It was introduced to make civilians feel comfortable with what the military asks of its service members, shifting focus from the human beings carrying the weight to the audience watching them carry it.

America loves the perfect military family hanging in photos around the world: a service member reuniting with a supportive spouse and resilient kids — all smiles, happy tears and beautifully curated.

America kills to see a happy homecoming. We watch from the safety of our couches as loved ones run to embrace their hero.

I’ve lived that photo. I am that supportive wife who is proud of this life and its honorable purpose. My husband looks good in his flight suit, and my kids are strong as hell.

The issue isn’t the photo; it’s what exists outside the frame. The reality lives in the go-bag in the closet, tearful goodbyes, moldy base housing, paychecks stretched thin, deteriorating mental health and the solo-parenting that spouses do every day.

The photo op can’t hold it.

The reality lives within the human beings inside those uniforms: the service member who is scared, exhausted or living with post-traumatic stress disorder; the children who don’t understand; and the spouse who is angry because she has skin in the game.

We’ve decided the image of the hero is more important than the human wearing the uniform. The support is loud until they step out of the frame. The second they show exhaustion, fear or disagreement, support turns into silence, or worse, an accusation: “You signed up for this.”

Yes, we did, and proudly. But nobody signed up to have their basic humanity stripped away to become America’s pretty patriotism prop.

The second a service member says, “I am exhausted,” “My mental health is failing,” or “This policy is broken,” their limits become an inconvenience, and they are written off as a threat to morale. When a spouse speaks up about mold or destructive deployment schedules, she is framed as “ungrateful” and warned she’ll ruin her partner’s career. The institution offers performative “help” through commissions far removed from daily realities, while kids become collateral damage in a system that values silence over empathy.

The proof is in the current events section of every government-run newspaper. It’s just not the story the institution wants you to hear.

When asked if the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was getting too long, the response was, “Not nearly long enough.” When sailors and families raised legitimate alarms about mental health, leadership brushed it off, managed optics and expected everyone to endure. When independent press like Stars and Stripes exposes messy realities, they’re handled — shattering the illusion that service members are lethal war machines, rather than humans with limits.

When active-duty officers like Major Jason Watson raise their voice on the Capitol steps, leadership doesn’t ask why; they immediately condemn. Challenging broken policy is treated as a personal insult to fragile leadership that cares more about rank and optics than humanity. By hyper-focusing on protocol, leadership hands itself a convenient shield: It’s easier to court-martial a man than answer the uncomfortable questions he brought with him.

Which brings me back to the man in the flight suit.

My loyalty belongs to my husband, not an institution that sees him as a disposable asset, nor a leadership pushing a toxic narrative over well-being. My loyalty is to the human who willingly puts on that suit and honors his oath.

Loving my husband and being a proud military spouse does not mean silent compliance. It fuels the fire because my name sits next to his on our marriage certificate, and it’s the very reason I refuse to be quiet.

I can honor his service and still look military leadership in the eye and ask, “What are you doing to him?”

What happens to him directly impacts our family, and I refuse to let his humanity be a bargaining chip for a public relations campaign.

If America and the Department of Defense truly want to “support our troops,” they must start taking responsibility for inconvenient consequences. Stop demanding the perfect military family and start acknowledging the human beings inside the uniform; their limits, fears, exhaustion and truth.

Debunking the war machine and seeing soldiers as human beings is the absolute minimum. Human acknowledgment isn’t simply “the right thing to do”; it’s how a successful military culture is created. When a leader chooses humanity over optics, a foundation is built on genuine trust rather than quiet burnout.

Maybe then service members and families would willingly choose 20 years instead of walking away. After all, you can only push someone to their limit before they jump ship.

Alexa LeCureux is a military spouse and writer who explores the complexities of service, patriotism and family life in the armed forces. She has spent over a decade supporting her husband’s career, first as a loadmaster and more recently as an Air Force KC-135 pilot, while raising their children in military communities across the United States and overseas. Her writing reflects the lived experience of military families and the quiet weight of life behind the uniform.

The Department of Defense wants to take that idea one step further and wield AI-generated “personalities” to mimic real people — and fool enemy AI trying to identify patterns in friendly cellphone traffic.

The goal is to mask “digital exhaust,” the metadata automatically emitted by mobile phones, such as location and specific device IDs. Intelligence agencies, law enforcement, militaries and even criminals have become adept at using this digital debris to locate users and analyze their behavior.

In particular, “accessing foreign mobile phone networks exposes individuals and organizations to surveillance and espionage threats,” warned the DoD Small Business Innovation Research solicitation, which opens Sept. 23 and closes Oct. 21.

“Adversaries can leverage this data to track daily routines, identify deviations indicating special events (e.g., VIP visits or mission preparation), and map sensitive facilities based on cell phone concentration or periods of inactivity,” the solicitation explained.

The solicitation doesn’t specifically mention AI-created people chatting on their mobiles. But DoD does envision a “digital exhaust deception system” in which AI “personas” generate cellphone signals that mimic the behavior of real people.

Each device should have a minimum of two personas, and eventually four or more. The device should weigh fewer than 2 pounds and have a battery life of up to 36 hours.

Defense startup raises $61 million to put AI into a wrist-worn display

Merely generating fake cellphone signals isn’t enough. The device must “mimic realistic patterns of life to defeat automated network analysis,” DoD said.

At a minimum, this means defeating basic traffic analysis. Ultimately, the Pentagon wants a system that can defeat behavioral tracking by advanced AI.

Phase I of the project involves creating a design concept and algorithms, as well as listing any “proprietary software required to conduct AI-enabled mission planning and operations.” Phase II will generate a prototype, followed by Phase III and delivery of “fully integrated mission management software and hardened decoy box form factors (e.g., Wi-Fi router-sized team devices and puck-sized personal devices).”

The technology could lend itself to civilian applications. A capability to obscure cell phone metadata “directly translates to protecting high-value corporate assets, personnel, and intellectual property from commercial espionage and tracking,” the solicitation states.

Analyzing signal traffic has long been a useful intelligence tool. For example, in World War II, the U.S. Navy used it to derive intelligence on Japanese naval deployment. Today, police have software that uses cell phone data to trace a user’s past movement for months.

On the other hand, traffic analysis can boomerang on its creators. Japan used decoy radio signals in 1941 to convince U.S. analysts that the Japanese fleet was at home, rather than steaming toward Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the Air Force’s chief modernization officer, told reporters at the Pentagon that a follow-on was already under discussion as the MQ-9 aged out.

“Although we have plenty of MQ-9As today, we are going through them at a rate that is concerning to us,” he said, according to Breaking Defense, which covered the briefing.

Defense Daily reported that Air Force Secretary Troy Meink directed the acceleration, and that the fiscal 2031 target of 20 mission-ready aircraft could be pulled forward by about two years.

In May, Lt. Gen. David Tabor told the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Airland the fleet was down to about 135 aircraft, roughly 54 below the service’s 189-aircraft floor. Niemi did not update the inventory.

Backfilling the fleet is difficult. General Atomics shut down MQ-9A production in 2025, and Tabor said the service was pursuing a short-term buy of existing MQ-9A airframes in fiscal 2026. Niemi said Sept. 3 that budget constraints make buying a large number of upgraded MQ-9B SkyGuardians unrealistic. It is a misconception, he said, that the Air Force could write a check and take delivery of 100 aircraft.

A Congressional Research Service Insight updated May 13 cited an April 9 news report of 24 Reapers lost since military operations against Iran began in February, and said it was unclear whether the Pentagon had given Congress an accounting. The Washington Post reported Aug. 13, citing three U.S. officials, that at least 45 had been lost, roughly 25% of the fleet.

Niemi signed requirements in May for a cheaper, modular, mass-producible aircraft.

That program, Massed Modular Aircraft, or MMA, opened as a Defense Innovation Unit competition July 7 with the Air Force as partner. The solicitation, which closed July 23, asked for a drone that could fly Reaper-class strike, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare and communications-relay missions cheaply enough to absorb losses. It called for at least 2,800 pounds of payload and an 8,000-nautical-mile one-way ferry range.

That is the aircraft Niemi now prices against Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA. He put CCA air vehicles near $20 million and MMA at about half that, Defense Daily reported.

An Air Force spokesperson said those figures are for the air vehicle only, not a fully missionized aircraft, according to Breaking Defense. In May, Niemi told senators a Reaper with a full sensor package can cost up to $50 million. At the Sept. 3 briefing, he said the Air Force will probably field at least 180 MMA drones.

Niemi argued the Reaper’s value is not the airframe.

“What makes the MQ-9 special has nothing to do with the aircraft itself,” he said, calling its speed, altitude and range decades-old technology.

Initial MMA versions, he said, will rely on proven technology rather than new systems to hit the price. He described a long-aspect-wing turboprop in the “4,000 miles-type class,” farther and heavier than a CCA but slower. Officials did not say how that class relates to the 8,000-nautical-mile ferry range in the July notice.

General Atomics is bidding a design it calls Wildfire, first reported by Aviation Week in August. Spokesman C. Mark Brinkley told Air & Space Forces Magazine it “meets every wish on the [MMA] list and exceeds most of them,” but declined to give capabilities or cost. The company has not released images.

Brinkley told The War Zone in August that treating MMA as a Reaper replacement misses the immediate need for a backfill. Wildfire does not depend on winning the competition, he said, and “we can deliver Wildfires years earlier than the current schedule.”

He framed the design targets as considerations rather than specs, among them a 10,000-nautical-mile ferry range, four Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles and 100 aircraft under semi-autonomous control.

Col. Todd Dye, senior materiel leader in the Air Force’s medium-altitude intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance division, said awards for MMA concept refinement were expected in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, Breaking Defense reported.

Officials did not announce a new date at the Sept. 3 briefing.

In July, Trump unexpectedly left the NATO summit in Turkey on a different plane, citing a potential threat as the conflict with Iran escalated. He switched to a smaller military aircraft in secret, using a catering truck for deception.

The swap raised further questions about the modified Qatari jet’s security as a presidential aircraft. That same month, Trump announced that the jet would be soon sent to be “maxed out” for security upgrades.

Trump said the alterations would begin in roughly a month, but no official statement has been made about the schedule.

“We don’t comment on specific upgrades or modifications to Air Force One,” a senior administration official told Military Times. “We maintain a consistent posture that ensures a safe, secure, and reliable capability for the President of the United States and routinely evolve the capability as required to maintain that posture.”

Trump will be in Ireland on Sept. 12 and 13, attending the Irish Open at his golf course in Doonbeg. The BBC reported that he is scheduled to meet Irish President Catherine Connolly and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin during his two-day trip.

Ahead of the midterm elections, Trump is also scheduled to headline the Republican midterm convention next week in Texas, and he has promised to campaign for Republican candidates across dozens of battleground states.

The unemployment rate for all veterans also came down from 4.2% in July to 3.4% in August — compared to the overall unemployment rate of 4.1%. This comes as the economy rebounded from the negative job creation numbers recorded in July, when employers shed 23,000 jobs.

The 162,000 jobs added in August blew past most analysts’ expectations of 53,000 jobs, and also gave evidence of the economy’s resilience in the face of war with Iran, rising gas and diesel prices and a new tariff war with Canada.

The surge was led by employment in food services and bars, which added 59,000 jobs in August, compared to the average monthly gain of 12,000 jobs in food services and bars over the previous 12 months, the BLS report said.

Local government schools added 42,000 jobs in August while “employment in manufacturing continued its upward trend” by adding 16,000 jobs in August — bringing the total of manufacturing jobs added this year to 58,000, the BLS report noted.

President Donald Trump quickly seized on the latest BLS numbers as an example of his administration’s success in managing the economy that he said should lead the Federal Reserve Board to cut interest rates at its next Open Market Committee meeting on Sept. 15-16.

“Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A. is a much stronger credit than it was just a short time ago!” Trump said. “A STRONG COUNTRY MEANS A LOWER INTEREST RATE - IT’S A BETTER CREDIT…Very simple! We should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World, like ‘the old days.’”

The main takeaway from the latest jobs report was that “it’s a lot easier to get a job [now] than it was a year ago,” said Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union. In a phone interview with Military Times, Long noted the 21,000 construction jobs added in August to cope with the demand for new data centers.

The concern for Long, however, was that wage gains were not keeping up with the rate of inflation. Wages rose 3.1% in August while inflation stood at 3.4%, she noted.

The turnaround in the jobs market has been a boon for veterans looking for work in what has been described as a “low hire, low fire” economy, said Kevin Rasch, a retired Navy Commander and the Warriors to Work Regional Director for the Wounded Warrior Project.

“We’re seeing success in placing Warriors,” he said in a telephone interview with Military Times. “The system seems to be working like it should” and it also “seems like what we’re doing is working.”

Libby Klinner, the wife of Alex Klinner, turned to social media to share the story of her husband’s passing and the struggles her family was facing in receiving certain additional benefits since the federal government did not officially declare war on Iran.

U.S. Air Force Maj. John “Alex” Klinner, 33, of Auburn, Alabama, was among the six killed on March 12 when a KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed over western Iraq during combat operations against Iran. Klinner was the chief of Squadron Standardizations and Evaluations within the 99th Air Refueling Squadron, located in Birmingham, Alabama.

He entered the Air Force in 2017 and deployed in 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2026 for a range of missions — flying 362 combat hours and 181 combat support hours in theater. His achievements include the Air Medal with oak leaf cluster, Aerial Achievement Medal and Air and Space Commendation Medal with oak leaf cluster.

Recently, Libby posted on Instagram that her casualty assistance officer told her that additional combat-related benefits, such as Hostile Fire Pay or Imminent Danger Pay and Combat Zone Tax Exclusions, could not be given to her family because the U.S. has not officially declared war against the Middle East country.

“The Air Force recently told me that because we haven’t officially declared war, my kids and I aren’t eligible for some benefits,” Libby wrote. “So not only was my husband killed in a war he never wanted to participate in, but now the benefits we’re left with are being dictated by semantics and public perceptions.”

In a later post, Libby said that the director of mortuary affairs reached out to her to audit the benefits.

On Thursday, Vance said the administration would reach out to Libby directly to ensure she receives “what she is entitled to.”

“We will certainly work that on the back end,” Vance told reporters in a White House briefing.

Libby did not return a request for comment from Military Times.

Libby has since taken down her personal Instagram with the original posts, but a statement of hers circulated social media on Thursday, saying “classification issues” caused the combat-related benefits to not be available for her family.

“That was the information I shared publicly at the time,” Libby wrote. “As the story spread, however, it created the impression that our family’s military benefits had been broadly denied or withheld, which was not the case.”

She said that the Department of Defense has since completed its review and confirmed her family’s benefits. Libby wrote that the experience highlights how challenging it can be to navigate classifications, terminology and government processes during a time of grief.

“No Gold Star family should have to become an expert in government language to understand what they are entitled to,” she said.

“Getting this right for the families left behind isn’t a footnote—it’s part of how we honor the service and sacrifice of those we lost,” she concluded.

Department of the Air Force officials spoke with Libby on Monday to address her questions and ensure she is receiving all eligible benefits her and her family are entitled to, an Air Force spokesperson told Military Times on Friday.

The spokesperson said that officials confirmed that all eligible combat theater benefits were included in the areas of pay she already received, including Imminent Danger Pay or Hostile Fire Pay and Combat Zone Tax Exclusion benefits.

Alongside other benefits spouses retain, Hostile Fire Pay, at the rate of $225 per month, is given when a service member is killed, injured or wounded by hostile fire, explosion of a mine or other hostile actions. Imminent Danger Pay, $7.50 for each day on official duty in a designated area up to $225 a month, is given when an airman is ordered to fly in an airspace designated as an imminent danger for a mission.

Service members can receive one pay or the other but not both. When a service member is entitled to one form of pay, they may also be eligible for Combat Zone Tax Exclusion, which excludes certain pay from their taxable income.

The Air Force spokesperson did not say which pay the Klinner family is entitled to.

The Department of Defense also provides a one-time, tax-free sum of $100,000 as a Death Gratuity to survivors of members of the armed forces who died while on active duty or in certain statuses.

The study, “Breaking Glass, Missing Hands,” asks how quickly the country could replace satellites and supporting systems lost early in a protracted conflict. It sets the benchmark for reconstitution, the term for restoring lost capability, at 12 to 24 months, a pace much more demanding than the decade or so the report says it typically takes to replace an aging satellite.

The study examines whether the space defense industrial base could meet that timeline between 2027 and 2032. The authors argue that existing workforce gaps could take years to close, putting a 12-to-24-month timeline out of reach.

Gen. Michael Guetlein, now the Golden Dome director, sponsored the study while serving as vice chief of space operations. RAND Project AIR FORCE conducted it as part of a fiscal 2024 project titled “In Emergency, Break Glass,” with Alexandra Gerber as lead author.

Researchers analyzed federal labor and education statistics from October 2024 through March 2025, and interviewed industry representatives and education administrators from May through July 2025.

The report divides the space-supporting workforce into three categories.

The first is engineers who design and test space systems. Nearly 3 million Americans work as engineers in jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher, but only about 3% of them work in industries RAND counted as supporting space: satellite communications, semiconductors and nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing that produces optical glass. RAND calls that grouping a subset of the space industrial base. Aerospace manufacturing was not included.

RAND estimates that those three counted industries account for only about 7,000 of 208,000 annual engineering job openings, noting that the space sector has little leverage against employers in the artificial intelligence, software and data analytics sectors that pay more and offer more flexible work environments.

The second category is “skilled touch labor,” the technicians and assemblers who physically build spacecraft. Using 2023 Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, researchers estimated about 30,000 annual openings for technicians, while only about 11,000 people earn the necessary qualifications each year.

For assemblers, including cleanroom technicians, they found about 244,000 annual openings with just 13,000 credentialed workers each year, a gap of 19 to 1. The space industry accounts for a small share of that demand, but it competes for the same pool as semiconductor manufacturers.

The third category takes the longest to build: specialists who advance infrared and electro-optical detection, and engineers who design systems to survive natural and man-made radiation. Qualified candidates hold master’s or doctoral degrees, and the expertise can take 15 years or more to develop.

Few schools offer advanced degrees in laser and optical engineering, and most specialists come up through electrical or computer engineering programs instead. Of recent doctorates in those fields, 70% went to foreign nationals, the report says, shrinking the pool eligible for classified work.

Security clearances slow hiring even further. In fiscal 2024, initial Secret investigations averaged more than 87 days while Top Secret cases took nearly six months, according to a Trusted Workforce 2.0 progress report RAND cites.

Separately, interviewees said even fully credentialed workers can take up to a year to become productive, and the report notes that cleanrooms and secure work areas cap how fast plants can absorb new hires.

Those interviewed described the central problem as “surging from zero.” Without steady production between contracts, specialized skills atrophy and experienced workers leave, taking with them the institutional knowledge needed to scale. RAND says writing surge-planning requirements into future contracts would help companies prepare to expand before a crisis.

Researchers found no consensus that emergency mobilization would work. Defense Production Act authorities could pull workers from other industries, but interviewees questioned whether that is feasible given security clearances, certifications and domain expertise.

RAND recommends roughly $5 million a year for scholarships, internships and academic outreach, plus an $800,000 study on whether workers from other fields could be retrained for surge production.

The report also suggests advocating for the expansion of the National Imperative for Industrial Skills program and evaluating the Navy’s Talent Pipeline Program as a model for the trades.

Another proposal would let Reserve Officers’ Training Corps graduates satisfy service obligations by working at qualifying space firms, and would extend the same option to SMART scholarship recipients now committed to civilian Defense Department jobs.

RAND assigns the policy lead to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, arguing workforce capacity is a supply-chain and production risk, not an internal Space Force staffing issue.

Interviewees pointed to hiring pipelines and faster clearances, rarely mentioning robotics, process automation or AI as a way to cut the labor hours per satellite. RAND did not independently assess whether automation is feasible, but flags that absence as a gap in reconstitution planning.

Most space producers run at volumes too low to justify the investment in automation, though RAND argues a reconstitution surge could change that math.

“We’re investigating it because obviously we care. We want to know,” Vance told reporters during a White House press briefing.

“If we do make mistakes, again, this is a big difference between us and Iran, when our military makes mistakes, they learn from them to try to get better from them,” Vance added.

Iranian officials say four people died and nearly 70 were wounded by a strike that hit a home during a wedding. Iranian state TV reported on Thursday that a fifth person, a 22-year-old woman, had since died at a hospital.

The U.S. military has said it was aware of the Iranian reports but that it “never targets civilians.”

The service used two C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft from Yokota Air Base, Japan, on Wednesday to provide bobcat front loaders, first aid kits, stretchers and specialized disaster victim recovery supplies, delivering them to Tribhuvan International Airport, a U.S. Pacific Command spokesperson told Military Times on Thursday.

“The U.S. military joins U.S. Embassy Nepal, the Government of Nepal, and response partners on the ground to provide urgent life-saving supplies and equipment to areas affected by flash flooding,” a PACOM release says.

On Aug. 26, Rasuwa, located in central Nepal, suffered floods from Bhote Koshi, a river that flows through Tibet and Nepal. The floods occurred after a large glacial collapse and avalanche in the Himalayas of Tibet.

“This rapid delivery reflects the enduring U.S.-Nepal partnership and our shared commitment to helping affected communities through this disaster,” the post says.

The embassy said that the humanitarian and disaster response assistance comes after requests from Nepal’s government, following the $3.6 million already announced by the U.S. for flood support.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon posted the “Clinical Guidance for Health and Human Performance Optimization” on its website. By Thursday, the memo and an accompanying statement from spokesperson Sean Parnell had been removed.

“The draft (document) published on September 2, 2026, has been temporarily rescinded to allow for updates,” the official said, adding that interim guidance remains in effect.

The detailed clinical guidelines had laid out separate testosterone deficiency screening paths for men and women that were to happen during their annual health assessments.

The guidance was set to take effect immediately, and the ​Pentagon said it is aimed at improving military readiness by ​identifying and managing hormonal and energy-availability issues.

“Page Not Found” appeared on websites for both the Pentagon and Defense Health Agency when clicking on links for the memo and statement.

Wednesday’s guidance said that men aged 30 and older would be screened through a questionnaire that could then trigger a blood test for testosterone levels and, if needed, testosterone hormone therapy.

Women would also be screened through a questionnaire, which could then move to treatment for conditions related to hormonal imbalance. Testosterone would be used in women only for one of the diagnoses for which there is evidence of efficacy, such as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, characterized by a distressing level of low sexual interest.

The Sept. 2 guidance, signed by DHA Director Vice Adm. Darin Via, establishes clinical pathways for female hormonal optimization and lays out when a woman should receive additional evaluation, what conditions providers should consider and when treatment or referral is warranted.

A female Marine interviewed by Military Times said low testosterone can occur in women but can be harder to identify because women normally have much lower testosterone levels than men.

“Low testosterone isn’t really a problem that affects women the same way as it affects men,” the Marine said.

Unlike the mandatory testosterone blood testing for male service members aged 30 and older, the female pathway begins with an annual clinical screen for hormonal dysregulation during the Periodic Health Assessment, or PHA.

Testosterone

DHA identifies fatigue, musculoskeletal pain and changes in menstrual patterns, including cycles longer than 35 days, as signs that should prompt a targeted assessment for Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, or RED-S.

DHA says military operational demands, fitness standards and occupational stressors can increase the risk of RED-S, a condition associated with low energy availability that can contribute to bone-stress injuries, impaired endocrine function and lost operational readiness.

If the initial assessment does not indicate concern for RED-S, no further evaluation is required under the DHA guidance. If concern remains, active-duty service members are referred to their primary care managers for further assessment and treatment.

The next step can include a validated screening tool such as the Low Energy Availability in Females Questionnaire, followed by the International Olympic Committee’s RED-S Clinical Assessment Tool Version 2. That assessment places service members into four risk categories, ranging from low risk, with unrestricted training and duties, to high risk, where limited duty, medical profiling or hospitalization may be necessary.

DHA also recognizes that one of the most visible indicators of RED-S can be obscured by treatment and notes that functional hypothalamic amenorrhea can be masked by hormonal contraception.

At the same time, menstrual-cycle and sex-hormone indicators are not scored in the RED-S assessment for women taking thyroid or sex-hormone-altering medications, including hormonal contraceptives.

When RED-S is suspected, clinicians can order blood tests including a complete blood count, comprehensive metabolic panel, ferritin, iron studies, vitamin B12 and thyroid-stimulating hormone. For women with prolonged or absent menstruation, pregnancy testing and additional hormone testing may be ordered when clinically indicated.

Treatment focuses first on correcting the underlying energy deficit, which can mean increasing dietary energy intake, reducing training volume or both. DHA also calls for attention to protein, carbohydrates, calcium and vitamin D, with psychological support when disordered eating, body-image concerns or performance pressures are involved.

Female service members aged 35 and older who report clinically significant symptoms of perimenopause or menopause are to be assessed for whether those symptoms affect operational duties or quality of life. If they do — or if the service member requests education or treatment — the provider is to refer her to a midlife-transition specialist.

That specialist could be an obstetrician-gynecologist, certified nurse midwife, women’s health nurse practitioner, endocrinologist or primary care provider trained in perimenopause and menopause care. If appropriate expertise is unavailable locally, DHA directs providers to its Midlife Telehealth Hub.

A Navy hospital corpsman interviewed by Military Times, says the military standard should remain the ability to perform the job.

“As long as they are fit for duty, any medically optional test they would like to have is fine for me personally,” she said. “If a testosterone treatment makes you fit for duty, then great, get in there.”

The DHA guidance addresses testosterone treatment for women within a narrow clinical context, citing the 2019 Global Consensus Position Statement on testosterone therapy, which identifies Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, or HSDD, in postmenopausal women as the only evidence-based indication for testosterone therapy in women.

The guidance does not establish a testosterone blood-test threshold for diagnosing HSDD. Instead, it calls for a clinical assessment, consideration of other causes and shared decision-making between the patient and provider.

DHA says available evidence does not demonstrate a benefit from testosterone therapy for psychological well-being, depressive symptoms, cognitive performance, cardiovascular outcomes, bone mineral density, or muscle mass and performance. Evidence for treating HSDD with testosterone in perimenopausal women remains limited, according to the guidance.

For a postmenopausal service member with a distressing decline in sexual function, DHA recommends addressing other possible causes before considering testosterone. If treatment is chosen, it is off-label: The guidance recommends one-tenth of an FDA-approved male 1% testosterone cream or gel.

Those undergoing treatment will have their testosterone levels checked three to six weeks after treatment begins or after a dose increase, with the goal of keeping levels within the normal premenopausal female range.

DHA recommends stopping treatment after six months if there is no demonstrated benefit. For women who remain on treatment, the guidance calls for clinical evaluation and testosterone testing every four to six months.

The agency also cautions that safety data for physiologic testosterone treatment in women do not extend beyond 24 months and recommends caution for women with hormone-sensitive breast cancer or high cardiometabolic risk.

The guidance takes effect immediately and expires one year after its Sept. 2 signature unless DHA reissues or cancels it earlier.

Iran’s health minister said 18 people were killed and 108 wounded in Tuesday night’s U.S. strikes across Iran. The Iranian Red Crescent said four people were killed and 67 wounded at a wedding ceremony near the coast of the Strait of Hormuz.

The return of combat operations has alarmed countries throughout the region, as Iran launched missile and drone attacks against what it said were U.S. assets in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq.

The guns had largely gone silent since the previous exchange in July, although peace talks failed to advance in the interim. President Donald Trump threatened to unleash yet more military force, even though the war is unpopular at home and has driven up the cost of gasoline.

Iran, for its part, has remained defiant, despite suffering heavy military and economic losses.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply alarmed by reports of civilian casualties, including a strike that reportedly hit a wedding ceremony in Iran,” and called for an immediate cessation of military action, his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

“The Secretary General condemns all attacks against civilians. He recalls that all parties must respect their obligations under international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution,” Dujarric said.

The deaths would be in addition to the 3,636 people documented as killed in Iran as of April 7, including 1,701 civilians, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), an independent Iranian rights group.

The U.S. has reported 18 military personnel killed and more than 750 wounded.

“We are aware of reports, which originated from Iranian state media. The U.S. military never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC,” U.S. Navy Captain Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for the U.S. military’s Central Command, said in an email.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society released video showing debris strewn on the ground next to a building with a large hole in the roof, accompanied by still images showing people, some in Red Crescent vests, at a damaged building and a utility tower lying on the ground.

Reuters was able to verify the location using satellite imagery, which showed the fallen tower was 136 metres (149 yards) from the damaged building.

The wedding incident recalled the blast at a school in Minab that killed 160 people at a girls’ school on the first day of the war.

The Pentagon has yet to issue an official finding on the Minab strike, which would be the U.S. military’s largest civilian casualty incident in decades. It may have been the ‌result of U.S. use of outdated targeting data, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Democratic members of the U.S. Congress have called on the administration to release findings of its investigation of the incident, but the report has not been sent to lawmakers.

Lawmakers demand Pentagon release findings from probe of Iran school strike

U.S. defenders of the Iran war also point to civilian deaths that resulted from Iranian attempts to put down street protests that embroiled the country in December and January, before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. HRANA has put that death toll at more than 7,000, while Iranian exile groups claim the number is much higher.

Trump has cited an incentive for Iranians to overthrow their government as one reason for the war, in addition to seeking to halt Iran’s nuclear program and ending its support for militant groups abroad such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Iran has also responded to the U.S. attacks by threatening any oil tankers that transit the Strait of Hormuz without Iranian authorization, severely curtailing traffic in a waterway that before the war carried 20% of the world’s oil supply.

VA’s original electronic health record contract had a ceiling of roughly $10 billion. The department has increased that ceiling to roughly $27 billion, an increase of about $17 billion.

The nearly $27 billion figure discussed repeatedly during Wednesday’s hearing is not money VA has already spent. It is the maximum potential value of the Oracle contract.

But the new contract ceiling is substantially higher than the ceiling on the deal VA struck with Cerner in 2018. Oracle acquired Cerner in 2022.

VA’s original contract had a ceiling of about $10 billion over 10 years. The department said at the time that the contract would replace its aging Vista system and create a common electronic health record with the Defense Department.

The issue lawmakers pressed throughout the hearing was why VA needs roughly $17 billion more under that contract.

VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence offered part of the answer during Wednesday’s hearing, but not all of it.

Lawrence said VA had estimated the cost of completing the deployment through 2031, asked Oracle for a proposal and then relied on its acquisition team to negotiate the resulting contract.

But Lawrence says he was not involved in those negotiations and could not explain why Oracle’s proposal reached roughly an increase of $17 billion, how much VA negotiated from the company’s request or what specifically drove the additional cost.

Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., asked whether VA expected to hit the original contract ceiling early and whether the accelerated rollout contributed to the increase.

Lawrence said VA had “hit the ceiling as planned.”

Elsewhere in the hearing, Lawrence described problems and complexities from earlier phases of the program requiring Oracle to address those issues as the department continued the rollout.

Lawmakers did not get a detailed explanation Wednesday of exactly what those complexities were or when VA determined the original ceiling would be insufficient.

The hearing also did not establish how much of the new ceiling VA ultimately expects to spend.

Lawrence emphasized that the roughly $27 billion figure is a contract ceiling, not a $17 billion payment to Oracle. He said the contract operates on a time-and-materials basis, meaning individual work is negotiated and obligated under the ceiling.

The expanded contract encompasses more than the electronic health record itself, including software and licensing, hosting, managed services, training, testing, data migration, change management, deployment support and other work.

What did VA actually negotiate with Oracle?

Lawmakers repeatedly returned to Oracle’s previous assurances about the program’s costs.

During the hearing, members cited a 2022 statement from Oracle Health CEO Mike Sicilia that the company was prepared to bear cost overruns associated with the VA project.

Lawrence said he was aware of the statement but could not explain how it was reflected in the current contract negotiations.

He said VA would need to determine what Oracle had previously promised and how the department’s acquisition team handled those commitments.

The department also provided lawmakers with a much larger estimate for the modernization effort as a whole.

Lawrence said VA estimates it will cost about $37 billion to complete deployment through 2031, plus approximately $11 billion for sustainment, for a total of roughly $48 billion.

When Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., asked whether that was an independent estimate, Lawrence corrected himself and acknowledged that it was not.

The Government Accountability Office told the committee Wednesday that VA still has not provided an updated cost estimate or detailed documentation of its schedule sufficient for GAO to determine whether the schedule is consistent with leading practices. GAO also noted VA has fully implemented only four of its 18 recommendations related to the EHR modernization program, with 14 still not fully addressed as of August.

Members from both parties questioned the cost increase, the pace of the rollout and whether VA could demonstrate that the additional spending is producing better care.

Lawrence defended the recent deployments as an improvement over earlier phases of the program.

VA has deployed the system to 11 sites in 2026, with Cleveland and Anchorage scheduled to go live in October. The department plans 26 additional site deployments in 2027 and expects to continue deployment waves through 2031.

Lawrence said VA is using 15 “return to normal” measures to determine whether facilities have recovered after implementation, including emergency department throughput, ambulatory visits, surgeries and inpatient care.

He also said trouble tickets have declined with each successive deployment and that, at Indiana on Day 12, more than 75% of trouble tickets had been closed and validated by the end users who submitted them.

Lawmakers questioned whether those measures are enough to demonstrate that the system is working safely and effectively.

Rep. Conaway, D-N.J. raised reports that roughly 300 dermatology patients at a VA facility had their referrals canceled after implementation of the Oracle system, including patients with cancer diagnoses.

VA’s chief medical officer, Dr. Adam Evans, did not explain what had happened. Instead, he asked lawmakers to provide the information so the department could investigate.

Lawmakers question the training

Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., said VA employees had reported completing Oracle’s required training without feeling confident using the system and said some new employees had been unable to document care for two to four weeks.

Lawrence defended VA’s training requirements while acknowledging that the department continues to make changes based on feedback from recent deployments.

Throughout the session, lawmakers asked a spate of questions, including: why Oracle’s proposal for additional work came to roughly $17 billion; what VA negotiated; why taxpayers are being asked to shoulder the additional cost after Oracle’s earlier assurances about cost overruns; and how the new contract ceiling fits into VA’s broader estimate of roughly $37 billion to complete deployment and another $11 billion to sustain the system.

VA officials did not provide detailed answers to those questions during the hearing. The dissatisfaction was bipartisan.

Oracle was not there to speak for themselves. The company initially accepted an invitation to testify before the committee but later declined, citing time constraints.

Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., moved to subpoena Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison and CEO Mike Sicilia, arguing that the committee cannot perform effective oversight when the company responsible for the contract will not appear to answer questions.

Ranking Member Mark Takano, D-Calif., also questioned whether VA had resolved problems identified during earlier deployments, citing concerns from employees at the Michigan, Southern Ohio and Indiana sites.

“Employees in Michigan, Southern Ohio, and Indiana are telling us that many of the issues identified by the first six sites still have not been fixed,” Takano said.

Lawrence, meanwhile, told lawmakers he remained confident VA could complete the remaining deployments within the new contract ceiling.

“This is the money available to do the things we need to do,” Lawrence concluded.

By a vote of 370-48, the House passed the extension of current spending through Dec. 11 and sent it to President Donald Trump for signing into law. The Senate passed the measure on Aug. 8.

The temporary measure prevents the type of situation that occurred last year, when a government shutdown put paychecks for U.S. troops in doubt.

Troops request assistance at ‘unprecedented’ rate as shutdown persists

The measure was needed because Congress so far has failed to finish work on any of the 12 spending bills that fund government programs for the full fiscal year that runs from Oct. 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2027. Those programs range from homeland security and federal law enforcement to energy, housing and defense.

Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, Congress has been consumed by particularly contentious fights between Republicans who control Congress and the Democratic minority in the House and Senate.

The result has been three partial government shutdowns, totaling an unprecedented 161 days, as the two parties fought over health insurance subsidies and checks on federal immigration officers’ enforcement powers.

This time, neither Republicans nor Democrats wanted a fourth shutdown hanging over them as they run for re-election, potentially enraging voters who already are angry about the high price of food and housing, the U.S. war against Iran and tariffs on foreign goods that have hit farmers particularly hard.

During debate of the temporary funding bill known as a “continuing resolution,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma underscored the political sensitivities.

“This will give Congress time to get past the November elections,” Cole said, referring to the effort to pass the bill.

Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the appropriations panel, argued that this bill was a move toward Congress reclaiming its constitutional power over spending. That, after the Trump administration since early 2025 took a series of unilateral actions, including severe cuts to federal agencies and even the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“The power of the purse resides within the Congress. It is our exclusive responsibility,” DeLauro said, adding, “The first step in exercising that authority is passing this bill today.”

However, this stopgap bill fails to address any of the country’s major fiscal problems as its national debt crossed the $40 trillion threshold last month and Washington has failed to address voters’ top concern of affordability.

Furthermore, with the legislation delaying decision-making on spending priorities for another 15 weeks, Congress in December faces a potentially arduous task of writing and passing the 12 full-year spending bills.

Oil prices had already risen after that first exchange of direct attacks since July and after reports of two tankers being hit on Monday leaving the Strait, the global oil supply waterway that Iran has effectively closed to shipping. Brent crude futures, already up 2% on the day, jumped almost 2% more on the reports. [O/R]

Tehran remained defiant, warning that it would prevent oil being exported from the Gulf, despite a threat by President Donald Trump to hit Iran “hard” in response to the renewed Iranian strikes, and a warning from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that Washington was about to impose new sanctions.

“Today at 12 p.m. ET (1600 GMT), U.S. forces began striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targets in Iran,” U.S. Central Command posted on X. “The strikes follow recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and against American service members deployed to the region.”

Iran’s state broadcaster said there had been reports of explosions on Iran’s Qeshm Island, on the northern side of the strait.

The state-linked news agency Nour News said there had been reports of explosions in the port city of Bandar Abbas and in Chabahar, a port on the southern coast. The state news agency IRNA also reported the sound of explosions in Jask and Sirik.

Trump posted on his social media channel that if Iran retaliated for the attack, “they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level”.

The Fars news agency cited an IRGC spokesperson as saying the U.S. “will regret its new attacks”.

Scale of resumption of Iran hostilities unclear

The U.S. Embassy in Qatar urged Americans currently in the Middle East to exercise “heightened vigilance and be aware of potential flight cancellations, airspace closures, and travel disruptions”.

The six-month-old conflict had shifted into an economic standoff before the weekend strikes, in which U.S. forces attacked Iran’s Larak Island on Sunday and Iran responded by launching missiles at two U.S. air bases in Jordan.

Although he warned of a U.S. response to the Iranian strikes, Trump also told reporters on Monday that they did not signal a return to full-scale war, and a senior Iranian source told Reuters they were a “limited and contained confrontation”.

But pledges by both sides to respond to further attacks have highlighted how quickly a conflict that has increasingly been fought through sanctions, blockades and economic pressure could spill back into military action.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had said early on Tuesday at a regional summit in Kyrgyzstan that Tehran would reciprocate immediately if Washington honoured its commitments under a June Memorandum of Understanding that was intended to halt the conflict.

The MOU declared an end to fighting that has now killed thousands in Iran and Lebanon since U.S. and Israeli strikes began on February 28. But it also deferred many of the most difficult issues and paved the way for a broader 60-day negotiation period — which passed without further agreement.

Iranian officials have shown no public sign since then of bowing to pressure.

“If the enemy wants us not to export oil from the Persian Gulf, no one will be able to export oil,” Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told a press conference in Tehran that Washington was “addicted to making excessive demands and has mistaken negotiations for dictating terms”.

New US economic sanctions loom

“As long as they act in this manner, they will certainly get no result other than what they have achieved so far,” he added, warning that Tehran would “use all our capabilities, whether on the battlefield or through our diplomatic apparatus”.

Before the latest attacks, Bessent had said Washington was likely to announce bank sanctions against Iran this week and next, stepping up an attempt to “economically asphyxiate” Iran’s leadership after six months of conflict.

At a G20 finance leaders’ meeting in Asheville, ​North Carolina, he said the U.S. was also looking at targeting airline leasing companies and other entities that did business with the IRGC.

“We have zero tolerance. We are going to economically asphyxiate this regime,” he said.

Iran’s leaders have defied decades of U.S. sanctions, many of which have been aimed at curtailing Tehran’s oil revenues and acquisition of weapons components.

Bessent has also warned that countries doing business with Iran could face U.S. sanctions.

The heightened tensions have renewed fears of oil supply disruptions from the world’s key crude-producing region.

“The tit-for-tat missile exchanges between the U.S. and Iran bring validation to those who believe that even if not a ‘forever war’, this conflict will run and run,” said PVM analyst John Evans.

Highlighting such concerns, two supertankers carrying Saudi oil were struck by unknown projectiles within minutes of each other while transiting outbound through the Strait of Hormuz late on Monday, according to data from shipping intelligence and tracking firms Marisks and Kpler.

As of Aug. 10, the Boeing twin-engine utility helicopter reached initial operational capability with “significant capability upgrades” compared to the medium utility Hueys, the service announced Monday.

The Grey Wolves are nearly 50% faster than the Hueys, can carry twice as many troops and contain improved defensive systems, allowing forces to mobilize and arrive sooner than before, with the previous Vietnam-era platform.

The Grey Wolves mark the ability for increased capabilities in the Air Force Global Strike Command’s nuclear security operations, an Air Force release reads.

“For more than half a century, the UH-1N Huey has been a key element of our Intercontinental Ballistic Missile security, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the crews who flew and maintained it over all these years,” Gen. S.L. Davis, commander of AFGSC, said in the release. “Securing these missiles demands our best efforts and the MH-139 will significantly improve our capabilities.”

The 20th Air Force, which oversees all three ICBM wings, was selected to receive the new aircraft to replace the Hueys at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana; F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming; and Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota.

The service plans to procure 84 Grey Wolves, training devices and associated equipment from Boeing, according to a 2019 release.

The 20th, which has a 33,600-square-mile area of responsibility, covers an expansive area of prairies, plains and mountain ranges, furthering the need for an aircraft that can support missile field security over the terrain, in which the nuclear mission operates all day, every day, per the statement.

AFGSC is preparing to switch from the Minuteman III ICBM system to a next-generation LGM-35A Sentinel weapon system, and the new aircraft are slated to support this modernization effort.

The Sentinel program is meant to overhaul the force’s land-based ICBMs, the release says, and the Grey Wolf’s capabilities can assist in securing assets during the phased transition, ensuring that operations continue as the new Sentinel sites are activated and Minuteman III facilities are decommissioned.

The 582nd Helicopter Group, located at F.E. Warren, executed testing, conversion training and operational milestones to propel the aircraft toward initial operational capability. Earlier this year, the 40th Helicopter Squadron, based at Malmstrom, conducted the first operational Minuteman III ICBM convoy with two Grey Wolves.

During a six-hour movement, the 40th escorted missile maintenance and armored security vehicles to and from a launch facility over 100 miles from base without refueling.

Alongside convoy support and emergency response functions, Grey Wolf’s capabilities will also be used for search and rescue, disaster response and medical evacuations.

In 2021, a DoD Inspector General audit found that snoopers were able to access the protected health information, or PHI, of “well-known DOD personnel.” Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs found that VA staff — often out of simple curiosity — had improperly accessed records of then-vice presidential candidates J.D. Vance and Tim Walz.

The Defense Health Agency has since tightened access to health records of well-known personnel, according to a follow-up DOD IG audit published Monday. But what DHA isn’t doing is investigating access by people who are not on a designated list of approved users.

The DHA “rarely investigated users who accessed the EHRs [electronic health records] of well‑known individuals to determine whether the access was improper,” said the IG report, which was heavily redacted.

DHA maintains a whitelist of authorized medical providers who can access health records, as well as a watchlist of users who are suspected of unauthorized access. Individuals on the watchlist are supposed to be referred to DHA’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Office, or to “the military medical treatment facility chain of command, for breach reporting, investigation, mitigation, containment, and sanctions if applicable,” the report noted.

DHA is also supposed to review weekly logs to determine whether access was justified.

Yet, DHA neither investigated users who were not on the approved list, nor those on the watchlist. Auditors examined the cases of 25 DoD personnel who were either senior officials or whose names had appeared in the media after a highly publicized event.

“Of the 2,600 users who accessed the PHI of those 25 well‑known individuals, 1,482 of the users were on the DHA’s Whitelist, and 15 were on the DHA’s Watchlist,” IG investigators found. “Of the 1,103 users (42 percent) who were not on the DHA’s Whitelist or Watchlist, the DHA did not investigate any of the users.”

In the case of one senior DOD official, 334 users accessed that person’s health records. Of that number, 94 were neither on the whitelist nor watchlist. There were no follow-up investigations.

One DHA policy — redacted in the report — isn’t meeting DoD guidelines, and it may also violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, the audit said. In addition, it “may not support the Executive Order and National Counterintelligence Strategy that warned that access to sensitive information of well‑known individuals could threaten national security.”

“Without proper monitoring and inquiry, users who improperly access these EHRs would not be held accountable as required by DHA guidance.”

The IG recommended that DHA contact any user not on the approved whitelist who accessed the health records of well-known individuals. The agency should also maintain a complete audit trail of all correspondence between DHA and the user.

If the Defense Health Agency lacks the resources or authorities to complete these inquiries, it should coordinate with the appropriate DoD or other federal components for assistance, the report suggested.

The four Filipino archaeologists knelt shoulder to shoulder in a trench only slightly larger than a toddler’s sandbox, shaving away paper-thin layers of earth and filling buckets with soil beneath a blazing early afternoon sun on the Philippine island of Mindanao.

A few feet away, Mike Henshaw, who spent much of his 25-year U.S. Army career recovering the remains of fallen service members, was creating a grid by stretching string between wooden stakes. He then activated a ground-penetrating radar device, hoping it would help the young scientists uncover the remains of three American soldiers executed by the Japanese 84 years ago.

Henshaw had come to the predominantly Muslim city of Marawi in June alongside archaeologist Danny Keay and forensic anthropologist Karin Dominko to begin the search. But Henshaw had another goal as well: He wanted to prove that his small American nonprofit could train Filipino archaeologists to help search for service members still missing in action from past wars.

“The question is whether the accounting mission can be done faster and for less money—with the same high standards,” Henshaw said.

That question has taken on new urgency as the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency faces intense budget pressure and dramatic reductions in missions to find Americans left behind in jungles, mountains, and former battlefields around the world.

For veterans advocates and families of the missing in action, the concern goes beyond how many recovery missions the government can afford. They see the cutbacks as a test of whether the nation can continue to make good on its longstanding promise to account for those who never came home.

“We’re not only at a crossroads. We’re also at a critical point,” said James McCormick, a highly decorated combat veteran of the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars who now serves as executive director for government affairs of Vietnam Veterans of America.

Against that backdrop, the Marawi project may offer a glimpse of how nonprofits can help the U.S. military uphold its promise to leave no service member behind. By taking a larger role in organizing recovery missions, drawing on local archaeologists for much of the painstaking fieldwork, and enlisting retired MIA specialists, Henshaw argues, they could extend the accounting mission into places where U.S. resources are limited or official teams cannot go.

A shrinking field mission

Nearly 81,000 U.S. military personnel remain unaccounted for from conflicts since World War II, according to the DPAA. More than half were lost at sea or under circumstances that make finding their remains extremely unlikely. But the agency says about 38,000 are recoverable.

The magnitude of that unfinished work is now colliding with a shrinking ability to conduct searches.

After two years of significant increases under the Biden administration, DPAA’s budget fell from $185 million in fiscal 2025 to $167 million in 2026. And Pentagon leaders want to cut it again, to $160 million next year.

At the DPAA’s annual meeting with Vietnam-era MIA families in late June, Director Kelly McKeague pointed to a slide showing agency-led field missions worldwide falling from 105 in fiscal 2025 to a projected 48 in 2027. The situation, he said, “is ugly.”

The DPAA posted a record 231 identifications in 2025. But as The War Horse reported in May, the overwhelming majority came from previously unidentified remains exhumed from military cemeteries—not from new field recoveries. The record was set in the final year before the Pentagon’s cuts began, so unless funding for field missions is restored, the agency will likely have to rely even more on disinterments to keep its identification numbers high.

The decline in field missions is especially painful in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, where nearly 1,600 American service members remain missing from the Vietnam War. The DPAA’s missions in the region have plunged from 42 in 2025 to only 13 planned for next year.

Many MIA families—particularly those whose relatives went missing during the war in Vietnam—see time as the greatest enemy. Landscapes change. Witnesses die. And with each passing year, families fear that clues that once might have led search teams to missing Americans can disappear forever.

On his office desk, McCormick keeps a photograph of Navy Cmdr. Edward James Jacobs Jr., whose reconnaissance aircraft disappeared with two other crewmen off the coast of North Vietnam in August 1967.

Jacobs’ daughter, Jeanie Jacobs Huffman, has long advocated for families still seeking answers about missing relatives.

“Jeanie’s father is looking down at me every day,” McCormick said. “I can’t go to sleep at night without thinking about it.”

That is one reason McCormick has little patience for Pentagon officials repeatedly invoking the sanctity of the accounting mission while sending fewer recovery teams into the field.

“We don’t want to hear any more chatter about how much you love the fallen and how much you care,” McCormick said. “The greatest form of love is in showing it, not in talking about it. Whatever the price tag is, we should pay it. We need closure. We need accountability.”

The DPAA’s budget squeeze reflects a broader Pentagon paradox. Even as overall defense spending has jumped substantially during the second Trump administration, agencies across the Defense Department have been ordered to cut costs as Pentagon leaders redirect tens of billions of dollars toward missile defense, new weapon systems, artificial intelligence, and other priorities.

“There is absolutely nobody inside of the agency that is excited about the trend line [of DPAA funding],” Chris Phelps, who oversees the agency’s operations in the Indo-Pacific region, told families at the June briefing. “It is absolutely going in the wrong way.”

The War Horse sought comment on the DPAA’s budget from the office of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth but received no response before publication.

Congress could still reverse some or all of the cuts. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted in early June to add $40 million to the DPAA’s budget in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, a provision championed by Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Nebraska. But the House version passed in late July did not include the additional funding.

The House is back from summer recess, but the Senate will not return until Sept. 14, leaving the defense bill stalled and the DPAA’s budget outlook uncertain.

For Henshaw, the agency’s dwindling financial support strengthens the case for rethinking how recovery missions are conducted.

Henshaw, who founded the Virginia-based Asymmetric MIA Accounting Group (AMAG) in January 2025, argues that the traditional model of sending large American teams around the world has become too expensive to remain the primary approach.

He believes trained archaeologists in countries such as the Philippines could help build local recovery expertise while nonprofits and volunteers pursue more cases at lower cost.

Building a new recovery model

The Marawi excavation offered one possible way to extend the accounting mission as the DPAA cuts back on fieldwork. But it also showed how difficult it can be to build a local MIA recovery program from scratch.

When Henshaw arrived on Mindanao in January, he brought years of experience searching for missing Americans across Asia with predecessor agencies of the DPAA—and a list of potentially recoverable World War II cases.

For nearly a week, he drove around the Philippines’ second-largest island in a rented Toyota sedan, trying to connect with government officials and civic leaders. Scheduled meetings fell through or led nowhere. Residents warned him that he would be kidnapped or killed if he went to Marawi.

Back home in Colorado, John Bear, AMAG’s chief investigative researcher, sent email after email to potential contacts across Mindanao with little success.

Then came the reply that changed everything.

It was from Robert Alonto, a member of the Bangsamoro Commission for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage who was about to become its chairman.

He wanted to talk.

Henshaw canceled his nonrefundable flight home and met over lunch with Alonto, his wife and son, and two Mindanao historians.

Henshaw explained how Bear had found an oral history interview with Ben Hagans, a former prisoner of war held by the Japanese who recalled watching his captors execute three Americans—Lt. Col. Robert Vesey, Capt. Albert Price, and 1st Sgt. John Chandler—at Camp Keithley, a U.S. Army post converted into a POW camp. Hagans, now 97, remembered seeing an obelisk near the execution site, offering Bear the best clue in decades to where the men might have been buried.

Hagans’ account also connected the search to Brig. Gen. Guy Fort, one of the senior U.S. Army officers who defended Mindanao. Fort had been spared during the July 1942 execution after Vesey offered to take his place. Four months later, the Japanese executed Fort after he refused to order the Moro guerrillas he had armed and trained to surrender. His remains have never been found.

Fort, the only American-born general executed by enemy forces during World War II, had spent four decades in the Philippines and knew Mindanao in a way few American officers did. Described as “a regular Daniel Boone,” he was an accomplished outdoorsman and mapmaker who learned local languages and immersed himself in Moro and other indigenous cultures.

Fort’s deep ties to Mindanao gave local officials reason to see the search as part of their own history, not simply an American recovery mission.

“Gen. Fort is a hero to the Moro people,” Alonto told Henshaw.

By the end of the lunch, Alonto’s son, Ruh, had agreed to serve as a bridge between the Americans and the communities in which they hoped to work.

A historical researcher from one of Mindanao’s most prominent Muslim families, Ruh Alonto knew the island’s politics, history, and people. He also understood the complicated legacy of American rule in the Philippines: U.S. troops had fought bloody campaigns against the Moros in the early 20th century, but the two sides became wartime allies after Japan invaded the Philippines in December 1941.

Official U.S. recovery teams cannot work in Marawi because of State Department security restrictions stemming from threats of terrorism and civil unrest.

Alonto said President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about Muslims and the U.S. war with Iran has deepened anti-American sentiment in the region, making the Americans’ presence in Marawi especially sensitive.

The city is also still rebuilding after the five-month battle in 2017 between Philippine security forces and Islamic State-linked militants that killed more than 1,100 people, displaced hundreds of thousands, and left much of the city center in ruins.

‘The CIA was already here’

Looking back, Alonto recalls thinking that Henshaw’s timetable seemed wildly unrealistic. Archaeological digs in the Philippines typically take at least a year to organize. Henshaw wanted to begin in four or five months.

“We’re all like, ‘Oh my God,’” Alonto recalled.

The team still had to recruit archaeologists, secure permits, consult local officials, obtain permission from landowners, and convince Philippine cultural authorities—accustomed to working with the DPAA—that Henshaw’s little-known nonprofit could be trusted.

A major boost came in April when Barbara Fox—whose stepfather, James Fort, was the general’s son—donated a collection of Fort’s diaries, photographs, correspondence, and artifacts to Iligan Institute of Technology, part of Mindanao State University. The collection is expected to become a permanent exhibit at the school.

Henshaw hand-delivered the materials. The donation helped build goodwill and reinforced the idea that the project was about preserving Mindanao’s history as well as recovering missing Americans.

But suspicions lingered.

The atmosphere became especially tense in April after the Philippine National Police and immigration officials arrested two young Tajik nationals for suspicious behavior in Marawi, Alonto said.

One Marawi resident lamented on Facebook that authorities were deporting Muslims while “the CIA was already here”—a reference to Henshaw and the American forensic anthropologist who had been discussing plans to return with equipment capable of detecting objects beneath the ground.

Still, the project moved forward.

Another crucial piece fell into place after Alonto approached Leee Anthony Neri, dean of the University of the Philippines’ School of Archaeology.

Neri, who grew up in northern Mindanao, has long pushed to expand archaeological work on the island and train more archaeologists from the region. Mindanao students seeking graduate training in archaeology generally have to move to Manila, he said, forcing many to leave jobs or somehow finance years of study hundreds of miles from home.

For Neri, the AMAG project aligned closely with what he was already trying to build: a center to train local archaeologists and study the archaeology and heritage of Mindanao. So Neri assembled a team of six other archaeologists, most of whom had previously excavated with him at Kota Kalawi, a historic fort where they conducted the first archaeological excavation in Lanao del Sur province in 2024.

“It’s such an honor to be part of this team,” said Ruben Claro “Kim” Reyes IV, who grew up in Manila. “We’re only starting to write the books about these places.”

Rona Catherine Repancol, also raised in Manila, already knew Marawi from her work as a historian studying fortifications around the city. Now pursuing a doctorate in archaeology, she said the Marawi excavation deepened her appreciation for Mindanao’s Muslim culture and history.

When she’s in Marawi, Repancol always wears long sleeves and pants out of respect for local customs and often covers her hair at special events.

Working there “connects me to the larger Philippine communities, not only the Christianized areas where I usually go,” she said. “It’s a beautiful experience.”

The dig begins, then stops

By late May, all the permits had come through. The archaeologists began arriving. The equipment was in place.

Then, as workers began clearing the site at Lanao People’s Park, a local family showed up claiming ownership of the land. The archaeological team, which had begun digging its first trench, was accused of trespassing.

Family members also suspected the Americans might be treasure hunters.

The suspicion had deep roots. The Philippines has long been gripped by stories of “Yamashita’s gold,” a vast cache supposedly hidden by retreating Japanese troops during World War II. The legend has fueled decades of often-destructive searches for buried treasure.

With the project suddenly in danger of unraveling, Ruh Alonto stepped in.

“I had to deescalate the entire situation,” he said.

Alonto explained what the team was doing and assured the family’s elders that the Americans were not searching for gold or trying to take their land.

A few days later, the elders gave the project their blessing.

Once the digging began in earnest, Henshaw said, he found himself surrounded by experienced archaeologists. What they had never done was apply those skills to the search for specific missing service members.

Henshaw and Keay showed them how to combine historical records and witness accounts with ground-penetrating radar data, map a site from a fixed survey point, and systematically search for evidence that might lead to human remains.

The knowledge flowed in both directions.

Trained to focus almost exclusively on recovering missing service members, Henshaw had long viewed anything unrelated to the case at hand as “peripheral.” Working alongside the Filipino archaeologists gave him a new appreciation for cultural archaeology, where every layer of soil, pottery fragment, and even the discoloration left by a long-decayed wooden post can help tell the story of a place.

“I learned why it’s so important for them to look at everything and not discard anything, even if it’s not related to the case we’re interested in,” he said. “It’s related to their history.”

Danny Keay understands why that history matters. He has spent decades searching for missing service members, beginning as a teenager in Germany tracking down World War II aircraft crash sites simply because he loved airplanes.

After a 22-year U.S. Army career that included counterintelligence work, he earned a master’s degree in conflict archaeology and did postgraduate training in analyzing human skeletal remains. Over the years, he has participated in 21 recovery operations.

The volunteer work gradually shifted his focus from the aircraft and artifacts to the families still waiting for answers. He recalled one American mother whose son went missing during World War II. For five or six years, she left her front door unlocked, believing he might someday walk through it.

Stories like that changed how Keay thought about the accounting mission.

“I honestly don’t care who takes the credit,” he said. “As long as the family gets their loved one back.”

‘The archaeology sounds the same’

When Owen O’Leary heard details of the Marawi excavation—the grids, the meticulous removal of soil, the buckets of dirt carried away by local laborers—the DPAA’s field sciences manager immediately recognized the process.

“The archaeology sounds the same,” O’Leary said.

The biggest difference was scale.

O’Leary, an archaeologist who spent 13 years supervising DPAA excavations and site surveys, said an archaeological survey may require eight to 10 people, while a large recovery operation can deploy 20 to 25.

Depending on the mission, those teams can include archaeologists, forensic anthropologists, military officers, medics, explosive ordnance technicians, forensic photographers, linguists, and life-support specialists.

Remote operations may require helicopters, boats, and occasionally even porters. Medical evacuation plans must be approved before recovery teams deploy. In some places, the DPAA teams sleep in tents at the site rather than lose hours each day traveling from distant hotels.

For all the sophisticated technology available to recovery teams, O’Leary said, there is still no substitute for excavations. Remote-sensing equipment can identify promising areas, but only careful excavation can establish what is actually beneath the ground.

“We do not go for easy,” O’Leary said. “We go for detailed, proper methods to ensure that we do not miss remains in the field.”

That level of staffing and logistical support is expensive.

At the June meeting, McKeague and Phelps assured the Vietnam-era MIA families that their cases would remain a priority. According to the DPAA, those cases still account for most of the Indo-Pacific directorate’s field-operations budget—69% in the current fiscal year and a projected 65% next year.

The DPAA budgeted $16 million for 28 investigative and recovery missions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia this year—an average of $573,000 per mission. For fiscal 2027, the agency projects spending $9.1 million for 13 missions, or an average of $702,000 per mission.

Henshaw said the cost of the initial Marawi excavation was about $45,000.

Doing more with less

The independent Marawi project reflects some of the concepts of the DPAA’s partnership program, in which the agency has leveraged the skills and resources of universities, nonprofits, foreign governments, and veterans organizations.

Rocky Gillette helped build much of that network, which he calls a “force multiplier.” As director of the agency’s Partnerships and Innovation Directorate, he works with about 130 partners worldwide, with another 40 in development.

But the Pentagon’s budget cuts are also reducing the very partnership missions the agency has relied on to expand its reach.

Gillette said his directorate had expected about $23 million for fiscal year 2027 under the Pentagon’s long-range budget plan. Instead, it’s set to receive about $12 million—a 48% reduction. His directorate had hoped to support about 55 partner-led missions next year, but now expects to support roughly 16.

“I think that the entire agency is confronted with this problem—how to do more with less,” Gillette said.

Henshaw believes his model could help. He wants qualified nonprofits to focus on specific regions, maintaining local relationships, equipment, and knowledge between DPAA deployments.

“DPAA has a global mission and necessarily rotates personnel and resources across many countries,” he said. “A regional nonprofit partner can continue investigations, follow new leads, monitor sites, build relationships, and prepare cases so that when DPAA is ready to conduct a recovery, much of the groundwork has already been completed.”

Some of the DPAA’s nonprofit partners have developed deep expertise in particular countries or regions, but usually through a succession of individual missions rather than the long-term assignments that Henshaw envisions.

Oregon-based Project Recover, which operates in 25 countries, has returned repeatedly to Palau, an island nation just east of the Philippines, according to CEO Derek Abbey, a retired Marine officer.

Abbey said its DPAA work in Palau has been funded mission by mission through separate contracts. But multiyear agreements might be a smarter approach because they would “give us greater freedom of movement, the ability to work on multiple missions at a time, and over time will result in cost savings,” he said.

The advantage is not only financial, Abbey said. Repeated visits help recovery teams build trust with local residents. Once they understand that the teams are searching for missing people rather than lost treasure, he said, the work takes on a different meaning for them.

“It very much becomes their mission as well,” Abbey said.

What comes next?

In mid-June, the Marawi excavation ended without finding the remains of the three soldiers executed at Camp Keithley.

The clue that had made the case seem so promising—Ben Hagans’ vivid memory of the execution near an obelisk—also revealed how difficult the search would be. When Ruh Alonto located the monument in late March, hidden by foliage next to a police station, he found that much of the surrounding area had been built over. He had hoped the obelisk would sit within a larger stretch of undisturbed ground. Instead, only about 20% of the area around it could be excavated.

The archaeologists discovered another complication once they began digging. Nearly two meters of fill, much of it deposited during a hydroelectric project in the 1970s, covered the wartime surface.

But the dig did uncover evidence that people had occupied the site long before World War II.

The archaeologists found earthenware shards, flakes of chert, and volcanic glass whose fracture patterns suggested some had been fashioned into stone tools. The artifacts have not yet been scientifically dated, but similar discoveries at the Kota Kalawi excavation raised the possibility that the ground being searched for Americans executed in 1942 had been occupied by people thousands of years earlier.

Before leaving Mindanao, Henshaw donated his $30,000 ground-penetrating radar system to the cultural commission and trained the Filipino archaeologists how to use it in future searches.

The excavation also drew interest beyond the dig site. In late June, about 150 Mindanao residents attended a public exhibition at the People’s Park library about the excavation and the history of Camp Keithley.

Outside, national police officers carrying rifles stood guard. Inside, Muslim and Christian residents mingled among the displays.

The project may also have opened a path toward cooperation between Henshaw and an agency he has fiercely criticized for years.

A month after the excavation, Henshaw and Bear met virtually for more than an hour with senior DPAA officials—including Gillette, Phelps, and the agency’s chief counsel—to discuss whether AMAG and the Pentagon agency could work together.

The two sides did not reach an agreement. But in early August, AMAG submitted a proposal to conduct five MIA investigations and two archaeological excavations annually over a three-year period on Mindanao.

Henshaw estimates the program would cost $180,000 a year and rely heavily on volunteers, Filipino archaeologists, and relationships already established across the island.

The idea is to turn what happened in Marawi into a continuing presence rather than a series of stand-alone expeditions.

Keeping a qualified nonprofit in the same geographic area eliminates the repetition of assembling teams, moving equipment, and establishing local relationships, Henshaw said.

Local archaeologists, historians, and volunteers could also develop cases between excavations by interviewing witnesses, locating forgotten cemeteries, studying wartime aerial imagery, and following new leads, he said.

The potential caseload is substantial. The DPAA says there are 180 unresolved MIA cases across Mindanao.

If American remains are found, Henshaw said, they would be handled under formal chain-of-custody procedures, transferred to the National Museum of the Philippines, and ultimately turned over to the DPAA.

Henshaw said he never intended to prove his concept through a single excavation. The real test, he said, would come from the multiyear pilot, allowing his nonprofit to maintain a continuous regional presence, pursue multiple MIA cases, and then measure the results against the cost and pace of conventional recovery missions.

He and Bear already know where they want to look next.

After studying World War II maps, eyewitness accounts, and wartime aerial imagery analyzed by AMAG volunteer Ed Bauer, Bear believes he has identified the rifle range where Japanese troops executed and buried Brig. Gen. Guy Fort.

Unlike Camp Keithley, the suspected burial site lies away from the heavily altered urban landscape that complicated the first excavation.

And when Henshaw’s team returns to Marawi, a much larger team of archaeologists and partners with the right equipment will be there, ready to start digging again.

This article from The War Horse was edited by Paul Szoldra, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

The goal, as military officials and industry executives often describe it, is to give commanders the information they need to make consequential decisions as quickly as possible.

But no matter how fast or accurate the analysis is, there’s still a gap between identifying what needs to happen and acting on it. Much of that AI processing happens on computers and servers miles from the battlefield, leaving troops to receive the information through radios, tablets or other devices.

That means the next step in military AI may be putting the technology directly on the bodies of those in the field. While some companies are exploring wearable technology like helmets equipped with heads-up displays, Smack Technologies thinks the answer may be much simpler: Instead of putting AI in a helmet, put it on an operator’s wrist.

The California-based defense tech startup recently raised $61 million in Series B funding to develop Alpha, a wrist-worn device designed to connect operators in the field to real-time data collected and processed through Smack’s Omega AI software.

Andy Markoff, Smack’s co-founder and chief executive, told Military Times that his company started with the software because it could train its AI around day-to-day operations.

“Alpha tackles a much harder problem because you have to make the model work in the field with hardware and little to no connectivity, but we’ve always known this is what has to happen to enable decision dominance,” he said.

During an interview, Markoff walked Military Times through the concept of Alpha, from how operators would wear the device to how it’s used.

As a former Marine Raider, Markoff said he and his team of former military personnel believe the wrist is a more convenient place to access intelligence in the field.

“The form factor we’re building replaces what I literally used to wear on my forearm, only here I’m exchanging a whiteboard and grease pencil for a flexible computer screen that has our models’ capabilities on it,” he said.

He likened the concept to a QB sleeve, which allows a quarterback to see plays at a glance.

“Our sensors that are out collecting information about enemy forces and their location are sending that information to a screen on my forearm along with actionable decision options informed by campaign equities and adjacent units,” he said.

Markoff said he recognizes that a heads-up display could be useful for some missions, but he also sees drawbacks, particularly in hot or humid environments.

“If you’ve ever walked in the jungle at night, you know you’d actually rather risk having an eyeball poked out by a tree than wear shooting glasses that fog up and prevent you from seeing anything,” he said.

However, Markoff said that the hardware is the easy part of building an AI-enabled wearable. The more difficult problem is figuring out what information an operator needs in the field.

He explained the fundamental idea behind Alpha is to decentralize command and control in environments where operators cannot communicate directly with commanders.

“To do this, we’re essentially encoding commander’s intent: here’s our goal, here’s what makes the most sense for the theater and the theater’s goals, and here’s context around how everyone at the front lines should be going after that goal, including constraints and contracts with adjacent units,” he said.

He added that the goal isn’t to have AI make decisions, but to give the operator enough information to make better ones, potentially increasing effectiveness while reducing wasted time and resources.

Alpha has been in development for only about four months, but Markoff projects that Smack will have a working prototype within the next year and could secure contracts for the device within two years.

Wilsbach met with Israel Defense Forces Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and the Commander of the Israeli Air Force Maj. Gen. Omar Tishler on Aug. 23, the IDF announced in a Wednesday social media post, with a photo of Wilsbach and Zamir shaking hands.

Wilsbach confirmed the meeting in Israel on his own social media, saying the three discussed “shared priorities for regional security” and “opportunities to deepen cooperation.”

The IDF said the groups advanced “learning from the joint campaign” as the Iran war surpassed six months.

The war, which began on Feb. 28, has consisted of dual airstrikes from both U.S. and Israeli forces, with the U.S. Air Force performing a variety of missions, including long-range bomber strikes and aerial refueling.

U.S. aircraft used in the attacks comprise a variety of bombers, strikers and refueling jets, such as the B-1B Lancer, B-52 Stratofortress, F-15E Strike Eagle, KC-135 Stratotanker, F-35A Lightning II and A-10 Thunderbolt II.

Wilsbach’s recent visit to Israel is the first publicly announced meeting, even though the chief of staff previously visited seven U.S. bases across the Middle East and Europe within the U.S. Central Command and U.S. European Command’s area of responsibility in December 2025.

Since the war began, 18 U.S. service members have died. The Pentagon has since altered the way it classifies casualties suffered, moving four to another casualty summary and thus lowering the number to 14.

Personnel were told to stop use of the AN/PRM-10 test oscillator set, a signal generator, after an airman assigned to F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, found traces of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, on a kit, according to a recent release.

The halt stemmed from a notification the command and 20th Air Force received in August that while performing a routine inspection of an AN/PRM-10 kit, the airman discovered and was exposed to the residue on a component of the kit.

“The Airman reported the issue, received medical attention, and was returned to duty with no adverse effects,” per the statement.

Additional testing confirmed the presence of PCBs in the residue. PCBs are a substance commonly used in electrical devices during the time the equipment was developed to maintain the Minuteman III ICBM system, per the release.

PCBs are a group of man-made organic chemicals that consist of carbon, hydrogen and chlorine atoms, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The chemicals were domestically manufactured in the U.S. from 1929 until 1979, when their manufacturing and importation were banned due to evidence showing that the chemical was toxic to human health and the environment.

The Minuteman III ICBM system’s silos and underground control centers were built more than 60 years ago, and traces of PCBs have continued to be found at some nuclear bases. The chemicals have become a recurring concern as the Air Force investigates cancer risks among personnel in the nuclear missile community.

In 2023, the Air Force investigated three nuclear bases, including F.E. Warren, to see if the service could find harmful levels of the chemical. The force said that no harmful levels were found at F.E. Warren at the time, but results found harmful levels at two locations at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana.

The recent effort to halt the use of AN/PRM-10 is part of the 2023 Air Force initiative, called the Missile Community Cancer Study, to review the system and its equipment to confirm a “hazard-free working environment” for the ICBM community.

After the presence of PCBs in the kit, the 20th Air Force, which serves over F.E. Warren, ordered a one-time inspection to assess all AN/PRM-10 kits as well as updated safety warnings, precautions and mandatory personal protective equipment requirements where legacy testers are still used.

The one-time inspection was completed within three days of its order and found potential residue on six of eight AN/PRM-10 systems, the release says, which have been collected and sent for further testing.

The presence of potential residue on additional systems caused the 20th units to immediately cease the use of the AN/PRM-10, instead opting for a “modern, PCB-free replacement tester.”

Alongside the switch to a replacement tester, the command and 20th officials are working with the Minuteman III systems program office to dispose of existing AN/PRM-10 kits and identify other test equipment that may contain PCBs.

F.E. Warren, Malmstrom and Minot are the Air Force’s three IBCM bases. The bases are kept in a continuous state of full alert.

Out of the 400 Minuteman III ICBM systems, F.E. Warren operates 150.

“There are no mission impacts as a result of these actions, and U.S. ICBM forces remain safe, secure, and effective to protect the U.S. homeland,” the statement reads.

The Department of Defense on Monday launched OpenAI’s ChatGPT Mil on GenAI.mil, making the chatbot available for work involving controlled unclassified information, or CUI — sensitive government information that is not classified but still requires specific safeguards.

The department said ChatGPT Mil is accredited for CUI at Impact Level 5, a DoD cloud-security standard for certain sensitive unclassified information.

ChatGPT Mil joins Google Gemini on GenAI.mil, giving military and civilian users access to multiple frontier AI models. A Defense Department official told Defense One that Gemini is useful for search, while ChatGPT can be used for more text-based work, allowing users to select a model for a particular task.

GenAI.mil is becoming a multi-model platform. The Defense Department also launched Starshield AI’s Grok for Government on GenAI.mil on Monday, saying the addition would help eliminate vendor lock-in and promote a broader American AI ecosystem.

GenAI.mil has already attracted more than 1.7 million unique users, according to the Defense Department. The platform launched nine months ago and is intended to serve the department’s more than 3 million personnel.

For the Navy and Marine Corps, GenAI.mil is already an enterprise requirement. A January Navy memorandum designated it as the Department of the Navy’s mandated CUI and IL5 generative-AI platform and directed Navy organizations and commands to transition to it by April 30.

Navy guidance states that GenAI.mil is authorized for CUI but prohibits the use of personally identifiable information and protected health information.

The initial ChatGPT Mil experience includes chat, files, projects and custom GPTs, with additional features expected over time, according to the Defense Department. The platform is designed for document-heavy work including planning, policy, logistics and administration.

An OpenAI official told Defense One potential military uses include disaster-response planning, resource allocation, reconciling supply and maintenance information and drafting transportation requirements.

The Defense Department has already cited a military example of GenAI.mil’s use. In May congressional testimony, the department said the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps used the platform to produce a complete exercise operations order for the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility in six weeks, with nine writers producing work that traditionally requires six to nine months by a much larger staff.

Preparing frontier models for GenAI.mil requires security testing involving the Defense Information Systems Agency and National Security Agency, according to a former defense official who spoke to Defense One.

GenAI.mil is an IL5 enterprise platform for unclassified work, not the classified AI capabilities the Defense Department is separately developing and testing for combat operations. Defense One reported that Pentagon and OpenAI officials do not intend to use models on GenAI.mil for combat; the department is developing AI capabilities for classified networks and warfighting missions.

OpenAI’s government sales chief Joe Larson said ChatGPT on GenAI.mil is intended to make unclassified work more efficient while maintaining safeguards, human judgment and accountability for high-stakes decisions.

OpenAI also said data processed on GenAI.mil remains isolated within the government environment and is not used to train or improve its public or commercial models.

The trial-scheduling order entered by Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama marked the latest milestone in a military prosecution beset by two decades of legal deadlock surrounding the four detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Last year, a U.S. appeals court refused to allow Mohammed and two of his co-defendants to plead guilty under agreements that would have spared them the death penalty.

The appellate decision reversed decisions of a military judge and the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review in support of the plea deal.

The agreement had been offered in 2024 and accepted by the official who oversees the Pentagon’s Guantanamo war court, only to be revoked in August of that year by then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin amid criticism of the deal from Republican lawmakers.

Under Schrama’s 11-page order, Mohammed and three co-defendants — Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin ‘Atash, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali — will stand trial starting on June 5, 2028.

The proceedings open with the selection of a panel consisting entirely of service members who will act as the jury to hear the case according to the rules of military justice.

Opening statements will commence 30 calendar days after the panel is seated, followed by presentation of the prosecution’s evidence, after which the defendants may file motions for findings of not guilty.

The order gives both sides opportunities to argue those motions and rebut one another, and for prosecutors to reopen their case. The defense presents its principal evidence starting 60 calendar days after the prosecution concludes its case.

The trial ends with a sentencing phase.

Schrama rejected the prosecutors’ proposal to open the trial in January 2027, saying that would leave too little time for the “resolution of pretrial evidentiary and compliance motions.”

Mohammed remains the most well-known inmate at the Guantanamo detention facility, which was set up in 2002 by then-U.S. President George W. Bush to house foreign militant suspects following the September 11, 2001, attacks.

He is accused of orchestrating the plot to fly hijacked passenger jetliners into the World Trade Center in New York City and into the Pentagon. The 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people.

“One of the most important functions of (the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation) is to provide transparency about the safety and effectiveness of major weapon systems,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) in a letter this month.

Warren is a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, and Norcross is a ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.

“A key element of this function is the release of publicly available annual reports that detail findings by DOT&E to make sure critical deficiencies are fixed so service members are not harmed or killed,” they added.

Despite legal obligations to publish the annual reports it sends to Congress online, the office now requires a Defense Department-issued common access card to access the collection, which includes material that has been available to the public for years.

A Defense Department official told Federal News Network that the decision to remove the materials was based on concerns that foreign adversaries could use artificial intelligence tools to develop detailed profiles of the U.S. military’s vulnerabilities.

But critics of the decision say the reasoning is part of an ongoing effort to reduce oversight and accountability as Defense Department officials set records for spending and budget requests.

Last May, Hegseth issued a memo directing the DOT&E to significantly reduce its workforce and budget in the name of cost-savings. In turn, the office’s staff was cut by some 74% and its budget by nearly 80%. The Defense Department subsequently proposed a $1.5 trillion budget for 2027.

In an interview with Military Times, Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense, or TCS, called it “suspicious” that officials gutted the DOT&E office prior to proposing a massive spending increase.

Murphy pointed to the ambitious Golden Dome Missile Defense System as an example of a project that warrants more oversight.

“They know that missile defense in general — and I think in particular, the space-based interceptors they want for this program — are not going to perform well in real tests,” he added.

To those pitching and building the project, the trillion-dollar Golden Dome is described as a missile defense system capable of detecting, tracking and intercepting aerial threats before reaching American soil.

But to critics like Murphy, it’s “questionable strategically and questionable in terms of their affordability.”

In a TCS report, the organization argued against the project because of concerns of scale and price. The group argued that while Golden Dome is modeled after Israel’s “Iron Dome,” which is designed for short- and medium-range missiles, the U.S. model would have to adjust for scale and threat, which would significantly increase costs.

While Defense Department officials say the estimated cost for the Golden Dome will be about $175 billion within the next three years, others say it could be anywhere from $1.2 trillion to $4.4 trillion over the next two decades.

As for the project’s effectiveness, the TSC report said the technology is unproven and that the available evidence suggests it will not work as proposed. But without live-fire testing and analysis by independent offices like the DOT&E, it would be difficult to know for sure.

“Without these reports, Congress has a lot less information to work with in terms of figuring out, you know, the sort of appropriate acquisition approach to some of these programs,” he said, adding that eliminating funding for the DOT&E would end up costing more money than it saves.

Historically, Congress uses DOT&E reports to inform funding decisions, and making them publicly available gives voters and taxpayers insight into the lawmakers’ decisions, according to the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, a non-profit government watchdog group.

Months after Hegseth proposed the $300 million cuts to DOT&E, POGO released a detailed analysis showing how DOT&E reports have been effective in the past.

For instance, Congress made DOT&E responsible for live-fire testing in 1986, after Army officials allegedly misled lawmakers about the performance of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

The Government Accountability Office seemed to validate critics’ concerns about defanging DOT&E as well. In a June report, the office warned that the Pentagon’s drive to field new weapons will outpace the DOT&E’s ability to catch problems before systems reach troops.

In their letter, Warren and Norcross requested that the Defense Department submit responses to their committees by Aug. 26.

The outages affected at least Fort Irwin, California; Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico; Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island; Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas; F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming; Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, and Fort Huachuca, Arizona, according to official announcements and social media reports.

Officials at the Defense Department would not say how many commissaries were affected in all or if the outages are being investigated as linked.

“The Department is aware of a possible refrigeration disruption at some Defense Commissary Agency commissaries,” a defense official said in a statement provided to Military Times. ”[The Defense Commissary Agency] has taken appropriate precautions to transfer products to alternate temperature-controlled locations to mitigate any product loss. Commissaries remain open, and all possible measures are being taken to ensure food safety. Beyond this we have nothing additional to provide.”

Defense commissaries are a benefit reserved for active-duty military members and their families as well as military retirees with base privileges. They offer at least a 25% discount from prices in comparable civilian grocery stores by selling food at cost, plus a small markup for staffing and facility maintenance.

Naval Station Newport publicly announced Wednesday on its social media pages that its commissary was among those affected.

“Due to refrigeration system issues at the commissary, the store will be open for the purchase of dry goods only until further notice,” the base said. “The deli, sushi bar, and grab and go sections will not be available to customers during this time.”

Fort Irwin posted its own update Thursday, saying the commissary would not sell eggs and milk “until the refrigeration systems are functioning properly.” It later revised its announcement, saying only dry goods would be available for purchase.

“Technicians are working diligently to troubleshoot and resolve the refrigeration issues currently affecting the Fort Irwin Commissary,” the base said on Friday. “At this time, there is no estimated time for completion.”

Fort Huachuca described its commissary incident as an “overnight equipment failure” on its Facebook page.

“ALL freezers went into defrost mode – ALL frozen food has spoiled,” it wrote.

F.E. Warren described a refrigeration “malfunction” in its public post.

While no official has offered an explanation for the cluster of outages, some have suggested that bad actors intentionally knocked linked refrigeration systems offline.

“It seems [continental U.S.] commissaries that have fridges linked to an online system have been getting shut off over the past few nights, and we’ve not seen any official notice put out to warn anyone so they can monitor their fridges more closely,” the popular military page “U.S Army W.T.F! Moments” posted. It added that reports indicated at least 18 commissaries were affected.

A defense official told Military Times it would be inappropriate to speculate as to the cause of the outages. It’s not yet clear how they’re being investigated.