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career, we knew him for his humor, curiosity, wisdom, generosity, and the love he brought into our lives,” they said. “He cared deeply about imagination, creativity, storytelling, service, veterans, the natural world, and helping others find and share their own voices.”

Born on August 25, 1933, in Detroit, Skerritt served in the Air Force before becoming an actor, making his film debut in 1962 alongside a young Robert Redford in War Hunt.

Tony Scott cast Skerritt in the key supporting role of naval aviation instructor Viper Metcalf in the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun that helped star Tom Cruise soar into Hollywood’s stratosphere.

“Hollywood knew him as Viper. We remember him as an American Veteran. Rest in peace, U.S. Air Force Veteran Tom Skerritt,” Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins wrote Friday on X.

Known for his rugged good looks and ability to shine in a variety of genres, Skerritt delivered memorable performances in leading and supporting roles in film and television.

Skerritt’s breakthrough role was a roguish U.S. Army surgeon in director Robert Altman’s 1970 Korean War black comedy M*A*S*H, a film whose ensemble cast also included Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould and Sally Kellerman. Skerritt played Southerner Duke Forrest as the doctors at the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital who stitched up wounded troops.

The film, whose popularity coincided with American unease over the Vietnam War, was nominated for five Academy Awards.

In director Ridley Scott’s claustrophobic 1979 sci-fi horror Alien, Skerritt played Dallas, the captain of an ill-fated spacecraft whose crew encounters a deadly parasitic extraterrestrial creature with a surrealist look and a bad attitude. In the film’s famous and bloody “chestburster” scene, Skerritt’s character is seated next to cast mate John Hurt when a baby alien violently exits the torso of Hurt’s character.

Alien, an influential masterpiece whose ensemble cast also included Sigourney Weaver and Ian Holm, earned two Oscar nominations.

“It is spontaneity and impulse that make the difference, and that is what I felt we had with ‘Alien.’ Every one of us had that immediate rapport with each other — the respect that I had for the other actors and the respect that they had for me,” Skerritt told interviewer Peter Sobczynski in 2019, while also lauding Scott’s directorial brilliance.

Alien was one of several films in which Skerritt appeared that featured strong female characters, in this case Weaver’s courageous character Ripley. That was considered pioneering at the time.

“When I read the script, one of the things that I liked most about it was that the woman becomes the hero. I loved that,” Skerritt said.

“The sight of women being in positions of strength and fortitude to make the right connections and decisions was what appealed to me. I experienced that as well in ‘Steel Magnolias,’ with the women in that. I liked the idea of women being tough and strong and influential.”

In Steel Magnolias (1989), Skerritt played Drum Eatenton, husband of Sally Field’s M’Lynn Eatenton.

Skerritt also played Shirley MacLaine’s husband in director Herbert Ross’s 1977 ballet drama The Turning Point, and starred alongside another emerging star in Brad Pitt in Redford’s beautifully shot 1992 period drama A River Runs Through It.

Among other films in which he appeared were: Harold and Maude (1971), Ice Castles (1978), The Dead Zone (1983), Poltergeist III (1988), Contact (1997), Tears of the Sun (2003) and Ted (2012).

On the small screen, Skerritt starred in the offbeat CBS series Picket Fences from 1992 to 1996, playing a Wisconsin town sheriff and claiming an Emmy as outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1993.

He was a father of five children and was married three times.

That is, at least, the proper terminology in this great American age of rebrands, one that has borne witness to such seismic overhauls as the Gulf of Mexico becoming the Gulf of America, Lake Ontario becoming Lake America, and a push to call New Mexico … New America.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 29 the term “artificial intelligence” would henceforth be retired in favor of “super intelligence.”

“As these capabilities continue to improve, they increasingly represent not merely artificial intelligence, but a new era of Super Intelligence,” the executive order stated.

The president followed that “SI” declaration up with an Oct. 8 Truth Social post asserting that anyone who uses the previous moniker would be branded “THE ENEMY!”

The U.S. Navy this week became one of the first services to avoid that traitorous designation, cementing the super initiative and calling on “all Navy echelons, commands, activities, and personnel [to] use ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in place of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI,’” a service memo stated.

“This policy applies effective immediately across all official Navy correspondence, flag letters, OPORDs, wargame documentation, instructional material, fleet advisories, public communications, official websites, strategic assessments, congressional reports, and non-statutory internal and external policy documents,” the memo continued.

As part of the super overhaul, echelon II commanders, type commanders and systems commanders will be required to review all “public releases, intranet portals, and external presentations for compliance” no later than 30 days after the release of the super memo. These personnel will then be required to submit a super report on completing the task.

The directive does not require retroactively amending previously published documentation or contracts, the message noted, while existing laws and statutes “will continue to be cited as statutorily required until conforming congressional amendments are enacted.”

A Military Times request for comment from the sea service regarding what consequences might result should “artificial intelligence” be used was not returned as of press time.

The goal is for AI to automatically analyze refueling operations from cameras mounted on the tankers and provide “hot wash” feedback to the tanker crews.

According to an Air Force Small Business Innovation Research solicitation, the service wants a system that can “leverage advanced computer vision, machine learning, and aviation (flight dynamics) analytics techniques to automatically extract operationally relevant performance metrics from aerial refueling events, quantify deviations from desired flight profiles, and generate actionable post-flight feedback to improve aircrew proficiency, reduce human-factor-driven mishaps, and enhance mission readiness.”

The application deadline is Nov. 25.

The SBIR is focused on the KC-46 tanker, which will feature a remote vision system that will allow operators to remotely operate the refueling boom via cameras and a 3D display. Though the system has been plagued by teething problems, the Air Force says most will soon be resolved.

The system would automatically track the tanker and refueling boom, as well as the receiving aircraft. It would measure a variety of data, including position, velocity, alignment and closure rate, and assess whether they deviate from nominal parameters.

The Air Force hopes an AI-based assessment system will mitigate the biases inherent in human assessment of aerial refueling, which is among the most demanding tasks for aircrew.

“Current aerial refueling training and post-flight assessment processes rely heavily on instructor observation, pilot self-assessment, manual video review, and subjective evaluation of performance,” the SBIR noted.

The system would create visual displays to improve the performance of pilots of the aircraft receiving fuel, such as “graphic AI overlays, heat maps, event timelines, and immersive or interactive debrief environments.” It would also have the potential to integrate with other training systems, including virtual and augmented reality, simulators, mission rehearsal systems, and other computer-based training tools.

The Air Force sees this as a prototype for future AI-based training systems.

“The desired end state is an operationally demonstrated capability ready to implement for at least one type of receiver aircraft and that can support transition into existing aviation training ecosystems and provide a scalable foundation for future AI-enabled aviation performance assessment across the Department of Defense,” the solicitation reads.

Becker, a decorated explosive ordnance disposal officer, was sentenced in 2022 to life without parole in the 2015 death of 32-year-old Johanna Hove-Becker, with a jury finding he was guilty of premeditated murder, assault consummated by a battery and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. The trial followed years of dispute over who would prosecute the case; Becker remained in the custody of Belgian legal authorities for two years after Hove-Becker’s death while the Navy declined to take jurisdiction. Then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ultimately ordered the Navy to take the case in 2018.

While prosecutors said Becker had had a “visceral” reaction to learning Hove-Becker had a new boyfriend and was thus motivated to later drug her with sleeping pills and push her from the window to her death, Becker’s attorney says evidence left out of trial points to the deceased woman’s own mental instability.

In an Oct. 16 petition for writ of certiorari, or formal review request to the Supreme Court, Becker’s attorney David Sheldon, a former Navy Judge Advocate General, argues that a series of text messages between Becker and his wife seven months before her death constitute evidence that she was suicidal and should have been included as part of Becker’s defense. Both Becker and Hove-Becker, the petition states, were separated at the time of her death and had other partners, though they continued to live together and co-parent.

In the messages, included in the petition, Hove-Becker allegedly tells Becker she’s “trying to work on not being nuts” and “terrified” of “losing my memory and my wits … losing my mental faculties against my will.”

The texts were excluded by the trial judge as hearsay, Sheldon states, but should have been included as key evidence of a “history of mental health problems,” particularly in light of other testimony from the prosecution that sought to establish Hove-Becker’s soundness of mind.

It’s the last in a series of appeals and follows previous disputes over hearsay in the case. A 2021 decision by the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals, or NMCCA, overturned a decision by the trial judge, Navy Capt. Aaron Rugh, which had excluded statements Hove-Becker made in 2013 accusing her husband of physical violence. She had claimed Becker had thrown her “around their hotel room and strangled her” after learning she’d had an affair, but she later recanted the statements in a joint counseling session, court documents show.

Later in 2021, though, the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, or CAAF, reversed the lower appellate court’s ruling, finding the judge was right to suppress the statements.

Texts Hove-Becker allegedly sent on the night of her death, including one stating “I f—ing hate my life,” also complicate the picture, though Becker was later accused of sending those messages himself.

In an interview, Sheldon said he believed the lower appellate courts should have allowed for admission of evidence supporting Becker’s claim that his wife had died by suicide.

“The government paints this picture throughout the trial that she somehow is sane right before she dies,” he said. “And that just didn’t match reality.”

In a 111-page opinion issued late last December, NMCCA declined to overturn Becker’s conviction, finding the prosecution had “presented overwhelming evidence of preparation, including [Becker] retrieving pills from his former desk one day before [Hove-Becker’s] death that match a description of zolpidem, and buying wine for someone he described as having a drinking problem.”

The court also noted that Hove-Becker was described by friends and co-workers as “happy and moving on with her life” around the time of her death.

CAAF, the last military appeals court before the Supreme Court, announced in June that it would not reconsider the case, and denied reconsideration a month later.

Becker has been incarcerated at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since his sentencing, Sheldon said. The Supreme Court is likely to make a decision within the next 90 days on whether it will take up the case, he said.

In a federal lawsuit, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, Battalion Search and Rescue and Southern Border Communities Coalition argue the Trump administration is misusing so-called “national defense areas” to circumvent longstanding restrictions on military participation in civilian law enforcement.

In a statement, Brian Netter, legal director at Democracy Forward, one of the teams representing the plaintiffs, called the “national defense area” designation “an extraordinary abuse of power with devastating consequences for the people who live, work, worship, recreate, and carry out lifesaving humanitarian work along the border.”

“Public lands do not become military installations simply because the president says so, and the military cannot be handed sweeping new authority to police civilians by drawing a line around land that belonged to the public,” he said, adding, “Our Constitution and laws impose clear limits on the use of the military for civilian law enforcement for a reason.”

The Trump administration began sending troops to the area in March 2025 to support border security and has since expanded the military’s presence along the border in other states. By April of that year, the Defense Department assumed jurisdiction over the 109,651 acres from the Department of the Interior.

The designation made the land, officially named the New Mexico National Defense Area, an expansion of Fort Huachuca for three years. The Defense Department said the designation allowed troops to detain people accused of trespassing in the military area after crossing the border illegally.

However, the lawsuit argues that the federal agencies exceeded their authority to transfer public land through emergency powers. “No statute authorizes the creation of ‘national defense areas,’ let alone permits carving one out of formerly public land,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit adds that the Defense Department has historically used such land restrictions only temporarily to protect people or property during accidents or emergencies.

“Creating a semi-permanent military zone along the southern border for purposes of immigration enforcement is directly contrary to the agency’s longstanding practice,” the lawsuit says.

Beyond alleging violations of federal law, the plaintiffs say the military zones are disrupting their work by limiting access to public lands used for recreation and conservation; supporting border communities; and providing humanitarian aid.

James R. Holeman, founder of Battalion Search and Rescue, said his organization leads volunteers who search for people in distress in remote areas and recover the remains of migrants who died crossing the border. Over the past three years, he said, the group’s monthly searches along the Arizona and New Mexico border have uncovered more than 100 death sites.

“Imagine how many more people could be found if we had the access, resources, and support to search systematically. Instead, we’re being locked out,” he said, adding that vast stretches of borderlands are “virtually inaccessible to humanitarian searchers” because of federal designations.

“Now the government is closing off even more territory. We don’t find weapons or drugs. We find Bibles, prayer cards, love notes, and the belongings of people simply trying to survive,” Holeman said. “There is no meaningful, systematic government effort to search for the missing and the dead. They don’t search, and now they’re preventing us from searching.”

During a review period from June 1, 2024, through May 31, 2025, the VA made at least one error in 17,900 cases, roughly 38%, regarding disability decisions for painful scars, according to a recent VA Office of Inspector General report.

920 of those decisions, per the report, led to millions in overpayment and will continue to accrue without “corrective action.”

For service-connected painful scars, as a result of burns, surgeries, shrapnel and gunshot wounds, among other sources, the VA requires a physical examination to support a veteran’s claim.

However, the OIG found that the Disability Benefits Questionnaire “does not clearly define objective versus subjective evidence.

Therefore, claims processors sometimes provided evaluations for painful scars without objective evidence to support the evaluations, which led to overpayments in disability compensation.”

In addition, the report found that physical manifestations of the disability were often evaluated under two separate diagnostic codes, often resulting in “pyramiding” and overpayment.

The report notes that more than a half-million veterans currently receive VA disability benefits for painful scarring caused or worsened by military service, but it took a random sample of 70 decisions from a review population of 47,300.

It further notes that the OIG took the findings to the VBA in February 2026 and following the briefing, “30 additional decisions completed from January 1 through January 31, 2026… identified a 43 percent error rate.”

The VBA, while agreeing with many of the OIG’s recommendations, including revising the “Scars/Disfigurement” section of the DBQ; ensuring employees understand how to accurately evaluate painful scars; and reviewing and correcting the processing errors on decisions the Office of Inspector General team identified, took issue with the statistical sample and the contextualization of those estimates.

“The OIG examined 130 decisions, representing approximately 0.27 percent of the total review population of about 47,300 decisions, and identified 60 errors, which form the basis for the projected 17,900 errors referenced throughout the report,” per VA comments in the report.

“Importantly, only seven of the 60 errors OIG found resulted in improper payments, which represents about 5.4 percent of the sample, and when viewed across the full review population, only about 0.015 percent of all decisions reviewed. The remaining 53 errors, more than 88 percent of the sample, were technical or procedural issues that did not result in improper payments.”

The VA is working to complete the OIG’s suggestions by February 2027 at the latest.

The Army wants contractors that can manufacture up to 10 barrels per month within three years, according to the Sources Sought notice. The deadline is Nov. 23.

Companies were asked to provide details of their ability — or their subcontractor’s capacity — to make barrels, including whether they could add “chrome bore coatings on a steel tube up to 30 [feet] long and up to 7,500 pounds in weight,” the notice said. They should also provide the maximum length and weight of tube that they could coat.

Also desired are details on a company’s boring, milling and rifling capabilities, as well as details on raw materials, such as “steel preform production, forging, guide bore, and heat treatment.”

The notice asks contractors to estimate their capacity to manufacture 155mm barrels within 18 months, and up to 10 barrels per month within 36 months. Companies should also offer a cost estimate for an “initial production quantity of 40 cannon tubes (broken down by caliber or indicating pricing for a combined/flexible mix),” the Army said.

Currently, the Army makes large-caliber barrels for howitzers and tanks only at the aging Watervliet Arsenal in New York.

While America and Europe have been focused on expanding production of howitzer ammunition to meet demand in the Ukraine war and replenish domestic stockpiles, another problem is a lack of manufacturing capacity to replace worn-out cannon barrels.

A 2024 Pentagon budget document stated that Ukraine’s heavy use of M777 howitzers created a demand for more than 30 M776 tubes per month, according to The War Zone. The document admitted that Watervliet could not keep up with demand, and asked for emergency funding to be transferred to enable a second manufacturer of barrels.

The new notice doesn’t mention how many additional barrel manufacturers are needed. However, the Army is exploring whether to replace the M777 with a weapon based on Korea’s popular K9 howitzer.