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.

A new GAO review found gaps at multiple stages of the Department of Defense Education Activity’s process for identifying and supporting students with specific learning disabilities, including screening, referrals, evaluations and instruction. GAO officials said those gaps can compound, affecting when students receive help and the quality of the services they receive.

“Those are gaps that, when you add them up, they multiply, and they have a compounding effect on when and the quality of services that students receive,” said Jennifer Gregory, a GAO assistant director who oversees part of the agency’s special education work.

About 5% of DODEA’s roughly 60,000 full-time K-12 students had an identified specific learning disability during the 2024-25 school year, and the number of students identified with such disabilities increased 29% from 2018-19 through 2024-25, according to the latest GAO report. About 10% of DODEA students received strategic instruction, which provides short-term, small-group academic support.

Specific learning disabilities include disorders such as dyslexia and dyscalculia that affect understanding language or performing mathematical calculations.

GAO examined DODEA schools in five of the agency’s nine districts, covering districts that serve 63% of DODEA students with identified specific learning disabilities. Investigators visited 11 schools and conducted 47 group interviews with teachers, administrators and other stakeholders. They also administered an opt-in online questionnaire to parents of DODEA students with specific learning disabilities.

Among the parents who responded to GAO’s questionnaire, 82 of 121 said the limited availability of DODEA resources to assess students, such as screening tools, was a challenge.

GAO found that at nine of the 11 schools, staff said they needed more or better screening tools to identify students who may need additional literacy or math support or special education. DODEA’s screening tools did not directly assess foundational phonics skills among elementary school students and were not available to all students.

GAO said those limitations make it difficult to identify students who are behind for their grade level, which is particularly important given DODEA’s highly mobile population. DODEA officials told GAO in July that the agency had procured universal screening tools for all grades and planned to begin administering them in late 2026.

GAO also found that DODEA cannot currently ensure that all students identified as needing additional literacy or math support to meet grade-level expectations receive the appropriate support.

At the high school level, some of that assistance is provided through strategic instruction classes, which are electives, according to GAO. That means a student identified as needing additional help may not necessarily receive it, said Jacqueline Nowicki, the GAO director who oversees the agency’s K-12 education work.

“Once it is determined that a kiddo does need support, there is not a way right now that DODEA can ensure that kids who have been identified for this kind of support actually get it,” Nowicki said.

GAO recommended that DODEA ensure all students identified as eligible for additional literacy or math support receive the necessary instruction. The recommendation remains open.

The review also found problems with referrals and evaluations.

GAO recommended that DODEA analyze why Student Support Teams reject referrals for students who may benefit from additional literacy and math support and identify special-education referrals rejected because of poor-quality or incomplete information.

In the 2024-25 school year, DODEA reported that 12% of special-education evaluations were not completed promptly, according to GAO. Ten of the 11 schools GAO visited identified timely identification and evaluation as a challenge. GAO recommended that DODEA analyze factors within its control that contribute to delays in the evaluation process.

At all 11 schools GAO visited, staff cited obstacles to helping students meet literacy and math goals, including limited access to student data and professional learning that did not always align with teachers’ roles. Of 44 strategic-instruction and special education teachers interviewed by GAO, 32 rated their professional-learning opportunities as “bad” or “very bad.”

Teachers were routinely asked to evaluate training they had already received but did not have a clearly understood opportunity to identify the training they needed going forward, Nowicki said.

GAO also found that teachers did not always receive the professional learning needed to use DODEA’s specialized reading interventions as intended.

GAO did not formally audit the transfer of individualized education programs during permanent changes of station as part of this review. But Nowicki said the issue has repeatedly surfaced in GAO’s broader work with DODEA and military families.

Parents have told GAO that records sometimes did not arrive at a child’s new school. Other parents said they hand-carried records but were unsure where to deliver them, she said. GAO has also heard from parents who said receiving schools did not immediately implement an existing IEP.

Nowicki said missing or delayed records can delay services or leave educators trying to reconstruct a child’s needs and prior services.

“It is not uncommon for parents to tell us, you know, I transferred to DODEA School from ABC Public School. My files didn’t show up,” Nowicki said. “Or my files I brought them with me and hand carried them and didn’t know who or couldn’t find who to give them to.”

School liaison officers can help military families coordinate so-called “warm handoffs” between schools, Nowicki said. But not every school has a liaison officer, and some parents do not know the service is available.

The latest review contains eight recommendations to the Defense Department, addressing screening, referrals, evaluation delays, teacher training and access to student data, as well as ensuring students identified as needing additional literacy or math support actually receive it.

Extensive damage to one of our most significant forward bases in the Middle East is likely to have profound tactical and strategic repercussions that are only now coming into focus.

The idea that this broad functioning hub, built over decades, was significantly degraded in the space of a few days by a regional player is unimaginable.

I have fond memories of Bahrain both from past port visits, where it provided much-needed rest and relaxation, decent shopping and fitness options, and from my time as a government trainer when I flew over for shipboard training once every six months. I always felt safe there.

That NSA Bahrain is now virtually uninhabitable, with families left in limbo, as described in recent reporting, is difficult to grasp.

The damage is estimated to be close to $400 million. Buildings reportedly harmed include the Fifth Fleet headquarters, a barracks, several warehouses, communications towers and a potable water station.

Ships, including several U.S. Coast Guard vessels, appear to have been relocated, along with a large portion of the staff and their facilities. Thankfully, no one was killed or severely injured at the base, according to U.S. military sources.

It’s important to understand that NSA Bahrain is more than just a headquarters. Among its many functions, the installation provides a regional naval operating base for U.S. Navy forces in the Middle East. NSA Bahrain is home to NAVCENT and U.S. Fifth Fleet, along with numerous tenant commands.

Whenever ships, aircraft, personnel or cargo are moving throughout the region, chances are they have been supported by NSA Bahrain.

The installation provides the physical infrastructure that keeps American military power continuously available in a strategically vital region. It is foundational to America’s ability to project maritime power in this critical theater.

The idea that the U.S. could not prevent and defend against a predictable attack on a Fleet Headquarters — and our sailors stationed there — is quite startling. It likely is just as alarming to our allies.

The depth of NSA Bahrain’s impact became clear as the stories of scarcities of parts, food, mail and supplies to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln hit the news. Before long, pieces of the puzzle began falling into place as to the connection between ship supplies and the lack of a familiar resupply source.

Stretching supply lines that were once hundreds of miles away out to thousands of miles has far-reaching implications for forward-deployed ships and is likely to become a significant constraint in maritime operations.

Having deployed to the area multiple times, I can attest to such impacts. The fact that the U.S. did not preemptively — or at least expeditiously — evacuate families and dependents is truly mind-boggling. Even now, six months later, well over a thousand evacuated troops and their families are still in limbo, with many separated from pets and belongings due to the devastation.

The potential loss of NSA Bahrain is effectively the equivalent of losing an aircraft carrier. It could not have come as a surprise that Iran would attack it in retaliation, yet it — and those living and working there — were left exposed and the facilities inadequately protected from Tehran’s ballistic missiles.

The U.S. has superb air defense capabilities that could potentially have formed a near-impenetrable “dome” over our citizens, as they have over Israel and parts of Ukraine in recent history. Ballistic missile defense destroyers boast incredible defensive capabilities and could have been stationed effectively at sea to protect the Fifth Fleet Headquarters.

Instead, there is now talk of “reducing the footprint” of U.S. forces in the region, a “strategic retreat” that will have a significant impact on logistic support for our ships and troops in the region, making them even more vulnerable.

I commend Vice Adm. Curt Renshaw, the commander of Naval Forces Central Command, 5^th Fleet, and Combined Maritime Forces, for his honesty and candor when he told Bahrain evacuees at a town hall, “When we started this journey, there were some pretty clear rules. As we’ve moved on, we’re really in uncharted territory right now.”

Adm. Renshaw’s frustration is understandable. What is striking is not simply the physical damage, but the continuing uncertainty six months later surrounding the operational status and future of one of America’s most important naval headquarters — and importantly, the status of the personnel and their families.

What, precisely, is the current operational status of NSA Bahrain and the Fifth Fleet headquarters, and what capability did the U.S. lose when Iran demonstrated that it could strike this critical naval hub?

Fifth Fleet is still functioning, but the infrastructure from which it operated has been badly degraded. While there is certainly a need for operational security, it is important for the American people to understand how this situation happened, the magnitude of the impact and how repeating it can be avoided.

If NSA Bahrain is not reconstituted to something near its pre-attack capabilities, it will fundamentally change how the U.S. Navy operates, supplies and maintains its ships. It will also upend how we support regional coalition partners in the Gulf region.

It is my hope that it is resurrected with sufficient support and security to make it safe and viable again.

John Cordle is a retired Navy captain who commanded the destroyer USS Oscar Austin and the cruiser USS San Jacinto during his 30-year military career. He is a recipient of the U.S. Navy League John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership.

By the end of the year, every airman and guardian, including Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve members, must complete two new Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear, or CBRN, defense requirements, a Department of the Air Force official told Military Times on Friday.

Earlier guidance circulated on the unofficial Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page directed that all service members complete protective mask training and validation. The guidance was intended to ensure that every airman and guardian could meet grooming standards while identifying those unable to achieve a visible protective mask seal.

Toward the end of July, the department released additional guidance on the CBRN Defense Program.

By Dec. 31, all airmen and guardians must complete both requirements, which will then transition to annual requirements for service members, the official said.

The requirements are to be completed in order, the official said. The first is the CBRN Defense Foundations Course, an annual web-based course taken through DAF e-Learning. The second is mask validation, or negative pressure check, completed in person with the unit mask fit validation monitor.

The changes align with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s restrictions on facial hair and new grooming standards across the services, the official said. They also reinforce that “these skills are critical not only for defense against CBRN threats, but also for other hazardous mission sets where respiratory protection may be required.”

The news comes after the Marine Corps and Navy announced that their personnel, beginning at the end of August, are required to undergo annual gas mask fit training to partly “reinforce grooming compliance.”

The activation of the 5th Helicopter Squadron on Aug. 28 takes the base a step closer to receiving 26 HH-60W Jolly Green IIs, advanced combat search-and-rescue helicopters that will eventually replace the base’s aging medium-utility UH-1N Huey

Recently, the Air Force selected the Maryland base to receive the new aircraft, with the 5th slated to be the first unit to receive the Jolly Green IIs as the 1st Helicopter Squadron continues to fly the Hueys before converting to the Whiskey mission.

The 1st was the Air Force’s only rotary-wing unit in the National Capital Region for the past 60 years until the 5th’s activation, according to a recent release.

The new aircraft are expected to reach initial operating capability by 2029, with full operational capability slated for 2030.

The idea for a new helicopter squadron came to fruition less than a month after the wing began the paperwork needed to establish it, Col. Kevin Geoffroy, 316th Operations Group commander, said during Thursday’s ceremony.

Initially, the 5th will fly the Jolly Green IIs while the 1st transitions to the new aircraft. The 5th will work to take over some of the 1st’s mission.

“[The 5th] will stand constant vigil alongside the 1st Helicopter Squadron, continuing our no-fail mission to conduct contingency response operations vital to national security, and provide priority airlift for our nation’s civil and military leadership in the national capital region,” Geoffroy said during the ceremony.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Bonilla assumed command of the newly activated 5th Helicopter Squadron, celebrating the 5th’s ability to build its own legacy on top of the Huey’s as the aging aircraft leave the base in the coming years.

“Our mission is not to replace that history,” Bonilla said during the ceremony. “Our mission is to honor it by carrying it forward into the next chapter.”

Bonilla said that the 5th has a “unique opportunity” because the squadron is being built from the ground up, meaning it can drive change and not be bound by past norms.

The base was able to have a Jolly Green II for the ceremony, courtesy of the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing, which flew the aircraft in for the service.

Lt. Col. James Gray, the 5th Helicopter Squadron’s director of operations, told reporters at the activation ceremony that the 5th’s first mission set is to build the Jolly Green II aircrew.

For Gray, the focus after activation is building a plan to address the unknowns, including getting to know the aircrew who will transition over and integrating with the National Capital Region’s airspace.

“That’s the big change in my mind: when you have something this momentous, you have to carry the legacy, but you also get to kind of form a new culture,” Gray said. “It’s kind of a great crossroads, if you will, between the two cultures.”

Designated F-15 Eagle Crest, the Aug. 24 award lets the Air Force place orders over time rather than buying a fixed number of aircraft at signing. Orders may run through Aug. 24, 2031, with an option to extend to 2036. The framework rolls new production, upgrades, retrofits, sustainment and depot support into a single contract for the Air Force, the Air National Guard and foreign buyers.

The contract also covers work to stand up organic depot maintenance, so Air Force depots can perform their own heavy overhauls instead of relying solely on Boeing. Boeing will perform the work in St. Louis. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity.

The award does not commit the government to spend the entire $131.23 billion; it caps what the Air Force may order over the life of the contract. Only $343,740 in fiscal 2026 for research, development, test and evaluation funds was obligated at award.

The notice does not include an order for any jets. For comparison, when the same office awarded Lockheed Martin a 10-year, $62 billion contract for new F-16 exports in August 2020, it issued a $4.94 billion order for 90 jets the same day.

The Aug. 24 notice says the contract involves foreign military sales to Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia and Poland. Indonesia and Poland do not currently fly the F-15.

Israel is already buying F-15s from the same St. Louis line. The F-15EX Modernized Selected Acquisition Report issued with the fiscal 2027 budget says a Dec. 29, 2025, agreement covers 25 F-15IA aircraft, with an option for 25 more, at $8.58 billion. The report says that the buy “stabilizes the lower-tier supply chain and extends the active manufacturing life of the F-15EX production line.”

The same report raises the U.S. F-15EX buy to 268 aircraft through fiscal 2031, up from a baseline of 98, and says the larger buy will force a refresh of the radar, mission computer, electronic warfare suite and engines.

The report also says the program will miss its July 2027 full operational capability date, or FOC, after a 15-week strike at Boeing’s St. Louis plant from Aug. 4 to Nov. 17, 2025, “compounded by the prime contractor’s subsequent failure to meet production recovery goals.”

The mitigation steps include “a re-evaluation of the FOC definition,” meaning the service is weighing a change to how it measures the milestone it is about to miss.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command said in a statement that the operation took place late Tuesday and early Wednesday and used the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser.

The military did not give the precise location of the strikes nor make clear whether it took place over U.S. or Mexican territory. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said any unilateral U.S. action on Mexican soil would be a grave breach of her country’s sovereignty.

The military said the drones posed “a physical threat” to U.S. military and U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel.

“Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners,” Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, the commander of Joint Task Force–Southern Border, said in a statement.

The announcement comes as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to clamp down on immigration and cartels, seeking to fulfill promises from his 2024 presidential campaign.

Since its establishment in 2025, the border task force has conducted tens of thousands of detection and monitoring patrols and thousands of observation flights, the task force said.

The military did not specify the manufacturer of the laser system.

AeroVironment Inc delivered its first two multi-purpose high-energy lasers to the U.S. Army last summer. The U.S. Army has previously deployed AeroVironment Inc’s LOCUST system. The deployment of that system led to a seven-hour airspace shutdown near Texas’ El Paso International Airport earlier this year.

In February, the military accidentally shot down a U.S. government drone using a laser-based anti-drone system, congressional aides told Reuters at the time.

U.S. security officials have expressed concern about the use of drones by Mexican cartels, which mostly employ crudely adapted versions of off-the-shelf models to drop drug packages or surveil trafficking routes.

In parts of Mexico farther from the U.S. border, cartels have used drones to drop explosives in deadly attacks. U.S. and Mexican authorities are working together to combat the rise of drones in the border region.

The U.S. Air Force recently selected Andrews to receive 26 HH-60W Jolly Green IIs, an advanced combat search and rescue helicopter, to replace the base’s 26 aging medium utility Hueys. The new aircraft are expected to reach initial operational capability by 2029, with full operational capability by 2030.

In the meantime, the base will prepare for the additional aircraft through standing up the 5th Helicopter Squadron on Thursday as the first unit on base to receive the Jolly Green IIs. As part of the transition to the “Whiskey” mission, the base will gain 60 active-duty manpower positions.

By 2030, both the 1st Helicopter Squadron, the unit that operates the base’s Hueys, and the 5th will be flying the HH-60Ws full time, completing the mission, Katrina Cheesman, JBA 316th Wing public affairs chief, told Military Times on Monday.

Ahead of the transition, Military Times had a chance to fly on a Huey during a media flight and speak with its crew to gain a sense of what this switch entails and what it means to them.

The 30-minute flight with three crew members took passengers from Andrews across the National Mall, northbound to Virginia, south toward Springfield and back toward the base, giving all a view of the Washington Monument, the Capitol and more from above.

Like cars, different makes and models bear similarities, lessening the learning curve for airmen, Lt. Col. Kristopher Schmautz, 1st Helicopter Squadron director of operations, told reporters after Monday’s flight.

The Jolly Green IIs are more modern, with updates involving their avionics systems and how the crew can operate the aircraft. Schmautz compares flying the Hueys to driving a 1970s Cadillac with its old gauges and demanding flight control systems.

The HH-60W has flight control systems that aid the pilot in operating the aircraft, prompting Schmautz to compare it to a Tesla. It has a four-axis autopilot system, allowing operators to focus more on the facets of the mission as the aircraft essentially flies itself.

The Huey’s Legacy

Schmautz said there are some mixed emotions regarding the transition from the Hueys to the Jolly Green IIs given the aircraft’s storied 60-year legacy. Several of the aircraft are from 1966, giving them 60 years of service dating back to the Vietnam War. Three of the Hueys at JBA still in service were actually flown in Vietnam.

JBA and its Hueys were some of the first aircraft to respond on 9/11, providing support to senior leaders after the Pentagon was struck and assisting with aid and medical evacuations in the area.

“They have seen decades of supporting missions both here and overseas, so from that it is the end of an era,” Schmautz said. “The aircraft are very visible. People hear the sound from miles off, and they know that’s a Huey.”

Given the aircraft’s unique two-blade structure, the sound profile is distinct. With four blades, the HH-60Ws will offer a sound profile change, possibly leading residents to believe there are fewer aircraft flying nearby because it will be quieter.

“For our generation that served in Vietnam, some of them, it stops them in their tracks because they remember that sound,” Schmautz continued. “It’s so noticeable, and to be part of a crew that has gotten to fly this storied aircraft it’s something I never could have imagined when I first enlisted 24 years ago.”

The transition to the Jolly Green IIs offers “great excitement” for the crew, given the aircraft’s increased payload capacity, maximum airspeed and mission range. The Jolly Green IIs will be able to carry 11 passengers as opposed to the Hueys’ ability to carry nine.

The Transition

The 1st will continue to fly the Hueys until it converts to the Whiskey mission. All airmen in the 5th will be dual-qualified on the aircraft and currently fly the Hueys. They will begin the transition to the Jolly Green IIs first.

Even though some details still need to be ironed out, Schmautz said that it will be a “slow transition” as the 1st will hold down the mission while the 5th works to be able to take on part of it. The two squadrons will work together to transfer different pieces of the mission, allowing members of the 1st to transition to the new aircraft.

“Day to day, it’ll be a balancing act as we figure out the exact dynamics of how fast and how we go ahead and convert the crews from one squadron or from one aircraft to the other,” Schmautz said.

Master Sgt. John Griggs, a 1st Helicopter Squadron flight engineer and senior enlisted leader of the 5th Helicopter Squadron, said that the switch is a big change in the right direction since the newer airframe will provide better capabilities and features, including a glass cockpit, allowing crews to execute the mission more effectively.

For Griggs, the transition hits close to home.

“Ever since I’ve been in aviation for about a decade, this is the only aircraft that I’ve known and operated,” Griggs said. “So it’s a little bittersweet to move from something I have such a tenure with and such a legacy across all the conflicts, but I am excited to learn something new.”

In response to a question regarding the Hueys’ age, Griggs said that the helicopter is still as effective as it’s always been at an operational level, and he’s never had worries about its ability to complete its mission.

But the larger aspect is sustainment, and even the best aircraft can’t last forever. He said the base is approaching a point in the 60-year-old aircraft’s operations where they are beginning to run into that detail.

“It’s very humbling to be able to see what this helicopter has done for the Air Force, and to be a part of transitioning to a newer airframe to uphold the same mission,” Griggs said.

“This is my favorite aircraft in the Air Force,” he said. “Lots of good memories on it. Lots of time, but it is time for something new, something with better modernization to be more effective in the area.”

NATO allies worry that the six-month review, announced in June, will lead to large-scale cuts to the roughly 80,000 U.S. forces across Europe and punish countries that President Donald Trump believes failed to support the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

The Pentagon’s “Terms of Reference,” which have not been previously detailed, explain the steps that the internal review will take and some of the criteria that will be used to evaluate U.S. basing decisions throughout Europe.

One important disclosure in the document is a plan for the top U.S. general in Europe to participate in a decision briefing with the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, by Sept. 18, according to the document.

That briefing will be key, according to the document, in hashing out options to develop for Hegseth.

NATO skepticism of US review process

Colby is expected to speak with NATO ambassadors about the review on Thursday at the alliance’s Brussels headquarters.

Asked about the Terms of Reference, a senior Pentagon official said the fact that a spectrum of options would be generated, in detail, underscored the seriousness of the process.

“We want to be able to talk through the pros and cons of a variety of different force levels or dispositions,” the official told Reuters.

It is unclear, however, whether the details will convince European officials skeptical of the review process, who say privately they are concerned Washington’s decision is all but made.

The Trump administration has long signaled it intends to reduce the military resources it devotes to Europe, with the expectation that NATO allies will carry a greater share of the burden than they have historically.

Trump has also fumed that European NATO allies have long relied on U.S. security guarantees while providing inadequate support for the Iran war. Accusations include that some allies failed to grant basing and overflight access to U.S. warplanes, or did it too slowly.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has expressed some understanding of Trump’s disappointment but said the large majority of Europeans have been helpful.

The Pentagon official said the Trump administration had made clear that “we are transitioning to provide critical, more limited support with allies in the lead.”

“President Trump has also been quite rightly and clearly frustrated with certain allies’ behavior in recent months. So there’s clearly at least some demand signal to have options that would show us (downgrading) our force levels in Europe,” the official said on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.

Still, the official said the review sought to “provide a spectrum of options from where we are to wherever” the review leads.

Hegseth accuses some NATO allies of ‘free-riding’

Announcing the review in June, Hegseth chided some “free-riding” NATO allies and said the review would ensure U.S. military “access, basing, and overflight are clearly delineated.”

The Terms of Reference go further.

Beyond calling for reliable U.S. access, basing and overflight rights, called ABO, in allied NATO nations, they examine space, cyber and “intelligence architectures and infrastructure that enable U.S. global power projection,” the document says.

The Pentagon expanded the definition of ABO to ensure the U.S. takes into account all the types of support that NATO allies provide, the senior official said.

The Terms of Reference also address other ways allies will be evaluated, and appear to be in line with previous U.S. remarks by senior officials.

The document says the Pentagon will seek to determine whether allies have a credible path to meet their NATO spending pledges and fill in gaps to NATO crisis forces — known as the NATO Force Model — after U.S. reductions were announced earlier this year.

Reuters has reported on a U.S. questionnaire sent to allies to inform the review. It covers issues ranging from defense spending to strategy, procurement and support for U.S. foreign policy priorities.

“What if any restrictions has the country placed on U.S. access, basing, and overflight (ABO)? If so, why? Are they willing to reduce or eliminate any such restrictions?” the U.S. asked in its questionnaire.

“Has the country publicly opposed regulations or other measures designed to inhibit or reduce transatlantic defense industrial cooperation? If so, how? If not, would they be willing to do so?” another question read.

The responses are due by Friday.

“We are working very, very hard, and it is a relatively tight timeline,” the official said. “A lot of prior analysis will inform this, which should allow us to move quicker on our end.”

The soldier wakes at 6 a.m. after getting only three or four hours of sleep.

He showers, shaves and puts on his uniform by 7 a.m., even as his head pounds from a traumatic brain injury. Sometimes, while walking to a mandatory daily roll call, the piece of shrapnel still lodged in his back catches on his shirt.

He’s not in the barracks. He is recovering at the Soldier Recovery Unit at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“It’s horrible,” he said. “I’m here to recover, not show up in uniform and play Army games.”

This soldier was critically wounded in the Iranian attack on Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, that killed six service members and injured dozens more. Four months later, he said, he was only recently able to see a neurologist for the first time.

“There were a lot of things that they missed that I should have done a long time ago,” he said.

His experience was not isolated.

The War Horse spoke with four Army Reserve soldiers from the 103rd Sustainment Command who were wounded in the attack. They described delayed testing and treatment, inconsistent care depending on which Soldier Recovery Unit received them and restrictions from taking leave to visit family. All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they remain on active-duty orders and feared retaliation that could damage their careers.

The War Horse corroborated key details of their accounts through separate interviews and reviews of medical records, photographs and documents from the attack and its aftermath.

Though the soldiers received Purple Hearts for being wounded in combat, they said the military medical system was failing to provide the care they needed.

Two of them, interviewed separately, used nearly the same words: “The military sees us as numbers.”

The ‘Peacetime Effect’

Military medicine has long struggled with what researchers call the “peacetime effect.” Medical teams become highly proficient at treating combat casualties during war, only to see those skills deteriorate once the fighting is over.

A 2023 research paper by the Institute for Defense Analyses described the cycle bluntly. Military medical forces excel at combat care during wartime, the authors wrote, “but then see these gains erode after the wars end.”

The problem has concerned federal watchdogs for decades, said Rashmi Agarwal, director of defense capabilities and management at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Her office has monitored whether military medical personnel receive enough training and real-world experience to be prepared for battlefield casualties.

“The concern is that these personnel just simply don’t have adequate exposure to a high volume of critical injuries, and that leaves them not well prepared to treat these casualties when they’re in the battlefield,” Agarwal said.

Recent reports from the GAO and the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General have raised similar concerns.

The military has tried to close that gap by placing military medical units in civilian trauma centers where doctors, nurses and medics can regularly treat patients with severe injuries. Some military hospitals have also begun accepting civilian trauma cases to give their medical staff more experience with the kinds of wounds they could encounter in combat.

But other developments have moved in the opposite direction.

In May, ABC News reported that the Army was canceling dozens of medical training courses because of a budget shortfall, including courses intended to provide frontline combat care.

Training issues were already evident before those cuts. In an article published by the Army, a senior enlisted medic in the Minnesota Army National Guard wrote that only half of the Army Reserve and National Guard medics sent to the Middle East had completed a critical combat medicine course before deploying in 2024.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees forces in the Middle East region, and the Department of Defense did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

No Evacuation Plan

The problems in Port Shuaiba began before the March 1 attack.

Soldiers had requested additional medical support in the weeks before the strike, CBS News reported. But when the drone hit, the unit had no established plan to care for the wounded.

“There was absolutely no evacuation plan,” said an Army colonel wounded in the blast. “If someone happened to have keys for a van in their pocket, then we got that van and we loaded soldiers into it.”

A few Kuwaiti ambulances arrived, but the colonel said most of the wounded were transported in an improvised rush.

It was “Googling what the closest hospital was and just driving in a panic,” he said.

Several of the most seriously injured underwent emergency surgery at a Kuwaiti hospital and were medically evacuated on March 4, according to people familiar with their treatment and to open-source flight-tracking data.

Others remained in Kuwait for more than a week despite perforated eardrums, shrapnel wounds and symptoms of traumatic brain injury. They stayed in safe houses, eating military field rations and takeout while waiting to leave the country.

A medic eventually conducted traumatic brain injury assessments, which helped document that the injuries occurred in combat. But it wasn’t until nine days after the attack that the soldiers boarded a flight to Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

When they arrived, the colonel said he felt relieved. He believed the wounded troops would finally receive comprehensive medical care at Landstuhl Medical Center.

Instead, “one by one they turned us away,” he said.

Multiple soldiers said Landstuhl staff told them that because they had not arrived on a formal medical evacuation flight, they were not being treated as wounded in action. They were denied inpatient beds and told to schedule outpatient appointments weeks later, in April or May.

Officials at Landstuhl did not respond to questions from The War Horse.

The War Horse spoke with multiple experts in military medicine about the soldier’s dealings with Landstuhl staff. All of them said the term “wounded in action” is typically determined by whether troops are wounded by enemy combatants, not by the type of flight they take.

“If you have rated a Purple Heart, which can only be obtained by an injury sustained from direct contact with the enemy, then that’s a MEDEVAC,” said retired Rear Adm. David Lane, a former Navy surgeon who deployed with the Marines and retired in 2018.

By the time the soldiers reached Fort Hood in mid-March, they were frustrated and still in pain.

They had gone days without being able to refill prescriptions issued at the hospital in Kuwait. One soldier with a badly injured shoulder had been relying on Motrin and Tylenol. At Fort Hood, she said, she repeatedly had to remind medical providers that she had survived a drone strike.

A couple of weeks after arriving, one of the soldiers received a call from a German phone number. Landstuhl was finally ready for the appointment he had been told to schedule before leaving Germany.

Alone in the Recovery Unit

At the end of March, the soldiers were told they could continue recovering in the Army’s Soldier Recovery Units, or SRUs, a network of 14 facilities for wounded, injured or ill soldiers with complex medical needs. Several members of the unit chose to go home instead.

Others asked to remain together. The Army denied the request and sent them to units across the country, generally based on their home of record. The soldiers were told the policy would place them closer to family and other support.

Instead, some said, the separation left them feeling even more isolated.

“I literally lived in my room by myself,” one soldier said. “It kind of took a toll on my mental [health].”

She asked to join group therapy but was told there were no openings. She requested leave to visit family and was denied. Eventually, she left the Soldier Recovery Unit and turned to the Department of Veterans Affairs for care.

“I was just so fed up, and I didn’t want to be isolated again,” she said.

But getting care through VA also proved difficult, this soldier said. She said primary care appointments were repeatedly canceled, and because her military medical records had not been transferred into the VA system, she could not receive referrals for specialty care, such as neurology or orthopedics.

“I see why a lot of soldiers snap,” she said. “Because if you’re physically wounded and you’re fighting the VA or you’re fighting military doctors, it messes with your mental health. You give up.”

The War Horse told VA it could not share the soldier’s name or facility because doing so would identify her as a source. The department did not dispute any of her specific claims about her care. Instead, VA press secretary Quinn Slaven criticized the reporting and the reporter, saying she “is not interested in verifying facts” and “prefers to write about hearsay.”

Not everyone describes the recovery units negatively.

The soldier at Walter Reed said his appointments appeared to receive priority, though some were still scheduled two or three months away. Still, he wanted to return home to the Midwest, where he could be near his wife and children and receive treatment at a local trauma center.

“Why can’t they keep me in orders, send me home where I’ll probably do a lot better mentally, and let me finish out care there?” he said.

The Army Reserve colonel recovering in another SRU said he appreciated the support of the SRU staff. But it took two months for the unit to arrange a CT scan for a persistent cough. The scan showed abnormal tissue growth in his lungs, possibly from inhaling unknown toxic fumes during the blast.

One problem, he said, is that SRU patients use the same medical facilities as everyone else on the installation. That can leave combat-wounded soldiers waiting alongside patients seeking care for appendicitis, broken bones and other conditions.

“There should be a mechanism, I think, to just push us to the front of the line for some of these initial tests, if nothing else,” the colonel said.

Some soldiers have already been discharged from the SRUs and cleared to return to duty.

One said he was told his injuries were not severe enough to require complex care, despite a traumatic brain injury, hearing loss and post-traumatic stress disorder. He is now trying to obtain treatment through the civilian health care system.

“I’ve been struggling to get mental help,” he said. He has also not yet seen a neurologist.

“It’s a whole complex system that at some point, even me as a soldier, I just give up on it.”

On July 29, 13 Democratic lawmakers wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanding answers about the treatment of soldiers from the 103rd Sustainment Command.

“We are alarmed by reports of failures of DoD to provide medical care for soldiers from the Army’s 103rd Sustainment Command who were injured in the strike,” they wrote.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, one of the lawmakers who signed the letter, told The War Horse that she had heard directly from troops with serious brain injuries who waited weeks for care.

“That is absolutely unacceptable,” Baldwin said.

For several survivors of the drone attack, however, the larger concern is what their experience says about the military’s ability to care for the next wave of wounded troops as the war with Iran continues.

“These soldiers that are getting injured, they have to advocate for themselves,” said the reservist still recovering at Walter Reed. “If they don’t, they’re not going to receive proper care, and they’re going to be screwed.”

Reps. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., said in a letter Wednesday to VA Secretary Doug Collins that recent department directives eliminated dedicated LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator positions, dismantled specialized support networks and restricted tailored healthcare resources for LGBTQ+ veterans.

The lawmakers asked VA to bring back dedicated coordinator positions across its health care systems, rescind restrictions on LGBTQ+ support groups and staff training and explain how the department will ensure veterans retain access to those support networks.

The letter follows two internal Veterans Health Administration communications released this year that changed the designation of the coordinators and the national support activities around the program.

A June 12 memorandum from VHA Under Secretary for Health John Bartrum directed that LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinators be redesignated as “Care Coordinators.” The memo said the coordinators would facilitate health care and benefits for all veterans and restricted the use of VHA funds, official time, facilities or other resources for activities promoting what it called “gender-ideology or gender-identity.”

The memo also required VHA officials to certify that activities deemed noncompliant had ended.

According to an internal VHA email obtained by The Advocate, the program’s specialized national support activities and resources were to be discontinued. The email directed the discontinuation of monthly coordinator calls, regional leadership calls, new-coordinator orientations and the program’s community of practice. National communications, processes and procedures specific to the program were also to end, while dedicated Microsoft Teams channels and SharePoint resources were to be archived.

VHA Directive 1340, issued Sept. 21, 2022, required VA medical facilities to designate at least one LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator. The directive says the program was established in 2016 and that the coordinators’ duties had expanded since its inception.

Those duties included helping veterans access appropriate services, identifying health care needs, addressing gaps or conflicts in clinical processes and maintaining relationships with community organizations and local resources.

The lawmakers describe the LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator positions as eliminated. The June VA memorandum, however, says the positions were redesignated as “Care Coordinators.” Publicly available documents do not establish that individuals who previously served as LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinators were removed from VA employment.

VA’s current public-facing webpages use different designations for care coordinators at different facilities.

For example, VA Tampa’s care-coordinator webpage, updated Aug. 24, identifies an “LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator.” The page also provides information about visitation, family definitions, confidentiality of sexual-orientation and sexual-behavior information, and procedures for changing names or sex in medical records.

Meanwhile, VA Tennessee Valley’s care-coordinator webpage, updated Aug. 25, identifies a “Veterans Care Coordinator.” The page continues to list services including mental health care, hormone therapy, gender-affirming prosthetics and HIV and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment.

When asked about the changes, the VA pointed Military Times to its June 12 memorandum.

Moulton and Houlahan said the changes could create confusion and discourage LGBTQ+ veterans from seeking medical and mental health care. They cited the history of discrimination faced by LGBTQ+ service members and veterans and called for VA to restore the specialized support infrastructure.

“Our heroes earned their care through courage, duty, and sacrifice. We owe them nothing less than our unwavering commitment to their health, well-being, and dignity,” Moulton and Houlahan wrote.

President Donald Trump ordered the lowering of the flags on the day of her passing as a “mark of respect” for her memory, directing all flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House, public buildings and grounds, military posts and naval stations and naval vessels throughout the U.S. and its territories and possessions until sunset on Sept. 1.

Alongside those locations, Trump decreed that American flags would be flown at half-staff at all U.S. embassies, legations, consular officers and other abroad facilities, which include military installations, naval vessels and stations, according to a presidential action.

“In her honor, I am lowering the American flag throughout the United States for a one week period beginning tonight at 6:00PM,” Trump wrote in a Tuesday social media post.

Parton, who is known for her successful music career and philanthropy, died in Nashville, Tennessee, her nephew Bryan Seaver announced in a video posted to the icon’s Instagram account.

“A rhinestone life that shone bright enough for the world to see, Dolly will forever stand as an inspiration not only through her timeless music and prolific songwriting, but also her wit, warmth, and kindness that made us all feel like family,” a message says on Instagram with a picture of Parton that reads, “I will always love you.”

Parton’s publicist Marcel Pariseau told CNN that the singer died after a “brief battle with cancer” and was admitted at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.

During her storied 60-year career, Parton spent time performing for American troops in support of the military community.

In 1991, Parton visited troops at Fort Hood, Texas, during Operation Desert Storm. The singer landed a picture of herself on a KC-135 Stratotanker air refueling aircraft at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base, Tennessee, in September 2004.

The following year, Parton performed at the Grand Ole Opry in support of the Department of Defense’s “America Supports You” campaign, with the feed being broadcast across 177 U.S. military stations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More recently, Parton was also a participant in the USO Military Virtual Programming series in December 2022, allowing deployed service members and their families to chat with her virtually.

A half-staff American flag notification says that the American flags will be returned to full-staff at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 1.

Viewers will see the Falcons donning the special 2026 edition of the Air Power Legacy Series uniform for the Navy game on Oct. 3 at the Air Force Academy’s stadium, according to a Tuesday release.

The special uniform showcases details symbolizing the stealth bomber throughout its design, from its backplate and patches to its red towel. The uniform has depictions of the stealth bomber in silver, and “B-21″ can be seen printed on the helmet.

Images and a video showing the uniform display phrases like “power projection” and “strategic deterrence” in place of a player’s last name on the uniform’s backplates. Patches on the player’s shoulder either represent the Air Force Global Strike Command, 412th Test Wing at Edwards Air Force Base that manages the B-21 development, or the Air Force Materiel Command.

The red towel tucked into the player’s side says “remove before flight,” an homage to the red ribbon safety warning usually seen while aircraft are on the ground to be removed before flight.

“There’s something powerful about seeing the future of American airpower represented on the uniforms of cadets who are themselves the future of our Air Force,” Tom Jones, Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems corporate vice president and president, said in a company release.

The B-21 Raider is a stealth bomber capable of conventional and nuclear munitions, and its manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, is developing the sixth-generation aircraft.

The active-duty officer, Maj. Jason Watson, denounced Trump and Vance last month for actions ​including going to war with Iran without congressional authorization, according ​to a video of the protest event posted online.

In ⁠the video, the U.S. Capitol Police can be seen detaining Watson, ​who held a protest sign calling for their impeachment, conviction ​and removal.

Watson’s lawyer said in a statement that the airman would face charges under three articles, including Article 88 -- a rarely used provision which accuses him of contempt towards officials.

“Major Watson acted knowing the risks to his career and his liberty,” said Christopher Mutimer, counsel for Watson.

“It is my hope that other Americans who feel powerless in this moment will take some measure of courage from his willingness to speak and to stand by his convictions,” Mutimer said.

The Air Force confirmed Watson had been charged and said he would continue to be held in pre-trial confinement and be afforded the right to due process.

Laws governing U.S. military service members place restrictions on their political activities, particularly while ​in uniform. Article ​88 of ⁠the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits officers from using “contemptuous words against the President, ​the Vice President, Congress” and other U.S. representatives.

Carpenter earned the nation’s highest military honor for his actions on Nov. 21, 2010, in Marjah, Afghanistan. When a grenade landed near him and fellow Marine Nick Eufrazio during a firefight, Carpenter threw himself toward the blast to shield his teammate. He was unconscious for five weeks afterward and lost an eye and most of his teeth, along with sustaining numerous other serious injuries.

We’re honored to be partnering with U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Medal of Honor recipient, Kyle Carpenter, on the Call of Duty Endowment (C.O.D.E.) Valor Pack. Coming day 1 on October 23 to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

The C.O.D.E. Valor Pack will be available on Xbox Series… pic.twitter.com/t9IWo89vxu

— Call of Duty Endowment (@CODE4Vets) August 21, 2026

President Barack Obama presented Carpenter with the Medal of Honor at the White House in 2014, making him the youngest living recipient at the time.

The Valor Pack is the latest entry in a long-running tradition for the Call of Duty Endowment, Activision’s charity dedicated to helping veterans land quality jobs after leaving the service. Proceeds from the bundle will go directly to that mission.

It follows a similar release tied to Black Ops 7, which featured retired NASA astronaut and 9/11-era special operations veteran Chris Cassidy, and comes on the heels of the Endowment’s operator bundle honoring Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient Danielle Green, the first female combat veteran featured as a playable character in the franchise.

Since its founding in 2009, the Call of Duty Endowment has placed more than 150,000 veterans into civilian careers, funded entirely through Activision Blizzard’s overhead support so that all player donations go straight toward job placement.

Modern Warfare 4 launches Oct. 23 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC and Nintendo Switch 2. An open beta for all players runs Aug. 28 through Sept. 1, following a preorder beta already underway.

2nd Lt. Leah R. Borsich, 23, was a project programmer in the 611th Civil Engineer Squadron at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, located in Anchorage, Alaska, according to a Monday base release.

Borsich was among eight people killed Aug. 20 when a civilian-contracted aircraft crashed at Cape Newenham Long Range Radar Site Airport, roughly 450 miles west-southwest of Anchorage.

“Lt. Borsich was a positive leader who brought tremendous energy and enthusiasm to our command,” Col. Timothey Meerstein, commander of Pacific Air Forces Regional Support Center, said in the release. “She led with professionalism, compassion and purpose, and her presence strengthened the bonds between the people around her. She made a lasting impact on our team, and we are grateful for her service and commitment to our nation.”

With support from an HC-130J Combat King II, an Alaska Air National Guard HH-60W Jolly Green II landed near the crash site, and personnel from the 212th Rescue Squadron, housed at Elmendorf-Richardson, confirmed there were no survivors of the crash, a Thursday release says.

The flight, which was chartered by the Army Corps of Engineers and operated by Security Aviation, crashed with eight personnel on board, resulting in the death of two pilots and six passengers.

Two Army Corps of Engineers employees from the Alaska District were also killed in the crash.

Sabrina Hansen and Hayden Scalis were both from Anchorage and working within the district’s Engineering Division, according to a Monday Corps release.

Hansen worked as a fire protection engineer, while Scalis served as a mechanical engineer.

They were on official duty conducting a routine project site visit in support of the Air Force to inspect and perform maintenance on a new fire suppression system, according to the release.

“We mourn the tragic loss of our selfless teammates. They were public servants and true professionals, dedicated to securing our nation,” Lt. Gen. William H. Graham, 56th Chief of Engineers and USACE commanding general, said in the release. “Our thoughts are with their families and colleagues during this time of immeasurable loss.”

Clint Johnson, Alaska region chief of the National Transportation Safety Board, said in a news conference following the crash that the aircraft was a Cessna 441.

Johnson said that preliminary data shows that the aircraft had a missed approach to the remote location of Cape Newenham and crashed upon a second attempt.

“What I mean by missed approach is this airplane was operating in IFR or instrument meteorological conditions, which means the pilot or the pilots in this case were navigating solely by instruments,” Johnson said. “Weather conditions would not allow them to actually visually see the ground.”

Anchorage Center lost contact with the aircraft after the second missed approach and a search began shortly after. The “down” weather at the time of the incident impacted the ability to find the wreckage. The crash occurred around 11:45 a.m. local time, and the wreckage was not located until late that afternoon.

There was a post-crash fire, Johnson said, and the wreckage was found in an area of rising terrain, about a third of a mile to the west of the runway the crew was headed toward.

The crash is currently under investigation by the NTSB, working with the Federal Aviation Administration and possibly Security Aviation, Johnson said.

Cape Newenham Long Range Radar Site, managed by the Pacific Air Forces Regional Support Center, is part of a network of remote radar sites that track aircraft in Alaska’s airspace and along its borders.

Her grandfather, Lt. Murray Simon, seldom spoke of wartime experiences, let alone the details regarding being shot down in a B-24 on a secret mission one month prior to D-Day.

All that was left was a piece of that downed plane — an antenna cover loop — painted black to blend into the cover of darkness.

Still, that and a shoebox full of military medals was all “just a little bit of mythology to me,” Sanders told Military Times.

But in 2016, the thread of Simon’s war years started to come undone thanks to Sanders’ persistence and a 1949 recording of the TV hit “This Is Your Life.”

The series, which ran from 1950 to 1990, ran on the premise of luring unsuspecting guests onto the show and then surprising them with loved ones or those whose lives they had touched.

In 1949, the guest of honor for one episode featured, according to its host Ralph Edwards, “a Marine whose life has been packed with enough adventure, thrills, hair-raising escapes, raw courage, and excitement to make half a dozen movies.”

The guest, Peter Ortiz, a lanky man with thick brunette hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, strolled onto stage — only to be surprised by Sanders’ grandfather a short while later.

With that recording and the blackened antenna cover loop, Sanders began to unravel the ties that bound these two men inexplicably together.

“Who was this multilingual, Hollywood-handsome figure who had parachuted behind enemy lines with bags of cash and ammunition for the Maquis, who he was at work training, between blowing up Wehrmacht railcars and eavesdropping on off-duty Nazis at pubs?” Sanders pondered, adding, “How was this not already a Netflix series?”

The full picture of Ortiz, a Marine Corps officer and Office of Strategic Services legend, quickly took shape, resulting in “Ortiz’s War,” written by Sanders and her co-author, retired Marine and CIA officer Nicholas Reynolds.

The book, published Tuesday, weaves the tale of the most battle-decorated member of the OSS who lived a multitude of lives before his death in 1988: as a French Legionnaire, a POW, a U.S. Marine, a spy and, to cap off his career, an actor.

While the OSS, created in 1942 as the first independent U.S. intelligence agency, was short-lived, the exploits of some of its legendary “glorious amateurs” such as William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Julia Child and Mo Berg live on within the American lexicon.

Ortiz, however, despite his many hair-raising adventures and numerous accolades, has lurked in the classified shadows for decades.

Something Sanders and Reynolds hope to rectify in “Ortiz’s War.”

“Even within this sort of very fascinating subset of American operatives, he really stood out,” Sanders said.

One of only 80 Marine Corps officers to serve in the OSS during the war, Ortiz was originally tasked with evaluating the strength and capabilities of the local resistance movement in the Vercors area in southeastern France. He then organized and armed the Maquis in preparation for the long-awaited D-Day assault, according to the CIA.

While operating in France, Ortiz often donned his U.S. Marine uniform — a unique sight, even after June 6, 1944.

“Ortiz felt that entering occupied France at a time when doing so was incredibly dangerous — and there weren’t many allies around — that the actual impact of that gesture on the resistance” was meant to boost morale when the promises of the liberation of France seemed more like a whisper of hope rather than reality, Sanders said.

“He was very symbolic, very literary in a lot of ways,” she continued. “He was there to arm, assess, and mobilize the resistance. So here he was coming in the middle of occupied France and he looks the part.”

That, Sanders said, was very much deliberate.

It was there, while operating in France, that Sanders’ personal family story intertwines with Ortiz’s.

Shot down in May 1944, her grandfather, Simon, had hurled himself out of his burning plane before being rescued by members of the French Underground. Initially hidden by a French Army doctor, Sanders recounts that after the war the doctor, tongue in cheek, demanded “two eggs” from the U.S. government because he had given Simon his last two.

Details like that, Sanders noted, while researching the book, “were very humanizing.”

From there, Simon was disguised as a deaf-mute Frenchman and transported to Valence, France, where he was introduced to the American commando.

Ortiz, codenamed “Chambellan” or ”Jean-Pierre" was the “person who, in my grandfather’s case, you would pray to be intercepted by when you’re a Jewish kid from Queens, New York, shot down over Nazi-occupied France,” Sanders said.

Simon’s encounter with Ortiz, who eventually led him to safety over the Pyrenees, was just one small deed in a series of larger sacrifices, however.

Following the success of Operation Overlord, Ortiz was directed to engage in acts of violent sabotage to prevent the retreating Germans from destroying key installations throughout the region.

During fighting near Albertville, France, in early August 1944, Ortiz, commanding five Marines, a Free French officer and an Army Air Forces captain, was soon overrun by several hundred troops of the German 157th Alpine Reserve Division.

Ortiz surrendered rather than risk German reprisals on the French village.

The commando made numerous escape attempts before being liberated by the British 7th Guards Armored Division on April 29, 1945. By October of that year, with the OSS disbanded Ortiz set his cap on Hollywood.

As for Simon, he “lived and died very grateful,” Sanders said.

“Ortiz’s War” by Nicholas Reynolds and Katie S. Sanders is out now.

On Sunday, the guard debuted the new ensemble at the Freedom 250 Grand Prix in Washington, D.C., according to a Friday release.

“The public will now be able to immediately recognize us as Guardians and key members of America’s warfighting capabilities,” Chief Master Sgt. Ross Koehler, Space Force Honor Guard senior enlisted leader, said in the release.

The new uniform is meant to replace the modified Air Force service uniform guardians have worn since the branch was established seven years ago as the Space Force moves to curate a unique “culture and visual identity,” per the statement.

The guard took eight months to make final touches after its guidance was released in mid-January, with the design striving to preserve the core identity of the Space Force and showcase colors from the service flag, Operational Camouflage Pattern uniform name tag and Class A uniform.

The ceremonial uniform differs from the standard service dress with its blue belt, cap and rope draped over the service member’s left shoulder.

“Having a dedicated ceremonial uniform ensures that our Guardians present a unified, unmistakable presence during high-visibility global missions,” Koehler said.

“The updated uniform reflects the force’s evolving individual culture and pride in those who wear it,” he continued.

VoteVets, a non-profit group and political action organization that largely supports Democrat veteran candidates, launched a 10-day billboard campaign Monday in 10 U.S. cities that features photos of President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on a fiery background.

“Trump & Hegseth’s Iran War means higher prices for you with no end in sight,” the signs declare.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, senior adviser to VoteVets, told Military Times the effort is intended to connect “affordability with accountability,” linking political leaders’ actions with higher costs at the gas pump and grocery stores.

“[Service members] tend to be married young with children, and when you allow the cost of living — not just gasoline, but the whole business, grocery stores — … it’s a visible increase in prices that we are bearing,” Eaton said during an interview Friday.

Iran and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, killing numerous Iranian leaders, including its top official, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Trump said the strikes were meant to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

“[Iran] attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas and could soon reach the American homeland,” Trump said in a social media post following the attack.

Since the opening salvos, other regional powers have become involved, and the control of the Strait of Hormuz — a vital shipping lane through which roughly 25% of the world’s oil is transported — has fallen into dispute, interrupting maritime commerce.

The conflict has caused natural gas and oil prices to swing, affecting prices of the commodities. But Eaton said the billboards also seek to call attention to the rising national debt, which surpassed $40 trillion this week.

The national debt limit has doubled in the past decade under President Joe Biden and Trump, growing by $8.4 trillion while Biden was in the White House. When Trump took office in January 2025 that debt was hovering at $36.1 trillion.

“That level of accountability to affordability, that linkage is also what we’re trying to make clear to everybody,” Eaton said.

The locations of VoteVets’ billboard campaign include: Dayton, Ohio; West Point, New York; Fayetteville, North Carolina; San Antonio, Texas; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Tampa, Florida; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Tomah City, Wisconsin; and Savannah, Georgia.

The group’s 1,000-plus digital billboards are slated to stay up until Sept. 2.

“We are going where veterans and military families are around our nation’s military installations, and underscoring the cost of Trump and Hegseth’s neocon war to them directly,” the group said in a press release.

The United States, which has been at war with Iran since Feb. 28, requested their temporary deployment under an agreement governing the joint use of military facilities.

Iran said at the time that their deployment would constitute complicity in “aggression and war crimes”, a charge that Sofia dismissed.

The two U.S. Air Force KC-135 planes left Bulgaria on Friday, Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov told reporters.

The U.S. authorities could not be immediately reached for comment.

The deployment of the aircraft, approved by Bulgaria’s parliament on July 22, led to protests by nearby residents who feared the planes would be attacked by Iranian missiles and drones.

Stoyanov said all the aircraft’s flights during their temporary deployment had been training missions over allied countries and that Bulgaria had “no information about direct threats to our national security.”

“We are working in full coordination with the U.S. government and had prior information, which is why all our decisions were well-founded,” he said.

The Defense Department’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, released Friday, estimated that 20,492 active-duty service members, including 9,860 women and 10,632 men, were sexually assaulted in the year preceding the fiscal year 2025 survey, down from 29,000 in 2023.

The 2025 figures represent a drop in sexual assaults from roughly 35,900 in 2021.

“The FY 2025 report underscores our ongoing commitment to maintaining high standards, protecting our people, and building a unified, ready, and lethal fighting force,” Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata said in a statement Friday.

The assault estimates were derived from the department’s 2025 Workplace Experiences Survey that polls troops on various topics such as sexual assault and harassment, work climate, leadership and training.

According to the fiscal year 2025 survey, the estimated rate of assaults dropped among active-duty women from 6.8% to 4.3%, and among active-duty men from 1.4% to 1.0%.

At the same time, reports of sexual assaults increased, with 7,998 filed in fiscal year 2025. Given the results of the survey, an estimated one in three individuals filed a formal report of an assault, up from one in four in 2023.

Defense Department officials have long encouraged service members to report assaults as a means to address the issue in the ranks. The Pentagon uses the reports metric to help determine whether department and service sexual assault prevention and reporting initiatives are succeeding.

“Estimated percentage of victimized service members making Restricted and Unrestricted Reports – desired state is increase,” the report stated.

According to the report, the Marine Corps had the highest prevalence of unwanted sexual contact against women, at 6.4% of female Marines. The Navy had the highest prevalence of unwanted contact against men, at 1.5%.

The Air Force had the lowest prevalence of unwanted contact reported by its members at 2.8% by women and 0.7% by men.

The report noted that a majority of service members trusted their leaders to handle the problem, with 72% of women and 80% of men saying that those involved were “treated fairly.”

Trust in the system also has risen since 2023, according to the data, but female members still struggle with confidence in the process.

In 2025, 64% of men and 41% of women said they believed the system would protect their privacy, up from 61% and 41%, respectively.

69% of men and 45% of women said they trusted the military to ensure their safety after a sexual assault, up from 66% and 43% in 2023.

Female service members reportedly expressed more confidence in the resources provided by their sexual assault response coordinators and support team, with more than 60% saying they were satisfied with support from their victim advocates, sexual assault response coordinators and assigned attorneys.

Male troops were less satisfied with the services of their sexual assault teams; however, between 36% and 47% expressed confidence in their victim advocates, response coordinators and counsel.

The military services were required in 2023 to establish independent legal structures to handle serious crimes, including sexual assault, domestic violence, murder and manslaughter. The Office of Special Trial Counsel directly handles investigations and decisions to prosecute such cases, removing the chain of command from a role it historically held in judicial proceedings.

The first survey since the Office of Special Trial Counsel’s creation found that men were “significantly more likely” than women to trust that the office would treat them fairly if they were to experience a sexual assault, with 65% of men reporting favorably. Just 44% of women expressed the same confidence, however.

In the past, service members have hesitated to report incidents of sexual assault out of fear of retaliation from their leadership, peers and/or perpetrator. A 2021 study found that 31% of men and 28% of women said they experienced retaliation after a sexual assault.

The report released Friday found that retaliation continues to be a concern. Among women service members who indicated an experience of Unwanted Sexual Contact (USC), 17% reported saying they experienced retaliation prohibited by law. For both men and women, one of the most common reasons for not coming forward was “worrying about backlash from coworkers and peers.”

Along with the decrease in sexual assault, the prevalence of sexual harassment also declined among men and women. An estimated 4.4%, or 44,656 service members, said they experienced sexual harassment, down from 5.8% in 2023. Among women, 17.5%, or 39,744 service members, said they experienced sexual harassment, down from 24.7% in 2023.

Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group dedicated to promoting equality and ending sexual assault in the ranks, said Friday that its analysis of the 2025 data found that service members experienced 38% more unwanted sexual contacts than a decade ago. The group also noted that the 4.3% rate of sexual assault among military women in 2025 was the same as the rate reported in 2016.

The Defense Department cautions that the survey measure was substantially revised in 2021 and that prevalence estimates from 2021 onward cannot be scientifically compared with estimates from earlier years.

The rate among men, at 1%, was higher than the 2018 rate of 0.7%, the group noted.

The advocates said they have heard from personnel whose prosecutions never occurred or whose evidence and documents were lost, and victims were pushed out of the military without proper medical care, including mental health treatment.

“I wouldn’t take these numbers at face value, and neither should the American public. They are not what we are seeing,“ said Protect Our Defenders Senior Vice President Josh Connolly.

“Survivors are more afraid to come forward than they were two years ago, and this administration has spent the past year giving them reason to be – rolling back whistleblower protections, making it harder to report anonymously, warning people who come forward that they may be punished for it. A number that falls because people stopped talking is not progress,” Connolly said.

In the report, department officials attributed the decline to numerous changes they have made to address sexual assault and harassment in the ranks, which they called harmful behaviors that “act as internal adversaries, eroding the very foundation of our operational readiness and unit lethality.”

According to the department, the DoD assessed Sexual Assault and Prevention and Reporting Offices in Indo-Pacific Command in 2025, engaged at joint bases to improve collaboration across the services, conducted unit evaluations and standardized the workforce to address issues with the program.

“Dignity, respect, and discipline are foundational to the warrior ethos and the overall preparedness of the force. Sexual assault and sexual harassment undermine these values, eroding trust and threatening the mission,” Tata said in the release.

While the military trains medics relentlessly to treat the wound, we do not train them to handle the question.

I have spent years on both sides of that moment. I am a 68W combat medic instructor and a Tactical Combat Casualty Care instructor with the West Virginia Army National Guard, and I am also an endorsed chaplain.

This role encompasses teaching soldiers how to control hemorrhage and manage an airway to sitting with them months later, when the physical injury has healed, though something else has not.

The Army should close the distance between those two conversations by building trauma-informed care into how we train medics.

I expect the first objection, because I’ve made it myself. There is no time for feelings under fire. A medic has minutes, sometimes seconds, and every one of them belongs to the casualty needing life-saving treatment.

That objection misunderstands what trauma-informed care is. It should not be viewed as a separate task competing for time on the timeline. Instead, it is intertwined in the manner in which a medic performs the tasks.

Telling a casualty what you are about to do before you do it costs three seconds and keeps the individual from experiencing treatment as one more thing being done without warning.

Keeping a level voice and clear instructions is not bedside manner, but a technique that lowers physiological arousal in a patient who is already flooded. These should not be viewed as soft skills bolted onto medicine, but medicine itself.

The reason this matters is simple: soldiers are people first. They come to us carrying whatever burdens were there before the uniform — childhood adversity, losses, things never processed or disclosed. The injury a medic is treating, therefore, may not be that soldier’s first trauma. A medic who understands that will read the situation and respond differently than one taught to see only the wound.

With this approach, there are three key things every medic should be trained to recognize:

• Acute stress reactions: panic, dissociation, a casualty who has gone flat and unreachable.
• Post-traumatic symptoms in the days and weeks that follow: hypervigilance, nightmares, intrusive memories.
• Moral injury: the toll of having done, or failed to prevent, something that violates what you believe about yourself.

That last point is an area in which I have spent most of my career as a chaplain, and it is badly under-recognized in medicine because it does not present as a symptom.

Medics are positioned to catch all three areas earlier than anyone else in the formation. They are often the first medical contact for troops — and sometimes the only one — which makes them the gate to every referral that follows. A medic who has never been taught what to look for will not make the call. We know this is not a deficiency of compassion, but a general lack of awareness about what call to make.

So the ask is concrete. Add trauma-informed care instruction to 68W advanced individual training, and build it into annual recertification alongside TCCC, where it will actually stick.

Teach psychological first aid as a skill with steps: active listening, normalizing the stress response and connecting the soldier to resources. Teach medics how to avoid retraumatizing a patient during treatment. And make the handoff to a chaplain or behavioral health a taught, practiced action rather than something a medic must figure out alone. Doing so will contribute to both wellness and readiness.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates that more than half of Americans have experienced a traumatic event, and the Department of Veterans Affairs reports higher rates of PTSD among women. Our formations reflect those numbers.

Soldiers whose psychological injuries are addressed early are more likely to return to their units and stay there. Every service member we lose downstream is a trained soldier who is not quickly replaced.

As the force plans for prolonged field care and longer evacuation timelines in future fights, medics will hold casualties longer before handing them off. Hours they spend with frightened, injured troops will matter more, not less.

Nothing in this approach is asking medics to become counselors. However, the Army must acknowledge that a medic is already doing psychological work in that moment, competently or not, trained or not. We might as well train to improve it.

Medics are taught to keep a body alive. We should also prepare them to help the soldier who walks away.

Staff Sgt. Jay Kotsko is a 68W combat medic instructor and Tactical Combat Casualty Care instructor with the West Virginia Army National Guard and an ecclesiastically endorsed chaplain. He holds a Doctor of Ministry in chaplaincy and is the author of “Even Here: Finding God in the Fractured Timelines of Trauma and Recovery.” The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official position of DoD, the Army or the West Virginia National Guard.

The department sought to fund 90% of its maintenance needs, but the GAO found that the services continue to request funding for only about 80% of their needs, according to the report released Friday. The funding shortfall led to an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

“DOD has not fully determined the risks to its mission and to the quality of life of its personnel as a result of not meeting its funding goal,” the report reads. “Fully determining and communicating these risks would provide better information to DOD and Congress to weigh budget priorities.”

GAO authors examined Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force military installations across the U.S. and its territories for this report.

The report found that the department does not request the full amount of maintenance funding as recommended by its Facilities Sustainment Model, which estimates the average annual sustainment funding requirement for facilities based on their size, location and other factors.

This contributed to the increased backlog of deferred maintenance needs. Even though in 2014 an Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics memorandum was issued to establish a goal of funding regular maintenance at 90% or higher of the amount estimated by the Facilities Sustainment Model, the GAO continues to find that the services are not meeting that goal.

Instead, the Army, Navy and Air Force requested about 80% for fiscal years 2017 through 2020. The Marine Corps requested funding decreased from 80% to 40% over the past five fiscal years, opting to fund more facility restoration and modernization projects in exchange for reduced sustainment funding, the report says.

Maintenance and improvement projects’ backlogs can contribute to service members’ quality of life and negatively affect installations’ missions.

“By requesting less funding for installation maintenance and improvement projects than its models and experts recommend, DOD has chosen to accept some degree of risk that mission or quality of life will be negatively affected,” the report says.

In past reports, the GAO has found that barracks maintenance were “chronically neglected” and resulted in poor conditions of enlisted service members that affected their quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in substandard barracks, with some hosting potentially serious health and safety risks, a 2023 report found.

Of the 31 recommendations issued in 2023, the department implemented 19 as of April 2026. But many remain unaddressed, such as establishing an oversight structure for barracks, the report says.

The GAO found that challenges in hiring and retaining key maintenance workers are seen in remote and isolated locations and other obstacles include private sector employment competition as well as federal hiring, pay and work eligibility practices.

Military departments have not fully identified the extent of maintenance workforce shortages or created plans to address the hurdles.

The GAO also found that installations rely on maintenance work order data systems to respond to needs, but the tracking is limited and the data is generally unreliable for determining the effectiveness of maintenance performed across the services.

In the report, the GAO made 13 recommendations, including strengthening departmental oversight, determining risks associated with funding maintenance below levels proposed and improving maintenance data reliability.

The department fully or partially concurred with 12 recommendations and did not concur with one.

New Zealand’s Civil Aviation Authority was aware the flight from Christchurch pivoted following the agency’s issue of a Notice to Airmen, or NOTAM, to the aircraft, a CAA spokesperson told Military Times.

The Russian Air Traffic Management Corporation notified the CAA of the space activity, the spokesperson said, causing the authority to issue the NOTAM to the U.S. Air Force flight.

In a follow-up statement, the spokesperson said that the CAA was made aware by the Russian air traffic agency of a planned missile launch and associated potential hazard to international airspace within New Zealand’s Oceanic Flight Information Region.

“As a result, we put in place a danger area and issued a NOTAM to alert aircraft operators to the potential hazard,” the spokesperson said. “This does not prevent aircraft from flying through the area, operators make their decisions based on the information available.”

NOTAMs alert aircraft operators of potential hazards to allow them to make operational decisions around flight planning.

“Much of our Oceanic FIR is over international waters, where we have limited control over activities,” the spokesperson said, referring to the roughly 30 million square kilometers of international waters that spans across the South Pacific Ocean, Southern Ocean and Tasman Sea.

“It is normal practice for Airspace Authorities and Air Traffic Service Providers, provided with such hazard notifications to issue NOTAMs,” the spokesperson continued.

Flight-tracking data from Flightradar24 shows a U.S. Air Force C-17A Globemaster III took off from Christchurch International Airport, New Zealand, on Tuesday at 9 a.m. local time, with the call sign ICE28.

The site shows the aircraft landed around 11:30 a.m. back at Christchurch.

The flight was a routine resupply mission scheduled for this time of year, a U.S. Pacific Air Forces spokesperson told Military Times.

“Christchurch is the gateway to Antarctica,” the PACAF spokesperson said. “Both the United States Air Force and New Zealand Defense Force conduct operations and logistical support out of Christchurch in support of our Antarctic science programs.”

The turnaround happened during the U.S. Air Force’s annual Winter Fly-in period, or WinFly, which usually occurs toward the end of August and delivers teams, equipment and cargo to McMurdo Station and Scott Base, both in Antarctica, ahead of its research season.

The PACAF spokesperson declined to comment on whether this flight was in direct support of the WinFly, but a 2012 Air Force release details that a C-17 delivered over 300 passengers and 230,000 pounds of cargo that year to Antarctica.

“Using Christchurch International Airport, New Zealand as the base of operations, the mission of WinFly is to deliver advance teams and cargo to the remote research center in preparation for the main season of Operation Deep Freeze,” the release reads.

Operation Deep Freeze provides support to the U.S. Antarctic Program, managed by the National Science Foundation, that allows for continuous scientific research in the region.

Boeing’s C-17 Globemaster III is a cargo aircraft capable of fast delivery of troops and loads to main operating bases or forward bases in deployment areas. The aircraft can also complete tactical airlift and airdrop missions as well as aeromedical evacuations.

Qatar’s government requested to buy up to four KC-46As, eight PW4062 turbofan engines, 10 AN/ALR-69A radar warning receivers, 15 Guardian Laser Transmitter Assemblies for Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasure systems and 8 LAIRCM system processor replacements, according to a Thursday release.

The proposed sale also includes “non-major defense equipment,” such as precision navigation, transportation and airlift support, personnel training and training equipment and other related logistical and program support items, per the statement.

“The proposed sale will increase Qatar’s capability to meet current and future threats by enhancing its defense capabilities and interoperability with U.S. and allied forces and reinforcing Qatar’s strategic role in regional security,” the release reads.

The potential sale is meant to support U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives through assisting in Qatar’s security. The U.S. government statement describes the country as a “strategic regional partner” that continues to be an “important force” for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East.

Principal contractors for the envisioned deal include Boeing, Pratt & Whitney Military Engines, RTX Corporation and Northrop Grumman Corporation.

The proposed sale’s implementation will not require any additional U.S. government or contractor representatives to Qatar, the announcement says.

“At this time, the U.S. Government is not aware of any offset agreement proposed in connection with this potential sale,” the statement says. “Any offset agreement will be defined in negotiations between the purchaser and the contractor.”

The KC-46A provides aerial refueling support to the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and partner nations and has greater refueling, cargo and aeromedical evacuation capabilities than the aging KC-135s.

The announcement comes as questions persist surrounding the security features of a Qatari-donated Air Force One aircraft that has been modified for U.S. presidential use. President Donald Trump began using the new jet in July and has since announced it will be “maxed out” for upgrades.