Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, a Pennsylvania Democrat and former Air Force Officer, has introduced the Women Add Resourcefulness and Resilience to Improve Operational Readiness (WARRIOR) Act, which would prohibit the military services from excluding service members from any “occupational speciality, career field, or assignment” on the basis of sex.

Houlahan was joined by Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a former Army Ranger and paratrooper, and Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., a former Naval intelligence officer. Others among the 36 cosponsors include Reps. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif; Pat Ryan, D-N.Y.; Mike Thompson, D-Calif., and Derek Tran, D-Calif. All are military veterans.

The bill, which lacks Republican sponsors, is explicitly described as a response to the Pentagon review and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s comments casting doubt on the ability of women to perform in keeping with established standards in ground combat roles.

“The WARRIOR Act proactively affirms women’s qualifications to serve in combat,” according to a statement from Houlahan’s office. “The legislation amends outdated law from 1996 and 2006 to ensure that women are judged on their skills, performance, and the gender-neutral standards that women in combat are already meeting and exceeding. In so doing, the WARRIOR Act prevents any exclusion of women in our Armed Forces.”

In addition to prohibiting gender-based exclusion from jobs, the bill would require the Secretary of Defense to submit an annual report to the House and Senate Armed Services committees outlining any changes to occupational standards enacted in the previous year, “including a description of how such change predicts performance of actual, regular, and recurring duties of a military occupational specialty.”

The report must also include how many members were involuntarily moved to new jobs or separated from the service “for reasons other than discipline or pursuant to a sentence of a court-martial.”

It includes an 18-month evaluation period to add new job standards, and creates categories designed to ensure that military occupational standards reflect job requirements, separating skill categories into technical, tactical, cognitive and physical.

The bill further calls for the Pentagon to provide the committees with a copy of the combat effectiveness review, which originally was set to be completed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, but was just this month reassigned to Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

According to an NPR analysis, about 4,500 female service members now serve in ground combat roles in the Army and Marine Corps.

The lawmakers rolled out the legislation at the end of March, surrounded by leaders of a range of progressive veterans organizations, including those focused on supporting female and minority veterans.

“Since the founding of our nation, women have proudly and honorably served in defense of our country. This commonsense update to gender-neutral occupational standards reflects what we already know to be true: women are a force multiplier across the military,” Kyleanne Hunter, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said in a released statement.

“As the fastest-growing group of recruits, ensuring women remain eligible to serve in all roles is not only grounded in science — it’s essential to our national security. IAVA is encouraged to see standards that reflect both our nation’s mission and the modern force that serves it,” she concluded.

At this point, there has been no proposal to reverse the military-wide policy that opened up combat roles to women in December 2015. Likewise, it’s not precisely clear how policy will follow Hegseth’s dictum last September that women in combat roles meet “the highest male standard.”

In a separate statement, Crow cited his experiences serving alongside female service members on deployments.

“When I deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, I served alongside badass women who risked their lives to protect our nation,” he said. “Anyone willing to put on the uniform and defend this country deserves our support.”

The 100-year-old South Carolina native received the National Order of the Legion of Honour on April 9 from Anne-Laure Desjonquères, the French consul general, who noted “Mr. Cook, you are a true hero — your example gives us inspiration for the future and your legacy provides a moral compass for generations to come.”

First established by Napoleon Bonaparte in May 1802, The Order is the highest decoration in France and is divided into five degrees: Chevalier (Knight), Officier (Officer), Commandeur (Commander), Grand Officier (Grand Officer) and Grand Croix (Grand Cross).

Roughly 10,000 Americans have been awarded France’s highest distinction, with most recipients being World War II veterans who played a role in liberating France.

“There is no way that I can even attempt to explain the feeling,” Cook said at the ceremony. “As far as I’m concerned, I am so unworthy. I want to be a representative of the people who didn’t come back. They are the ones who paid the real sacrifice.”

For three years, from 1942 to 1945, daylight bombing runs by the 8th’s Flying Fortresses over Nazi Germany unleashed 697,000 tons of bombs.

Of that total, more than 47,000 were from the 8th.

Of that 47,000, the 379th Bomb Group — of which Cook was a part of — dropped 26,459 tons.

The effort to pry the claws of the Third Reich from Europe was met with deadly resistance, prompting torturous contemplation of one’s own mortality while being confronted with casualty totals that, by war’s end, would exceed 115,000 personnel from the U.S. Army Air Force.

Despite such odds, Cook told the WWII Veterans History Project, “Anytime I got in that plane and we took off, I told myself that I’m coming home. That was my attitude.”

Enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1943, Cook had dreams of becoming a P-38 fighter pilot. However, according to Cook’s account in the WWII Veterans History Project, he washed out of cadet training for what the Army called a “negative attitude regarding military aviation.”

Undeterred, the slender, 138-pound Cook found his way back to aviation, this time as an aerial gunner in the belly of the four-engine bomber.

“To me that was the most comfortable place in the plane. I was accustomed to that. I fit in it pretty good,” Cook told ABC 25 Columbia.

Flying with the of 524th Bomb Squadron, 379th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force out of Kimbolton, England, Cook participated in the bombings of enemy rail yards, airfields, factories, communication centers, synthetic fuel factories, rocket sites and enemy troop concentrations within France, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Holland.

According to the South Carolina legislature, the 379th’s combat record “was the most successful of all the 8th Air Force heavy bomber groups. The unit held records as far as bomb tonnage dropped … and exceeded all other United Kingdom-based Bomb Groups in the total number of missions flown, carrying out 330 missions between May 1943 and May 1945.”

Cook participated in the air cover during the Battle of France, bombing enemy positions from Normandy through the breakout at St. Lo, as well as during the Battle of the Bulge and the Allied assault across the Rhine River into Germany.

“We would bomb just about anything that would disrupt the [German] war effort,” he explained to the Veterans Project.

Cook flew his last mission — his 35th — on Feb. 16, 1945, and was discharged in October of that year. The veteran returned home to Lexington, South Carolina, where he ran a jewelry store for more than 20 years before his retirement in 1983.

“The Lord’s just been good to me,” said Cook at the ceremony last Thursday. “I have really enjoyed life, and I just thank the Lord for what he’s done for me.”

The six-month independent review, commissioned by Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata in December, was originally set to be performed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Washington, D.C.-area nonprofit that administers three research centers supported by federal funding. The effectiveness study, according to a Pentagon official, was set to kick off with the 10-year anniversary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s lifting of the ban on women in ground combat roles at the end of 2015.

This review, the official told Military Times on Monday, is “in line with standard [Department of War] practice for evaluating the effects of significant policy changes.”

But a reevaluation of study requirements has led to a reassignment of the work, the official said.

“The Department has since recognized the need to incorporate combat-relevant field tests, based on established tasks, conditions, and standards, into the independent review to produce the comprehensive data required for this effort,” the official said. “DoW has engaged the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to assume responsibility for the study from IDA, effective April 2026. JHU/APL, a University Affiliated Research Center, has the capability to examine existing personnel and operational data, as well as conduct the field tests, ensuring a unified effort that will further posture our warfighters to meet mission objectives.”

JHU/APL will now complete work over the next 12 months to inform what’s now being called the “Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment,” according to the Pentagon. The assessment will use established analytical techniques “to identify the dominant drivers of combat performance variance in ground combat units and provide evidence-based findings to inform force design, training, physical standards, and readiness decisions,” the official said.

A request for information to JHU/APL for more details on the study and data collection milestones did not receive an immediate response.

Pentagon officials emphasized the long tradition of conducting reviews of policy changes, citing specifically an internal assessment of the 2010 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal that was conducted in 2021, and reviews by the Pentagon-connected Rand Corporation of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and the Blended Retirement System of 2015.

Historically, these analyses have been used to evaluate major changes and their impacts, but have not carried with them the possibility of reopening the matter for potential reversal. It’s not clear that the same considerations are in play here.

In a December memo first reported on by NPR, Tata described the review as gauging “the operational effectiveness of ground combat” elements and the impact of permitting women to enter the roles.

Leaders of the Army and Marine Corps were asked to provide the Institute for Defense Analyses with a broad slate of data ranging from training performance to command climate; and metrics showing individual service members’ readiness to deploy.

An email from Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson at the time also appeared to open the door to changes based on the review, saying the Pentagon “will not compromise standards to satisfy quotas or an ideological agenda — this is common sense.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expressed opposition to women serving in combat roles in his 2024 book “The War on Warriors,” saying they couldn’t meet the physical requirement and adding, “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”

His Senate confirmation hearing in 2025 softened the stance. He said then that women would continue to have access to ground combat roles, “given the standards remain high.”

In September, he announced that ground combat jobs would be reserved for those who meet “the highest male standard.”

The Pentagon official said the pending combat effectiveness review, now to be carried out by JHU/APL, showcased the military’s commitment to “continuous learning and improvement.”

“These types of studies enable the Department to maximize our efforts in support of peace through strength,” the Pentagon official said Monday. “The ‘Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment’ is expected to further this tradition, increasing the lethality and readiness of the force.”

The U.S. military is paving the way for the regular deployment of high-energy laser weapons on American soil for air defense amid the expanding threat of low-cost weaponized drones.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Defense Department have reached a “landmark safety agreement” regarding the use of laser weapons to counter unauthorized drones at the US-Mexico border following a safety assessment that concluded such countermeasures “do not pose undue risk to passenger aircraft,” the FAA announced Friday.

The assessment and resulting agreement were the direct result of two laser incidents along the southern border of Texas in February, which prompted the FAA to abruptly close nearby airspace amid concerns over the potential impact on civilian air traffic. The incidents involved the U.S. Army’s 20 kilowatt Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL), a vehicle-mounted version of defense contractor AV’s LOCUST Laser Weapon System.

In the first incident, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol personnel used an AMP-HEL on loan from the Pentagon to engage an unidentified target near Fort Bliss, triggering an airspace shutdown above El Paso on Feb. 11. In the second, U.S. military personnel used an AMP-HEL near Fort Hancock to neutralize a “seemingly threatening” drone that turned out to belong to CBP, spurring another shutdown on Feb. 27.

“Following a thorough, data-informed Safety Risk Assessment, we determined that these systems do not present an increased risk to the flying public,” FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said in a statement. “We will continue working with our interagency partners to ensure the National Airspace System remains safe while addressing emerging drone threats.”

The “first of its kind” safety assessment, conducted in early March by the FAA and the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) counter-drone organization at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, reportedly yielded two significant conclusions: 1) the LOCUST’s automatic shutoff mechanism will consistently prohibit the system from firing under unsafe circumstances, a point that AV executives have emphasized in recent weeks, and 2) in the event of a system failure, the laser beam itself cannot inflict catastrophic damage even on aircraft flying at its maximum effective range, let alone those at cruising altitudes.

Here’s how Aaron Westman, AV senior director for business development, described the LOCUST’s safety protocols in a company blog post on March 23:

Every time an operator presses the “fire” button, the system runs through a series of automated checks. Some examples include:

• Is the laser pointing away from protected “keep-out” zones?
• Are all internal subsystems operating within safe parameters?
• Is the system properly locked onto a target?
• Are safety interlock switches engaged?
• Are all software safety checks satisfied?

Each of these checks acts as a safety “vote.”

If any subsystem registers a “no vote,” the laser simply will not fire. An operator can press the trigger — and nothing happens. The system refuses to engage until all conditions are verified as safe.

These automated safeguards are built into both the hardware and the software of the system.

Here’s how DefenseScoop described the LOCUST’s potential effects on passing airframes based on an account from Army Col. Scott McLellan, JIATF-401 deputy director, of the testing at White Sands:

McLellan said the evaluation involved “localized” firing of the AMP-HEL from various distances at the fuselage of a Boeing 767 airliner that testers lugged on to White Sands to assess the system’s damaging effects, “or lack thereof” on aircraft material. He said it aimed to “disprove some myths” about the capability, noting “that energy clearly dissipates over time and space and doesn’t have the effect everyone thinks it does as far as lasers are concerned.”

A JIATF 401 spokesperson said the laser was fired at its “maximum effective range for up to 8 seconds” at the grounded fuselage, “demonstrating that even at full intensity, the laser caused no structural damage to the aircraft.”

As drone warfare spreads beyond distant conflicts, laser weapons are an increasingly attractive domestic countermeasure. While kinetic interceptors and electronic warfare may be considered suitable for chaotic battlefields, their potential for collateral effects makes them far too risky for consistent domestic applications. And even if collateral damage wasn’t a concern, expending expensive missiles on the 1,000 cartel-operated drones that cross the border with Mexico monthly is economically unsustainable, especially for a Pentagon that’s already rapidly burning through munitions as part of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. On paper, the argument seems obvious: Why not save those critical interceptors for high-end threats overseas and let domestic laser emplacements, with their deep magazines and minimal cost-per-shot, pull counter-drone duty at home?

Using laser weapons for domestic air defense wouldn’t be unprecedented. France deployed two 2 kw High Energy Laser for Multiple Applications – Power (HELMA-P) systems to secure the airspace over the country’s Île-de-France region during the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics. This past September, China’s People’s Liberation Army deployed several laser weapons across Beijing during a major military parade marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II. As of January, the U.K. Ministry of Defense was reportedly drawing up plans to build a domestic laser screen, albeit composed of lower-power laser dazzlers, to protect military installations and other critical infrastructure. The Pentagon has even already considered laser weapons to reinforce the airspace above Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s residences at Fort McNair in Washington following a series of unauthorized drone incursions there.

Indeed, there’s a distinct possibility that laser weapons could see increasing domestic applications amid the U.S. military’s growing appetite for novel drone defenses. On April 2, JIATF-401 announced that it had funneled $20 million in counter-drone systems like the Dronebuster EW handset and Smart Shooter computerized riflescope to the U.S.-Mexico border in just four months.

Days later, the task force announced $100 million to enhance counter-drone capabilities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup starting in June “to protect stadiums and fan zones in 11 cities across nine states,” part of larger $600 million surge in counter-drone systems that also allocated $158 million to “defend the nation’s highest-priority defense critical infrastructure.”

With the Pentagon asking for $580 million in R&D funding just for JIATF-401 in its fiscal year 2027 budget request (and potentially $800 million in procurement cash), the task force appears poised to explore any and all possible solutions to the drone problem — and operationally, the FAA-Pentagon safety agreement helps establish laser weapons as a viable option.

That said, the safety agreement on its own is unlikely to open the floodgates for a sudden spate of laser weapon deployments along the U.S.-Mexico border, let alone for major events like the World Cup or critical infrastructure just yet. First, the agreement doesn’t appear to clarify who has final say in authorizing a laser engagement when U.S. military, CBP and FAA jurisdictions overlap — the precise ambiguity that yielded February’s airspace closures and, until resolved, will complicate future engagements during a fast-moving crisis. Second, the U.S. military’s arsenal of operational laser weapons is currently limited despite a stated goal of rapidly fielding new systems at scale within three years. Even with clear plans to surge directed energy research and development for homeland defense under President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome for America” missile shield, the age of sleek beam directors quietly standing watch along the US-Mexico border remains a long way off.

The FAA agreement may end up laying the foundation for a true domestic laser air defense architecture — a “Laser Dome” in all but name. Whether the U.S. military actually builds it, however, will depend not just the Pentagon’s promise to deploy laser weapons at scale, but whether Washington can finally sort out who’s in charge when a beam crosses into civilian airspace.

In the link between distance and ease of aggression, there’s a direct relationship between empathy, physical proximity of the victim and the resultant difficulty and trauma of the kill, according to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman in his 1995 study “On Killing.”

For Vietnam veteran Eugene “Gene” Marion Simmers, a close proximity to death and the actions he wrought haunted him for more than fifty years.

Simmers was drafted soon after he graduated from Granville High School in Ohio in 1966. Serving as a combat medic with Company A, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, Simmers received a Silver Star for heroism after his unit found itself trapped as it approached a booby-trapped bridge over a rice paddy near Mo Duc, Vietnam.

“Upon hearing the explosion,” according to his Army citation, “Specialist Simmers rushed to the front of the company and came under intense sniper fire from scattered positions in the area. After taking momentary cover, he maneuvered through the hostile fire and administered first aid to those wounded in the explosion.

“Despite enemy fire impacting all around him, he moved throughout the area to aid his fellow soldiers. His courageous actions were directly responsible for saving the lives of his comrades.”

When asked about his memory of the incident in 2014 by a local news outlet, the Newark Advocate, Simmers recalled, “I just knew I had seven guys hit, and I had to do whatever I could to keep them alive.”

“War’s a bitch,” Simmers went on. “I was just doing my job, and they gave me a medal for it.”

However, up until his death on Nov. 28, 2022, it was not the lives of those men he saved that stayed with him, but that of an elderly Vietnamese woman he had killed during the war.

While the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death remain unclear, what is evident is the weight of her death on Simmers’ psyche.

The simple etching on his gravestone is short — but poignant. The burden of decades-long grief and trauma:

In memory of the elderly woman I killed in Vietnam.

Forgive me. I’m so sorry.

Gene Simmers

President Donald Trump, in a social media post after no deal emerged from peace talks this weekend in Islamabad, said the U.S. Navy “will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.”

The U.S. military’s Central Command later said the blockade will only apply to ships going to or from Iran, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. It will take effect on Monday at 10 a.m. in Washington, CENTCOM said.

Trump also said U.S. forces would interdict vessels that have paid tolls to Iran, even if those ships are now in international waters.

“No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The ultimate goal, Trump said, would be to pressure Iran to end its effective closure of the strait, a choke point for about 20% of the world’s oil, to all but the countries that secure safe passage from Tehran.

If Trump’s strategy succeeds, he would eliminate Iran’s greatest point of leverage in negotiations with the United States and clear the strait again for global trade, potentially lowering oil prices. But a blockade, experts say, is an act of war that requires an open-ended commitment of a significant number of warships.

“Trump wants a quick fix. The reality is, this mission is difficult to execute alone and likely unsustainable over the medium to long-term,” said Dana Stroul, a former senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration now at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

IRANIAN RETALIATION

The U.S. military has not offered basic details yet about the blockade, including how many U.S. warships will enforce it, whether warplanes will be used and whether any Gulf allies will assist in the effort. Central Command declined to respond to requests for comment.

With enough warships, the U.S. Navy could set up a blockade that intimidates many commercial tankers from trying to power through with Iranian oil, experts say.

But would the United States be prepared to board and seize — or even damage or sink — ships that try to break the blockade? What if they carry oil for China, a major power, or U.S. partners such as India or South Korea?

And what would Iran do? Retired Adm. Gary Roughead, a former chief of U.S. naval operations, cautioned that Iran could fire on ships in the Gulf or attack infrastructure of the Gulf states that host U.S. forces.

“I honestly believe that if we begin to do it, that Iran will have some kind of a reaction,” Roughead said.

Iran’s threats to shipping have caused global oil prices to skyrocket about 50% since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28.

Trump said on Sunday that the price of oil and gasoline may remain high in the United States through November’s U.S. midterm elections, which could see Trump’s Republicans lose control of the U.S. Congress if there is a public backlash. The war has already been unpopular.

GAS PRICE PROBLEM

Frustrated by Iran’s refusal to end the war on his terms, Trump on Sunday also floated the possibility of a resumption of U.S. strikes inside Iran, citing missile factories as one possibility.

U.S. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned the strategy, noting Iran could send speedboats to mine the strait or put bombs against tankers.

“How is that going to ever bring down gas prices?” Warner asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Thousands of U.S. military strikes have severely weakened Iran’s military. But analysts say Tehran has emerged from the conflict as a vexing problem for Washington, with a more hardline leadership and a buried stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

Trump threatened on Sunday that “any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded with a statement warning that military vessels approaching the strait will be considered a ceasefire breach and dealt with harshly and decisively, underlining the risk of a dangerous escalation.

Stroul said the crisis will require a long-term, international effort to resolve.

“Over the long run, this will need to be resolved through diplomacy and international political will,” she said.

Trump also said in a post on Truth Social that the U.S. would interdict every vessel in international waters that had paid a toll to Iran, and begin destroying mines that he said the Iranians had dropped in the strait, a choke point for about 20% of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked.

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.

“I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump added.

“Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” he added.

Each side had earlier blamed the other for the failure of talks to end six weeks of fighting that has killed thousands, roiled the global economy and sent oil prices soaring.

“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vice President JD Vance, the head of the U.S. delegation at the weekend talks, said earlier.

“We’ve made very clear what our red lines are,” Vance added.

IRAN CITES LACK OF TRUST

Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who led his country’s delegation along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, blamed the U.S. for not winning Tehran’s trust despite his team offering “forward-looking initiatives.”

“The U.S. has understood Iran’s logic and principles and it’s time for them to decide whether they can earn our trust or not,” Qalibaf said on X.

The talks, after a ceasefire earlier in the week, were the first direct U.S.-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Vance said Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including not to build nuclear weapons.

“I could go into great detail, and talk about much that has been gotten but, there is only one thing that matters — IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS!” Trump said later.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” U.S. demands had hindered reaching a deal. Other Iranian media said there was agreement on a number of issues, but the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program were the main points of difference.

‘IMPERATIVE’ TO MAINTAIN CEASEFIRE

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said it was “imperative” to preserve the ceasefire that was agreed last Tuesday as the sides attempt to wind down a war that began on February 28 with air strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iran.

Israeli security cabinet minister Zeev Elkin told Army Radio that more talks were still an option, but added: “The Iranians are playing with fire.”

In a brief press conference, Vance did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Even as the talks took place, U.S. ally Israel continued bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, insisting that that conflict was not part of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire. Iran says the fighting in Lebanon must stop.

The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah rocket launchers overnight into Sunday and black smoke could be seen rising in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday. In Israeli villages near the border, air raid sirens sounded, warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.

IRANIAN DEMANDS

Tehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region, including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials, as well as the release of its frozen assets abroad.

Tehran also wants to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite the differences in Islamabad, three supertankers fully laden with oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, in what appeared to be the first vessels to exit the Gulf since the ceasefire deal.

Hundreds of tankers are still stuck in the Gulf, waiting to exit during the two-week ceasefire period.

Trump’s stated goals have shifted, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb.

Tehran has long denied seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

“We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, adding that “all 28” of Iran’s “mine dropper boats are also lying at the bottom of the sea.”

Minutes before Trump’s post, reports started to emerge about the presence of U.S. Navy ships in the strait.

An Axios journalist, citing an unnamed U.S. official, posted that “several” U.S. ships had crossed the strait on Saturday, though Iranian state TV soon after reported a denial from an official with Iran’s military.

Trump has repeatedly said that American forces have destroyed Iran’s navy and air force while crippling its ballistic missile and nuclear programs.

But fear of Iranian attacks on shipping over the past several weeks has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical conduit for global oil supplies. Throttling the strait has disrupted global energy markets.

U.S. gasoline prices have spiked even though most of the oil that flows through the waterway does not go to the United States.

Representatives from the U.S. and Iran began talks hosted by Pakistan in Islamabad on Saturday amid a fragile ceasefire in the conflict.

Marvin Glen Shields was born in Port Townsend, Washington, on Dec. 30, 1939. After high school his family moved in 1958 to Hyder, Alaska, where he worked in a gold mining project for the Mineral Basin Mining Company.

On Jan. 8, 1962, he enlisted in the Navy, choosing the multi-training of a construction battalion member, or Seabee. After training at Naval Air Station Glynco, Georgia, and Port Hueneme, California, he graduated as a naval construction mechanic in May 1963, and served his first assignment at Okinawa from Nov. 18 to Sept. 1964.

On Nov. 1, 1964, Construction Mechanic 3rd Class Shields swerved into harm’s way when he was assigned to Seabee Team 1104 of Naval Construction Battalion 11.

After final training, on Jan. 22, 1965, he and his nine-man unit transferred to Saigon, Vietnam, just 10 days later. From there, Team 1104 was transported 55 miles north to Dong Xoai, where it joined the 11 members of Army Special Forces Team, A-342, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, in constructing a fortified Special Forces camp.

Further reinforcing the area were 200 local anti-communist Montagnards and 200 soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).

The area was also crawling with enemy troops, ranging from local guerrillas to full-fledged infantry units trained and organized in North Vietnam before returning south. The latter included the reinforced 272nd Regiment, about 2,000 strong, which on the night of June 9, 1965, set out to eliminate the compound at Dong Xoai.

Soon, every defender at Dong Xoai was fighting for his life.

As described in his citation, that included Shields, who was wounded early in the fighting as was the commander of Team 1104. In spite of that: “Shields continued to resupply his fellow Americans who needed ammunition and to return the enemy fire for a period of approximately three hours, at which time the Viet Cong launched a massive attack at close-range with flame throwers, hand grenades and small-arms fire.”

Though wounded a second time during this attack, Shields assisted in carrying a more critically wounded man to safety, then rejoined the fighting for another four hours.

Then a call came up from 2nd Lt. Charles Quincy Williams who, with the wounding of his commander, had taken charge of the Special Forces troops. He needed a volunteer to join him in a sally to eliminate a well-placed Viet Cong machine gunner whose accuracy was endangering the lives of all personnel in the compound.

Without hesitation, Shields volunteered for this hazardous mission. Proceeding toward their objective with a 3.5-inch rocket launcher, Williams and Shields closed to approximately 500 feet and Williams succeeded in destroying the machine gun emplacement.

As the Green Beret and the Seabee made their way back to their defensive positions, however, Shields was hit a third time and Williams twice more.

After a grueling 14-hour siege, Dong Xoai’s defenders were finally evacuated. In the process, Williams eventually recovered from his injuries. Shields was not so fortunate, dying before he reached Saigon. On June 19, he was buried in the presence of a Marine honor guard in Gardiner Cemetery, Washington.

Although the 272nd Regiment finally overran Dong Xoai, the VC knew enough not to hold it long against an enemy with complete air superiority. As far as casualties went, postwar statistics testify to the overnight siege’s butcher bill.

The Americans claimed to have killed 300 VC and captured 104 weapons, while Vietnamese records claimed the loss of 134 men killed and 290 wounded. On the South Vietnamese side, 416 of the ARVN and Montagnards stationed in and around the compound were killed and 176 wounded and 233 missing.

Of the Americans, nine Special Forces troops were killed and of the Seabees, besides Shields, Petty Officer 2nd Class William C. Hoover was killed in the VC’s opening mortar attack. All seven surviving Seabees were wounded.

On Sept. 13, 1966, Shields’ family traveled to the White House, where President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him a posthumous Medal of Honor. Later, on June 5, 1966, Charles Q. Williams was alive to receive his Medal of Honor. Shields’ name was later christened to the guided missile frigate USS Marvin Shields (FF-1066), as was Camp Marvin Shields Construction Battalion Support Base in Okinawa.

The agreement came after the FAA conducted testing in New Mexico on the laser system used by the Pentagon and Homeland Security Department and validated that proper safety controls are in place and do not pose undue risks to passenger aircraft.

Two earlier incidents posed serious concerns.

The U.S. military errantly shot down a government drone with the ​laser-based system on Feb. 25, leading the FAA to expand an area in which flights are ​barred around Fort Hancock, Texas.

The incident followed the Feb. 18 decision by the FAA to halt all flights for 10 days at the nearby El Paso airport because of the use of ​the Pentagon laser system by a Homeland Security agency without completion of an FAA safety review. The ​El Paso shutdown order was lifted by the FAA after about eight hours following ‌the ⁠White House’s intervention.

“Following a thorough, data-informed Safety Risk Assessment, we determined that these systems do not present an increased risk to the flying public,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said on Friday.

The Pentagon has said there are more than 1,000 drone incursions along the U.S.-Mexico border each month. ​U.S. security officials have increasingly ​expressed alarm about ⁠the use of drones by Mexican cartels to drop drug packages or surveil trafficking routes.

Several media outlets reported last month drones were seen over Fort McNair in Washington where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live.

There is no indication the Pentagon plans to deploy the laser at the base, which is close to Reagan Washington National Airport.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth last month called on federal watchdogs to review the ​decision-making process leading to the use of the systems and the ​FAA’s decision ⁠to close airspace.

Just a little over a decade after World War I ended, Erich Maria Remarque’s readers found themselves behind the German front lines, empathizing with German soldiers who had once been mortal enemies to the Americans, British and the French.

Like the outcropping of surrealism after WWI, “All Quiet on the Western Front” opened up a new genre of books for veterans to process what they had gone through.

“The novel attracted global audiences in its own time — and continues to do so nearly a century later — because it lays bare features identifiable in virtually any war: deprivation, terror, trauma, kinship, black humor, alienation from society, and (usually) some questioning of the cause,” Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., writes in the forward of the book’s most recent translation.

However, while it is one of the most famous books to come out of WWI — or any war for that matter — “All Quiet on the Western Front” — until recently — had only been translated twice from German to English. Once in 1929 by an Australian; the second translation, from 1993, is available only in the United Kingdom.

Arthur Wesley Wheen’s 1929 edition, despite its numerous mistranslations and stylistic flaws, is the dominant one today, having been the only one available in the U.S. for almost one hundred years.

Maria Tatar, the John L. Loeb professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures & Folklore and Mythology Emerita, saw a gap in the literature and painstakingly restored the novel with contemporary prose while remaining faithful to Remarque’s voice.

With “All Quiet on the Western Front” now in the public domain, she writes in her foreword, “we have the opportunity to try to convey its power in a new translation, and to introduce it to a new generation.”

“I think my real mission was to bring back the voice of [protagonist] Paul Bäumer. To let him speak,” Tatar told Military Times. “In a way, this is a talking book. I’d like to think of it as a book that speaks to us, that gives somebody who is muted by the war, really, a voice.”

“We get to process the violence of war through Paul,” Tatar continued. “And the interesting thing is that, of course, war is this world-shattering experience. Not just world shattering, but also word shattering. So there’s a strange paradox embedded in the book — we’re getting these sorts of unmediated thoughts of the soldier as he’s experiencing combat. I really did see my mission as trying to capture the register of Bäumer’s voice in English, which is, I have to say, not as easy as I thought it would be.”

Calling the translation a “labor of love” and a “struggle,” Tatar strove to bring back, or rather preserve, the Germanness of “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

“Translation means carrying over, carrying across,” said Tatar. “And I felt as I was translating that I was rowing across the River Styx, bringing back a dead man, giving him a voice and channeling Remarque as well.”

Wheen’s 1929 translation has become the definitive translation of Remarque’s work, but according to Tatar, Wheen himself “admitted that his German was not very good.”

“The manuscript was sent to me,” Wheen later reported, “as being one able to understand it, and on reading I found that I understood it less by reason of my knowledge of German, which I have but imperfectly, than by virtue of having made the experience recorded in it.”

In some instances, Wheen includes the word “mate” in his translation — something no German on the Western Front would conceivably call his fellow soldiers. In another, Remarque writes about a guy “getting lucky,” which translates into English literally as “he had a pig.” According to Tatar, Wheen subsequently took that to mean the soldier had pork for dinner.

While Brian Murdoch’s 1993 version comes closer to a true rendering of “All Quiet,” Tatar notes that there were “places where I felt uncomfortable, where the dialog is so difficult to capture in the right way, to get the right tone. And although Murdoch is successful in many ways that’s where I think he fell short, in not working hard enough to get the dialog close to something like a Hemingway style.”

Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” serves as a semiautobiographical account of the author’s war. Conscripted in the German Army in 1917 at the age of 18, Remarque was hit by shrapnel in the leg, arm and neck and sent to a hospital to convalesce before returning once again to the front. Remarque’s unvarnished account of the war is evident in “All Quiet.”

“It is written from the heart, not from the head,” Tatar noted.

“Tim O’Brien describes in ‘The Things They Carried’ the majesty of combat,” said Tatar. “I think he calls it the ‘aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference.’ But what I find in Remarque’s work is more of a grotesque aesthetic. It’s not the majesty of combat. You get this fragmentation, destructive violence, disintegration, dissolution. And yet, in the face of all of that, there’s a subtext that endorses affective engagement, emotional engagement, sympathetic identification, almost as if to compensate for the unspeakable, physical injuries of war. So in the midst of all of this violence, we’re seeing what Paul sees. We’re feeling what he feels. You feel his pain in an extraordinary way.

“As I was translating the novel, I was so often on the edge of tears,” Tatar continued. “And part of it is that Remarque is so skillful as a narrator, in drawing you into combat. First you get all these acoustical effects — the roar of cannon, the explosions. And then he gives you all these sensory, visual details. You’re really drawn into this explosive, terrifying scene of time.”

The novel has endured for almost a century because while the tools for killing have evolved, much of warfare remains the same. There are and will always be soldiers seeking solace in the camaraderie of their peers and “wondering what the hell it achieves to kill and be killed for causes defined by others,” Powers writes.

It also details the painful, deep disconnect of soldiers returning home from war.

“They’re people I don’t understand,” Paul reflects. “And I both envy and loathe them.”

Human nature almost ensures that there will be more generations who empathize with Paul, but Tatar hopes that her translation has “found the words for a story that we must keep reading to keep from repeating it.”

Attempting to achieve energy levels considered necessary to unleash the beast, John Witt, 29, instead discovered an actual rotting beast after finishing the drink, according to local CBS affiliate WTKR News.

Witt, who said he purchased a pack of the drinks from a 7-Eleven in Norfolk, Virginia, promptly vomited several times, “naturally,” he told WTKR, which shared video of the canned corpse.

“It’s a full-size rat,” he said, “and it’s a big rat.”

The sailor first brought the issue to the attention of his chain of command, one member of which responded, correctly, “Go the ER, bro.”

Witt then checked into Portsmouth Naval Hospital, where he said medical personnel informed him that it was more than likely, “with the chemicals that are in Monster, that it should be OK.”

Unleash the embalming fluid.

“My antibodies should be able to fight it off,” Witt said, adding that medical staff wanted to closely monitor the situation for the next 48 hours.

Witt, a longtime beast unleasher, told WTKR that he has no plans to ever consume another Monster — or even closed-can beverages, for that matter.

“I’m never going to be able to drink anything that I can’t see again,” the new open-container advocate told the outlet.

Witt intends to file a report with the Food and Drug Administration, according to WTKR.

Select reports, meanwhile, suggest Master Splinter, having gotten on in years, may have confused the Monster can for mutagen, the chemical colloquially known as “Ooze.”

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could not be reached for comment.

In the early aughts of the 1990s, the Pentagon was working on developing a whole host of non-lethal chemical weapons that would render an enemy force incapable of being anything other than ... amorous or annoyed.

Within a three-page declassified document came a blink-and-you-miss-it line positing using “Chemicals that effect human behavior so that morale and discipline in enemy units is adversely affected.”

“One distasteful but completely non-lethal example,” it continued, “would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”

In a word, a chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to one another — striking a blow to morale.

The randy chemical, later dubbed “gay bomb,” was just one of the many that the Wright Laboratory explored in its proposal dubbed “Project Sunshine.”

Among others, Project Sunshine contained a litany of ideas ranging from the absurd to impractical, including: making a “chemical that made personnel very sensitive to sunlight”; making a weapon that would attract swarms of enraged wasps or rats to an enemy position; and the development of a chemical that caused “severe and lasting halitosis.”

The lab requested $7.5 millions dollars over a five-year period to make their hair-brained ideas reality. The funding was not forthcoming. It did, however, eventually make its way to the mind of Tina Fey and 30 Rock.

As the saying goes, there are no bad ideas — only great ideas that go horribly wrong — but perhaps the Wright Laboratory is an exception that that rule.

No decision has been made, and the White House has not directed the Pentagon to draw up concrete plans for a troop reduction on the continent, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

But the discussions alone underscore how sharply relations between Washington and its European NATO allies have deteriorated in recent months. They also suggest that a visit to the White House on Wednesday by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte failed to significantly improve transatlantic relations, which are arguably at their lowest point since NATO’s 1949 founding.

The White House has publicly said that Trump has considered withdrawing from the alliance altogether. Removing troops from Europe would allow Trump to dramatically lessen Washington’s security commitments on the continent, without formally withdrawing, a move that would test constitutional law.

The U.S. currently has more than 80,000 troops in Europe and has played a central role in Europe’s security architecture since World War Two. More than 30,000 of those troops are located in Germany, with sizeable numbers also stationed in Italy, the United Kingdom and Spain.

The official did not say which countries could be affected or how many troops might ultimately be withdrawn if Trump decides to move forward with the idea.

Asked for comment, a NATO spokesperson referred Reuters to Rutte’s interview with CNN on Wednesday.

In that interview, Rutte said that he understood Trump’s frustrations with the alliance, but that the “large majority of European nations” had been helpful to Washington’s war effort in Iran.

Following Rutte’s meeting with Trump, the secretary general told European governments that Trump wants concrete commitments to help secure the Strait of Hormuz within days, Reuters reported earlier on Thursday.

Alliance in crisis

While Trump has long had a tumultuous relationship with NATO — for years accusing European capitals of skimping on defense spending — the last three months have been particularly rocky.

In January, Trump provoked a transatlantic crisis when he renewed longstanding threats to annex Greenland, an overseas territory of Denmark. Since the war with Iran broke out on Feb. 28, he has expressed deep frustration that NATO allies have not offered to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for global energy supplies that has remained largely closed despite a fragile ceasefire announced this week.

NATO diplomats have previously said the U.S. has not made clear if it expects any mission in the Strait of Hormuz to start during or after the conflict, and they have also said the U.S. has not specified what particular capabilities it expects of each NATO country.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that senior administration officials were discussing moving troops stationed in Europe out of countries whose leaders had been critical of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and into European countries whose leaders had been more supportive.

The White House official told Reuters that Trump was specifically discussing bringing troops back to the U.S., rather than moving them to different foreign countries.

The official said Trump was particularly irked about what he perceives as Europe’s attempts to brush off his attempts to acquire Greenland.

After meeting with Rutte in Switzerland in January, Trump had suggested a deal was in sight to end the dispute over the Danish territory. No such agreement has come to fruition.

“He asked NATO specifically to come up with a plan when we were in Davos, and they’re sort of not taking it seriously,” the official said.

On a serene Saturday afternoon, thousands of miles from conflict, soldiers with the California Air National Guard are scattered among stations, hunched over a buddy. Some apply tourniquets. Others practice life-saving skills, checking for breathing, tilting chins to clear airways, searching for blood loss and hidden wounds.

This is how they learn to keep a soldier alive.

“They’re getting ready to deploy,” said Dr. Dean Winslow, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and an instructor at the Tactical Combat Casualty Care classes.

“This is very real.”

Drone warfare requires new age of battlefield medicine

To help them prepare for what they may encounter in the war with Iran, an update was added to the standard curriculum. Its title: Modern Warfare Concepts, POV Unmanned Aircraft System Explosives. Its focus: the risk of air attack and the importance of high-quality burn care.

As the U.S. confronts a changed character of combat, the trauma training for the 50 airmen at Moffett Federal Airfield, about 35 miles south of San Francisco, is urgent and essential. But is it enough?

Several new trends are driving concerns that military medical care needs to adapt to drone warfare, a defining feature of 21st-century conflicts.

“With injuries, it’s a new world now,” Winslow told The War Horse.

Wars have been inflicting explosive wounds ever since China’s early Ming Dynasty used “fire-weapons,” including a cast-iron grade bomb with gunpowder, in the 14th century. Sky-borne casualties are nothing new — Nazi Germany inflicted V-1 flying bombs on London residents during World War II. Improvised explosive devices were responsible for a surge of explosive injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, causing 74.4% of casualties; only 19.9% of casualties were caused by gunshot wounds.

But an analysis of injuries in Ukraine shows that drone-delivered explosives are more destructive and lead to a wider range and higher severity of traumatic injury, according to research by a team led by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. The drones Russia has been launching on Ukraine are similar to the weapons used by Iran.

Ukrainian soldiers are suffering from a far higher range and severity of devastating wounds than U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, researchers found. The high-energy explosives, deployed in swarms, have the potential to create large clusters of casualties in relatively short periods of time.

The signature wound of the Russian drones is limb amputation, followed by multiple-limb injuries and severe burns. Detonating at close range, a drone can inflict a complicated constellation of upper-body, neck and head injuries, according to a report by the aid group MedGlobal.

“Drone warfare has drastically changed the complexity of the traumatized patient that we see,” said Dr. Michael Samotowka, a volunteer trauma surgeon with MedGlobal who frequently travels to Ukraine to treat soldiers injured by Russian drones.

“It has drastically changed the volume of injuries that require surgical intervention,” he told The War Horse. “It’s changed our whole mentality.”

Mounting medical challenges

Drones also mean that we can no longer rely on an old axiom of combat: Distance from the front is protective, and the place for life-saving care. Small and cheap, drones can fly for miles, linger in the air for hours and descend in swarms, evading air defenses.

If the skies aren’t safe to evacuate injured soldiers, prolonged casualty care will become the collective effort by close combat forces at the brigade-and-below levels, according to research led by Army trauma surgeon Col. Jennifer Gurney, chief of the Joint Trauma System at the Department of Defense’s Center of Excellence for Trauma.

The new threat also comes at a precarious time: The U.S. Department of Defense has downsized its hospitals, so military physicians aren’t getting enough experience with trauma patients to be ready for major casualties.

“Because Army and Navy medical personnel are not consistently assigned where they can sustain their wartime readiness skills, they may not provide high-quality, point-of-injury care to service members during deployments,” concluded a 2025 Department of Defense Inspector General report.

Iran most commonly uses a drone called the Shahed 136, according to the munitions tracking project Open Source Munitions Portal. Preprogrammed to fly up to 1,200 miles and carry warheads guided by a satellite navigation system, it can target embassies, hotels and other places where American troops are dispersed.

Shortly after the U.S. and Israel launched their surprise air assault to start the war, an Iranian drone strike on March 1 triggered an explosion in Kuwait at a U.S supply and logistics unit that killed six U.S. service members, injured about 30 others and set off a fire and frantic search for survivors in the rubble.

The unit had relocated to the civilian Port of Shuaiba from U.S. Army base Camp Arifjan in an effort to evade incoming strikes from Tehran. “They were dispersing because they were in fear that the base they were on was going to get attacked, and they felt it was safer in smaller groups in separated places,” Joey Amor — the husband of Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, who died in the attack — told The Associated Press.

It wasn’t the only drone attack to injure U.S. forces. About 29 drones and six ballistic missiles were blamed for a March 27 assault at Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan air base that injured at least 15 U.S. troops, including five seriously, according to The Associated Press.

That was one of the most significant breaches of U.S. air defenses since the conflict started. With President Trump threatening a major escalation of attacks, Iran and the U.S. on Tuesday agreed to a two-week ceasefire. As of March 31, at least 348 U.S. military personnel had been wounded, reported U.S. Central Command’s spokesperson Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, but reports are surfacing about whether this is an undercount.

Iraq and Afghanistan vs. Ukraine

Military combat care evolved to meet the needs of the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters. But this support — an agile and efficient network that quickly stabilized, treated and evacuated wounded service members — was based on relatively light patient loads in places where U.S. forces could safely evacuate injured service members to higher echelons of care.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, wounded soldiers and Marines could be evacuated from the field to an operating room within an hour, said Dan Elinoff, a combat medic in Iraq and Afghanistan and a former senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation. That helped reduce the case fatality rate from 36% in Vietnam to 10% in Iraq and Afghanistan — a saving of an estimated 1,000 lives.

But when drones are overhead, evacuation can be delayed. Surgical treatment within “the golden hour” — the critical 60-minute window when most lives are saved or lost — will become a goal, not an expectation.

“The main issue that I can see for drone warfare, compared to IEDs, is a real compromise of ‘the golden hour,’” Elinoff told The War Horse. In previous wars, “your main threat was on the front line. The rear area is a lot more secure. You can get people back there, and you can probably keep them a lot safer.

“With the abundance of drones, it’s much easier to hit those rear areas,” said Elinoff. “Your evacuation routes are a lot more compromised.”

In Ukraine, drone warfare has demanded a dramatic shift toward a more decentralized model of care, bringing more advanced care closer to hard-to-reach people on the front lines.

This decentralized model echoes patterns of treatment created in Syria and Yemen, where air bombardment and targeting of health sites forced medical care to move underground, onto mobile platforms or across dispersed community sites, according to the MedGlobal report.

Anticipating that it may take two to three days to evacuate an injured soldier in future conflicts, Fort Benning launched in 2022 a pilot Delayed Evacuation Casualty Management Course to train medics how to provide advanced care on the front lines.

The type of injuries may shift. In Iraq and Afghanistan between 50% and 60% of deaths and injuries were caused by roadside improvised explosive devices, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Manpower Data Center. Because these devices often exploded under vehicles, the lower torso and abdomen were common sites of wounds, particularly by blasts that forced damage upward.

Drones, by contrast, cause significant damage both on the ground and overhead. Data from Ukraine shows that they frequently attack from above, targeting the top of buildings, tanks and trucks. Or they explode in the air, showering metal fragments. Some precision-guided drones enter buildings. As a result, the most frequent injuries in Ukrainian soldiers occur in the head and neck, followed by lower extremities, upper extremities and chest and upper back.

Drone injuries also are typically more complex. One study found that nearly half of Ukrainian casualties involved “multisite trauma,” involving more than two regions of the body from blasts, high-temperature burns from thermobaric and incendiary munitions and traumatic brain injuries. About one in five had injuries in three or more body regions.

A drone “either showers down at a high energy, in small fragments, head down to toes, or it drops in front of the soldier and it blows up,” said Samotowka.

“If there’s 100 drones flying around you, looking for you, you can’t be evacuated.”

Too few trauma experts, too little practice

In future U.S. conflicts, even if evacuation is successful, there is an insufficient supply of highly skilled military surgeons and other experts to meet the demand.

That’s because after every war, the military loses resources and expertise, said Rear Adm. Dr. David Lane, a former commanding officer of Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune and former director of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“Budget wonks in both Republican and Democratic administrations always look for a so-called peace dividend whenever we scale back from major combat operations,” he told The War Horse.

“During peacetime, there is a ying and a yang between the efficiency needed to run military hospitals and clinics on par with the best of the best civilian health care organizations,” he said. “Staying ready for combat trauma and diseases and nonbattle injuries requires time away [from military treatment facilities], disrupts continuity, and adds to the cost of care.”

In recent years, the Army Medical Corps’ rate of recruitment has not been able to keep up with the pace of separations, according to a RAND Corporation report. And retention is down. So positions at military treatment facilities and other units go empty.

At military hospitals, there is less exposure to complex trauma, said Elinoff. On bases, “people are pretty young and healthy. … It’s really hard to keep those skill sets up when you’re not seeing a lot.”

Opportunities for hands-on work are limited. The Army and Navy do not effectively assign medical personnel to locations where they could maintain their required wartime medical readiness skills, the Department of Defense Inspector General found.

It’s too hard and time-consuming to get military health care providers credentialed and integrated into community settings, Elinoff said. While several of the nation’s top trauma hospitals — including the University of Maryland and the University of Cincinnati — have partnered with the military to share their trauma cases, the rotations at trauma centers tend to be too brief.

Even at a busy civilian hospital, there are relatively few trauma patients. That’s because seat belts, air bags, smoke alarms and flame-retardant children’s sleepwear have reduced the number of severe injuries that require complex life-saving surgery. Gunshot injuries are increasing, but they typically involve one part of the body, not general trauma, said doctors.

And trauma patients are increasingly unlikely to be rushed to the operating table. Due to high-tech innovations in interventional radiology, for example, damaged blood vessels can be sealed to stop internal bleeding.

Many young surgeons may graduate after operating on only one or two liver injuries, said Samotowka.

Practice is essential in medicine, said Stefani Diedrich, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who served as an anesthesiologist for 24 years with deployments to Afghanistan and Niger.

“Any procedural skill needs to be practiced regularly or else it is lost,” she said. “Doing knee arthroscopy does not prepare you for a traumatic amputation. Doing a robotic hernia repair does not prepare you for an exploratory laparotomy for trauma.”

“You can’t ‘refresh’ trauma surgery skills. … You need to do it on a regular basis to not suck,” she said.

Stanford’s Winslow agreed. As the White House considers its next steps in the ongoing tensions with Iran, with thousands of additional U.S. troops heading to the Middle East theater, the challenge is no longer theoretical. There are now 50,000 American troops in the Middle East.

If there is a huge operation, Winslow said, “there’s no way that the active duty surgeons, or at least the majority of them, will have the recency of experience with handling major trauma.”

This War Horse story was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

This article first appeared on The War Horse and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

For fiscal year 2026’s aviation bonus program, the force is offering the monetary incentive to select aviators in exchange for an active-duty service commitment, according to a Wednesday Air Force release.

The statement lists specific eligible pilots: remotely piloted aircraft pilots, air battle managers and combat systems officers among those the service wishes to “decisively shape and retain” with the bonus opportunity.

“The aviation bonus is an incentive that helps us retain expertise and ensures we have the right mix of experienced aviators to meet warfighting demands today and into the future,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in the release.

The fiscal 2026 aviation bonus program allows for the increase in monetary compensation to align with shorter contract lengths, especially within the fighter, bomber and U-2 groups, according to the statement.

The bonus rates depend on the aviator’s career field and experience level, but they can receive up to $50,000 a year with a minimum contract of three years and maximum of 12 years, the release reads, making a total of up to $600,000 under the maximum.

To be eligible for this bonus program, airmen need to be ranked as lieutenant colonels and below, be qualified for operational flying duty and be entitled to monthly aviation incentive pay, per the release.

The program is designated for active-duty airmen and Air Reserve Component Airmen that are serving in the Voluntary Limited Period of Active Duty Program.

“Airmen applying for these bonus programs should expect to see payments within three weeks after final approval of their application and processing by the Defense Finance Accounting Service,” according to the statement.

Eligible airmen were able to begin applying for the bonus on April 1 and have until May 31 to submit their application.

In the 40 days since the start of Operation Epic Fury against Iran, 13 U.S. service members have been killed and 381 have been wounded, according to data provided Wednesday by U.S. Central Command.

The Defense Department has added the war on Iran to its Defense Casualty Analysis System, a database that catalogues combat casualties dating to World War I.

As of Tuesday, the department listed seven service members as having been killed by enemy fire during the operation, presumably the Army soldiers who died March 1 in Saudi Arabia during an Iranian airstrike.

It also classified six Air Force deaths as “non-hostile,” the crew of a KC-135 refueling aircraft who died while supporting air operations.

And it said that 346 were wounded in action: 231 soldiers, 63 sailors, 33 airmen and 19 Marines.

But U.S. Central Command told Military Times Wednesday that the number of wounded now stands at 381. They did not provide any details on the extent or types of injuries.

In mid-March, CBS News reported that roughly 25 troops were being treated at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, a dozen were evacuated to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and one had been transported to Brooke Army Medical Center, DOD’s only Level I trauma center and home to the department’s top burn unit.

The United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire late Tuesday. Under the terms, the U.S. agreed to stop military strikes while Iran said it would immediately open the Strait of Hormuz, the key body of water through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas ships.

Iran has offered a 10-point proposal for ending the conflict, which President Donald Trump described as a “workable basis on which to negotiate.”

Attacks continued in the early hours of the temporary truce in Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. During a press conference Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran would be wise to “find a way to get the carrier pigeon” to their troops to stop shooting.

“We’ll be hanging around. We’re not going anywhere. We will make sure that Iran complies with the ceasefire and ultimately comes to the table and makes a deal. … Our troops are prepared to restart at a moment’s notice,” Hegseth said.

As of midday Wednesday, just a handful of cargo vessels had traversed the strait and several oil tankers were heading to the passage, according to apps that track the maritime shipping industry.

“We have seen an uptick in the traffic in the strait today and I will reiterate the president’s expectation and demand that the Strait of Hormuz is reopened immediately and quickly and safely,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press conference Wednesday.

The U.S. military has more than 50,000 personnel in the region. According to U.S. Central Command, they have supported more than 13,000 strikes on targets and destroyed at least 155 Iranian vessels.

Iran’s health ministry has reported that more than 2,000 people have been killed and 20,000 wounded since the operation began.

A CENTCOM official declined to discuss the number of troops evacuated from theater, saying that the unit will not discuss locations or movements “to protect privacy and security of our service members.”

According to the official, 344 of the injured personnel have returned to duty. The official declined to describe the nature of the injuries, including wounds or head injuries.

“We have no additional information to provide,” the official said.

Walter Reed issued a press release Wednesday detailing how its medical evacuation team supports the transport of injured personnel from the battlefield to the facility, but it included no details on the number of personnel that have been evacuated from Operation Epic Fury.

According to the release, Walter Reed supports a 14-member team of Army, Navy and Air Force personnel who coordinate transport across U.S. Transportation Command, U.S. European Command, the Deployed Warrior Medical Management Center at Landstuhl and Air Force aeromedical staging facilities.

During the press conference Wednesday, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine acknowledged the sacrifices U.S. military personnel have made during the operation.

“I’m humbled by the service and sacrifice each and every day that I am lucky enough to see,” Caine said. “I ask that we never forget our fallen and their families — especially the 13 fallen from Operation Epic Fury. May we always be worthy of their sacrifice and honor their legacy,” Caine said.

The shockwaves have rippled outward, contributing to global economic strains and bringing conflict to Gulf neighbors whose economies depend on stability.

“This war will be remembered as Trump’s grave strategic miscalculation. One whose consequences reshaped the region in unintended ways,” Middle East scholar Fawaz Gerges told Reuters.

Before the war, the Strait, a narrow passage carrying around a fifth of the world’s oil and gas, was formally treated as an international waterway. Iran monitored it, harassed shipping and intermittently intercepted vessels, but it stopped short of asserting outright control.

In the new reality, Tehran has moved from shadowing tankers to effectively dictating terms. It currently functions as the de facto gatekeeper of the shipping route, selectively deciding on passage and on what terms. Iran wants to charge ships for safe passage.

Additionally, Iran has demonstrated resilience under sustained attack and retained the capacity to escalate further, projecting influence across multiple fronts and strategic choke points.

Its reach extends through Lebanon and Iraq via Hezbollah and Shi’ite militias, and into the Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea, leveraging the sphere of influence of its Houthi allies.

At home, Iran’s leadership remains firmly in control - even though the country’s economy is in tatters and great swathes of infrastructure in ruins from American and Israeli bombs.

“What did the U.S.–Israeli war actually achieve?” asked Gerges. “Regime change in Tehran? No. The surrender of the Islamic Republic? No. Containment of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium? No. An end to Tehran’s support for its regional allies? No.”

Iran has absorbed the blows while retaining — and in some cases strengthening — its core instruments of power, said four analysts and three Gulf government sources who spoke to Reuters for this story.

As well as Iran’s control of Hormuz, the political picture now, they noted, is of a more brutal, empowered establishment, unaccounted nuclear material, continued missile and drone production, and ongoing support for regional militias.

Echoing Trump, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday said Washington had won a decisive military victory, and that Iran’s missile program had been functionally destroyed. The State Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The United States, Israel and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire and U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to hold talks from Friday to discuss a long-term settlement.

While the ceasefire may halt the fighting, the Gulf officials said its durability hinges on addressing the deeper conflicts shaping the region’s security and energy landscape.

Any deal that falls short of a comprehensive settlement risks entrenching Iranian leverage rather than constraining it, they add.

Ebtesam Al‑Ketbi, president of the Emirates Policy Center described the truce as a fragile pause, one likely to institutionalize new forms of instability unless it expands well beyond a narrow cessation of hostilities.

“This ceasefire is not a solution; it is a test of intentions,” Ketbi told Reuters. “If it does not evolve into a broader agreement redefining the rules of engagement - in Hormuz and across proxy theaters — it will amount to little more than a tactical pause before a more dangerous and complex escalation.”

“If Trump reaches a deal with Iran without addressing core issues - ballistic missiles, drones, proxies, nuclear concerns, and the rules governing Hormuz - then the conflict is effectively left unresolved and the region exposed,” said Ketbi.

HORMUZ IS RED LINE FOR GULF COUNTRIES

Iran, for its part, has put forward to Washington terms that include sanctions relief, recognition of enrichment rights, compensation for war damage and continued control over the Strait, underscoring just how far apart the sides remain.

Trump acknowledged receiving the Iranian plan and called it “a workable basis to negotiate.”

For Gulf countries who rely on Hormuz to export their oil, the Strait remains a non-negotiable red line, added Saudi analyst Ali Shihabi.

“Any outcome that leaves the waterway effectively in Iranian hands would be a defeat for President Trump,” with the potential repercussions of high energy prices extending into the midterm elections, he said.

What the war may nonetheless open up for Tehran, Shihabi added, is the prospect of a negotiated settlement — potentially including sanctions relief.

From a Gulf perspective, the picture is deeply unsettling. Mistrust of Iran is running high following Tehran’s strikes on energy facilities and commercial hubs across the region. More troubling still, the war has transformed Hormuz into an explicit instrument of leverage and coercion, analysts say.

The economic stakes are equally stark. Iran wants to charge fees for ships passing through the Hormuz shipping lanes as part of any permanent peace deal, a move that would reverberate far beyond the Gulf, hitting global energy markets and the economic lifelines of states along the opposite shore.

“If Iran can extract millions per ship, the implications are enormous — not just for the Gulf, but for the global economy,” Ketbi said. “In that sense, the outcome is not just a regional setback, but a systemic shift with worldwide consequences.”

More broadly, the analysts warned, it would signal a fundamental change in the regional order, from a strait governed by international norms to one effectively policed by a hostile state emboldened, not weakened, by war.

GULF DEMANDS

The ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan, followed a war launched on February 28 by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said they aimed to curb Iran’s regional power, dismantle its nuclear program and create conditions for Iranians to topple their rulers.

Both sides declared victory. Trump called the ceasefire a “total and complete victory,” saying U.S. forces had achieved their objectives, while Iran’s Supreme National Security Council claimed Trump had accepted its conditions.

But the war has yet to deprive Iran of its stockpile of near‑weapons‑grade enriched uranium or its ability to strike neighbors with missiles and drones. The leadership, which faced a mass uprising months ago, withstood the superpower onslaught with no sign of collapse.

A Gulf source said restoring trust with Tehran would require stringent, written commitments — not informal assurances — covering non‑interference, freedom of navigation, and the security of key maritime corridors, including Hormuz, as well as the national security requirements of the Gulf states.

Those conditions, the Gulf source said, were conveyed to Pakistani mediators to be included as part of a comprehensive settlement.

An Israeli official said senior Trump administration officials had assured Israel that they would insist on previous conditions, such as the removal of Iran’s nuclear material, a halt to enrichment and the elimination of ballistic missiles.

Pakistan’s prime minister said Iranian and U.S. delegations were expected to meet in Islamabad on Friday for what would be the first official peace talks since the war began.

The Selective Service System, the federal agency that maintains a database of registered U.S. males who are considered draft-eligible in the event of a national emergency, submitted a proposed rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on March 30, according to the office’s dashboard.

Automatic registration into Selective Service was mandated in December 2025, when President Donald Trump signed into law the fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, the agency’s website says.

“This statutory change transfers responsibility for registration from individual men to SSS through integration with federal data sources,” the website reads.

Putting the effort in motion by this December is a move to simplify the registration process and the equivalent “workforce realignment,” according to the website.

The proposed rule is currently under review by the regulatory affairs office, awaiting finalization, per the dashboard.

The SSS coordinated with Congress throughout the 2026 NDAA process, the agency’s website says. In May 2024, lawmakers worked to incorporate language about the automatic registration into the annual defense authorization bill, citing money and legal challenges. The SSS costs around $30 million a year.

“This will also allow us to rededicate resources — basically that means money — towards [readiness] and towards mobilization … rather than towards education and advertising campaigns driven to register people,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., who sponsored the language, said at the time.

Currently, almost all male U.S. citizens and immigrants aged 18 through 25 are required to self-register within 30 days of their 18th birthday, with late registration available until an individual turns 26.

Men who fail to register are considered to be in violation of the Military Selective Service Act and can face penalties, such as ineligibility for federal programs, a fine up to $250,000 or five years imprisonment.

Registration for the draft has dwindled in recent years, partly because the option to register was removed from federal student loan forms in 2022, which accounted for nearly a quarter of all previous registrations.

Meanwhile, after some attempts from lawmakers, women are still exempt from registration.

The SSS was established in 1917 by President Woodrow Wilson after the U.S. entered World War I. President Gerald Ford suspended the draft in 1975, but it was reinstated just five years later in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

The U.S. hasn’t activated the draft since 1973 during the Vietnam War and has relied on volunteers ever since.

The remarks came one day after President Donald Trump declared a two-week ceasefire with Iran, stepping back from earlier threats to level Iranian civilization. The president said he hopes the pause will pave the way for negotiations toward a longer-term agreement.

Hegseth noted that the United States had carried out more than 800 strikes against targets in the hours leading up to the pause in hostilities.

He added that if Tehran had refused to agree, attacks would have expanded to include “power plants, the bridges and oil and energy infrastructure.”

The defense secretary went on to hail Operation Epic Fury as a “historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield,” painting a picture of an Iranian military in ruins.

“Central Command, using less than 10% of America’s total combat power, dismantled one of the world’s largest militaries, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” Hegseth said during a news conference at the Pentagon. “Their mission program is functionally destroyed. Launchers, production facilities and existing stockpiles, depleted, and decimated.”

Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, enumerated the claimed results of the U.S. offensive in Iran: 80% of Iran’s air-defense systems destroyed, 800 one-way attack drone storage facilities and 450 ballistic missile storage facilities hit, and 150 ships sunk.

“Epic Fury decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat ineffective for years to come,” Hegseth asserted. “Iran’s Navy is at the bottom of the sea...Iran’s Air Force has been wiped out.”

But despite the devastation, Tehran has remained defiant. The Islamic Republic, using a decentralized command structure built to survive decapitation, orchestrated an average of 120 drone and missile attacks per day across the region throughout the conflict’s duration. Crucially, it also maintained effective control over the Strait of Hormuz — a strategic leverage that sent oil prices soaring.

Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, 13 American service members had been killed in action and more than 365 had been wounded, according to the Pentagon.

Caine, for his part, struck a note of more guarded pragmatism.

“We welcome the ongoing ceasefire,” he said. “Let us be clear: a ceasefire is a pause, and the joint force remains ready if ordered or called upon to resume combat operations with the same speed and precision as we’ve demonstrated over the last 38 days. And we hope that that is not the case.”

Asked by reporters about Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, Hegseth expressed hope that Tehran would hand it over to Washington “voluntarily.” If not, he warned, America might still try to seize the material by force.

“It’s buried, and we’re watching it, we know exactly what they have,” Hegseth said.

“They’ll give it to us voluntarily,” he continued. “Or if we have to do something else ourselves — like we did in Midnight Hammer or something like that — we reserve that opportunity."

The following is a chronological account of how events unfolded, based on U.S. Central Command statements, the White House press conference and reporting citing U.S. military and defense officials.

April 3: F-15E Strike Eagle shot down

The F-15E was conducting a combat strike mission over southwestern Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury when it was engaged by Iranian air defenses, according to U.S. Central Command. The shootdown occurred on the 34th day of the joint U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran, which began Feb. 28. At the time, U.S. forces had conducted more than 10,000 combat sorties over Iran and struck more than 13,000 targets, according to Trump.

The F-15E was the first manned U.S. aircraft confirmed lost to Iranian fire in the conflict, though several other aircraft had been damaged or destroyed in the preceding weeks by a combination of Iranian strikes and a friendly-fire incident involving Kuwaiti air defenses. The F-15E was brought down by a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missile, according to Trump.

Both the pilot, call sign Dude 44 Alpha, and the weapons systems officer, or WSO, call sign Dude 44 Bravo, ejected safely, landing miles apart in hostile Iranian territory. The pilot came down in the Khuzestan Province area. The WSO evaded Iranian forces in the Zagros Mountains region of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province near Dehdasht.

Iranian state media released images of claimed wreckage, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a manhunt, offering a reward of approximately $60,000 for information leading to the capture of the American crew, while appealing to locals for information.

One of the images appeared to show an aircraft’s vertical stabilizer, which displayed markings consistent with F-15Es assigned to the 494th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron of the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath in England, though CENTCOM declined to confirm.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said at Monday’s press conference that a U.S. Air Force combat search-and-rescue task force was immediately assembled, comprising 10 A-10C Thunderbolt IIs in the Sandy role, HC-130J Combat King II aircraft, HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters, and Air Force Special Warfare airmen, including combat rescue officers and pararescuemen. The package penetrated Iranian airspace protected by a fighter strike package, Caine said.

The pilot was located and recovered by U.S. forces within hours in a daylight operation that drew heavy ground fire. U.S. aircraft flew seven hours over Iranian territory to reach him. One of the two HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters involved in the recovery took multiple hits from small-arms fire, wounding crew members aboard, Caine confirmed Monday. No U.S. personnel were killed.

Once the pilot was out of Iranian airspace, attention immediately turned to locating the WSO.

Meanwhile, one of the 10 A-10C Thunderbolt IIs providing Sandy escort for the pilot recovery mission took significant fire from Iranian forces. The pilot was able to fly the heavily damaged aircraft into Kuwaiti airspace before ejecting, as the aircraft crashed. The A-10 pilot was safely recovered, Caine said.

“A Sandy has one mission,” he said. “Get to the survivor, bring the rescue force forward and put themselves between that survivor on the ground and the enemy.”

Retired Air Force Col. Kim “KC” Campbell flew A-10s in combat over Iraq and is credited with successfully landing a severely battle-damaged Warthog under fire in 2003, earning her the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism.

“Events this week have definitely brought back some memories from my experience in Iraq,” Campbell told Military Times. “I’m proud to be an A-10 pilot and I’m proud to be a Sandy pilot. What they have been able to do has truly been incredible.”

Campbell described the decision-making process a pilot faces after sustaining battle damage.

“The A-10 was designed to take hits while performing its mission,” she said. “The A-10 is durable, reliable and has multiple redundant systems. We train for battle damage so that when it happens we fall back on our training. Our redundant systems allow us to get back to friendly territory and eject or in some cases, safely land the airplane.”

The decision to land or eject is based on the aircraft’s condition, according to Campbell. “It’s a single-seat airplane so each pilot will make their own decision after assessing the damage, talking to their wingman and conducting a controllability check.”

The A-10 is uniquely suited for the Sandy role, Campbell said. In addition to going through a qualification program to become Sandy pilots, A-10 pilots routinely train for the mission, she said.

“A-10s possess unique hardware that assists in locating the survivor. Its slower airspeed also allows for more effective escort of rescue helicopters. Sandy 1, the rescue mission commander, typically makes a final assessment of the situation and makes the final decision to execute the pickup.”

For the aircrew who fly these missions, the U.S. military’s “leave no one behind” philosophy is more than a slogan.

“It’s absolutely critical,” Campbell said. “When we know that the cavalry is coming to get us to bring us home, it allows us to do our job and do it well. We understand the promise and the obligation that no one will be left behind.”

April 3–5: Locating and extracting the weapons systems officer

The WSO, described by Trump as “a highly respected colonel,” sustained significant injuries during ejection but remained mobile. While the F-15E pilot was being evacuated, the WSO was on the move.

Despite “bleeding profusely,” the WSO employed Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, tactics, traversing several kilometers across rugged mountain terrain, treating his own wounds and taking cover in a mountain crevice, according to Trump. Both crew members had activated their rescue beacons after ejecting, Caine said, aiding in determining their location.

The Wall Street Journal reported that MQ-9 Reaper drones flew overhead during the evasion period, firing on Iranian forces that closed in on the WSO’s position. Israeli officials confirmed that Israel provided intelligence support and postponed planned strikes on Iran to avoid interfering with the search-and-rescue effort.

As the WSO evaded, U.S. forces continued their search — a task CIA Director John Ratcliffe later described at Monday’s press conference as comparable to hunting for “a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”

Ratcliffe confirmed the agency executed a deception campaign and used “unique, exquisite capabilities” to locate the WSO concealed in a mountain crevice.

Trump described the scale of the aerial deception, saying U.S. forces deployed aircraft to seven different locations simultaneously to confuse Iranian search teams.

With the WSO’s location confirmed, Trump ordered an immediate rescue mission. The second rescue force launched overnight April 4–5 with 155 aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers and 13 rescue aircraft, supported by hundreds of special operations personnel across the operation, Trump said. U.S. forces flew seven hours over Iran in darkness to reach the WSO, he added, mirroring the seven-hour daylight operation that recovered the pilot two days earlier.

The ground extraction force included members of Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known as SEAL Team 6, according to The New York Times.

Among the assets deployed were three MH-6 Little Bird helicopters, transported inside MC-130J Commando II aircraft and reassembled by operators after offloading. “They rebuilt these helicopters in less than 10 minutes,” Trump said. “And that was one of the more amazing things.” Additional fixed-wing support included A-10s and MQ-9 Reapers for suppression and overwatch.

U.S. aircraft conducted sustained strikes on approaching IRGC elements, cratering roads and hitting Iranian convoys to keep them away from the recovery site. Caine described the force as fighting through “multiple simultaneous contingencies, something no other nation, no other military can do.”

Trump noted that not all of his military advisers supported the decision to launch the rescue. “There were military people, very professional, that preferred not doing it,” he said.

Self-denial and material costs

With the WSO recovered, the force began its extraction from the forward site approximately 14 miles north of Shahreza City in southern Isfahan province, according to open-source analysts.

Trump described the forward site as “a farm without a runway with wet, crummy soil, sand, mostly sand, wet sand, and it eats planes alive.” He noted that planners had anticipated the possibility that aircraft could become stuck and had replacement aircraft ready. When two MC-130J Commando II aircraft became stuck on the soft ground at the site, U.S. forces executed the preplanned contingency, and three additional aircraft were flown in to extract the force, Trump said.

The immobile aircraft were deliberately destroyed by U.S. forces to prevent sensitive technology from falling into Iranian hands. The destruction followed a well-established U.S. military protocol for self-denial of sensitive equipment, a doctrine that gained renewed attention after a modified stealth helicopter was destroyed during the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Trump described the decision: “We blew them up to smithereens because we had equipment on the planes that frankly we’d like to take, but I don’t think it was worthwhile spending another four hours there taking it off.”

The operation’s confirmed material losses included the original F-15E Strike Eagle, the A-10 that crashed in Kuwait and two MC-130J Commando II aircraft destroyed at the forward site. The War Zone identified imagery consistent with additional MH-6 Little Bird helicopters destroyed at the site, though the exact number remains unconfirmed.

Each MC-130J Commando II carries a unit cost of approximately $100 million, according to publicly available Air Force procurement data. Caine offered the guiding principle behind the self-denial decision: “People are more important than hardware. That is the standard we live by.”

Iranian reactions

Iranian officials disputed the U.S. characterization of the mission’s outcome. Khatam al-Anbiya spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari said the rescue operation “was completely foiled.” Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said: “If the United States gets three more victories like this it will be utterly ruined.”

Operational context

The CIA’s role in the mission, locating the WSO and running the deception campaign, represented a marked contrast with 1980’s Operation Eagle Claw, which also took place in Iran, where intelligence failures contributed to the mission’s collapse and the deaths of eight U.S. service members.

“The CIA was very responsible for finding this little speck,” Trump said. “A general was talking about it’s like finding a needle in a haystack, finding this pilot.”

Trump described the moment of confirmation: “40 miles away was the head of a human being. I’m telling you, it’s moving. And then all of a sudden, 45 minutes later, he moved a lot. Stood up and they said, ‘We have him.’”

The operation marked the first publicly acknowledged U.S. ground presence inside Iran since Eagle Claw in 1980, and the first successful combat personnel recovery from Iranian territory.

With the A-10 platform slated for retirement, its role as the Sandy in Iran raises questions about the future of the CSAR escort mission. Campbell said a capable replacement is critical.

“If the plan continues for the A-10 to retire … then it’s absolutely critical that we have a plan to fulfill both the CAS and CSAR roles,” she said. “Not just an aircraft assigned to it, but an aircraft that will routinely train for it.”

Both crew members remain in U.S. care. The Pentagon has withheld their identities, and neither has been identified by name in any official U.S. government statement.

Mike, as his comrades-in-arms universally called him, spent World War II fighting in the Pacific and helping to liberate the Philippines. He was wounded twice over the course of the conflict and after the Japanese surrender, he served in the occupation of Japan.

He had indeed taken to his profession, albeit on his own terms, as explained to the local press by his brother, Alfredo: “One time they offered to make him a lieutenant, but he didn’t want it. He liked the action, the excitement, being with his men.”

As it was, by 1950 he had married and had risen among the non-commissioned ranks to master sergeant in Company F, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.

With a world war behind him, Pena got a new, thoroughly unexpected helping of excitement on June 25, 1950, when the North Korean People’s Army (KPA) surged across the borders of South Korea, seized Seoul and threatened to unite the peninsula under the regime of Kim Il-Sung.

Taken by surprise, the United Nations gathered what armed forces it could muster to back up its Republic of Korea army allies, but by mid-August 1950 the communists had all but overrun the country, save for those UN forces holding onto the port of Pusan. Among them was the 5th Cavalry.

By late August 1950, American aircraft had driven the North Korean air force from sky and the KPA was starting to run out of its most vital advantage: the initiative.

While its senior officers did all they could to win a breakthrough in the Pusan Perimeter, the UN troops did all they could to counter each enemy move.

On Sept. 1, the KPA committed four divisions to face Maj. Gen. Hobart R. Gay’s 1st Cavalry Division and the 1st ROK Division over a 35-mile front from Tabu-dong to the Naktong River.

On the evening of Sept. 4, elements of the “5th Cav” moved up on the town of Waegwan and right into a meeting engagement in which Mike Pena established his place in 1st Cavalry Division annals:

“That evening, under cover of darkness and a dreary mist, an enemy battalion moved to within a few yards of Master Sergeant Pena’s platoon. Recognizing the enemy’s approach, Master Sergeant Pena and his men opened fire, but the enemy’s sudden emergence and accurate point blank fire forced the friendly troops to withdraw. Master Sergeant Pena rapidly reorganized his men and led them in a counterattack which succeeded in regaining the positions they had lost. He and his men quickly established a defensive perimeter and laid down devastating fire, but enemy troops continued to hurl themselves in overwhelming numbers. Realizing that their scarce supply of ammunition would soon make their positions untenable, Master Sgt. Pena ordered his men to fall back and manned a machine gun to cover their withdrawal, he singlehandedly held back the enemy until the early hours of the following morning when his position was overrun and he was killed.”

Pena’s body was recovered the next day, but the North Koreans gradually but slowly forced the 5th Cavalry and the 1st ROK back. On Sept. 15, however, Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s landing at Inchon caught the weary North Koreans from their right flank and on the 16th the UN forces broke out of the Pusan Perimeter, driving the KPA into a full rout.

The Korean War had only begun, but the North Koreans would never have another chance like the one they had in September 1950. Saving South Korea and recovering Seoul did not come without sacrifice, however.

By the time the British 27th Commonwealth Brigade arrived to relieve its stretch of front, the 1st Cavalry Division suffered the death of 770 men killed, 2,616 wounded and 62 taken prisoner.

Pena was posthumously awarded Distinguished Service Cross, and a retroactive Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster as well as a Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster.

On March 18, 2014, in accordance with the Defense Authorization Act, Pena was among 14 service personnel judged unfairly honored due to their race, and his DSC was upgraded with President Barack Obama presenting the Medal of Honor to his son, Michael David Pena, in the White House.

Iranian state TV flashed an announcement claiming that Trump had accepted Iran’s terms for ending the war, describing it as a “humiliating retreat” by the U.S. president.

Iran said talks between the U.S. and Iran would begin on Friday in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Trump’s announcement on social media represented an abrupt turnaround from earlier in the day, when Trump issued an extraordinary warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if his demands were not met.

Trump said the last-minute deal, negotiated with Pakistan serving as a mediator, was subject to Iran’s agreement to pause its blockade of oil and gas supplies through the strait, which typically handles about one-fifth of global oil shipments.

“This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East.”

Two White House officials confirmed that Israel has also agreed to the two-week ceasefire and to suspend its bombing campaign on Iran. A few minutes after Trump’s announcement, the Israeli military said that it identified missiles launched from Iran towards Israel.

Trump, who has issued a series of threats in recent weeks only to back away, claimed progress between the two sides. He said Iran had presented a 10-point proposal that was a “workable basis” for negotiations and that he expected an agreement to be “finalized and consummated” during the two-week ceasefire.

Abrupt turnaround

The abrupt turnaround capped a whirlwind day that was dominated by Trump’s threat to destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran unless Tehran reopened the strait, which unnerved world leaders, rattled global financial and energy markets and drew widespread condemnation, including criticism from the head of the United Nations and Pope Leo.

As the clock ticked down to Trump’s 8 p.m. EDT deadline, U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran intensified, hitting railway and road bridges, an airport and a petrochemical plant. U.S. forces attacked targets on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil export terminal.

In response, Iran declared it would no longer hold back from hitting its Gulf neighbors’ infrastructure and said it had carried out fresh strikes on a ship in the Gulf and a huge Saudi petrochemical complex. Booms were heard in Doha late on Tuesday night, according to a Reuters witness in the Qatari capital.

The war, now in its sixth week, has claimed more than 5,000 lives in nearly a dozen countries, including more than 1,600 civilians in Iran, according to tallies from government sources and human rights groups.

The closure of the strait, through which almost a fifth of the world’s oil supply typically travels, has sharply increased oil prices, escalating the chances of a global economic downturn or even recession.

With the U.S. midterm election campaign ramping up, Trump’s approval ratings have hit their lowest level ever, leaving his Republican Party at risk of losing its grip on Congress. Polls show sizable majorities of Americans opposed to the war and frustrated by the rising cost of gasoline.

Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, gave the order after intelligence indicated a nexus of senior IRGC leaders was meeting at the location, the official said.

The B-2s are equipped to drop 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, also known as GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, to destroy deeply fortified structures. Their immense payload allows them to strike targets at a depth beyond the reach of conventional munitions, while their flying-wing design enables them to penetrate sophisticated defenses with minimal detection.

US special forces rescue second F-15 airman from Iran

That weapon was key to last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer, when bunker busters battered three of Iran’s nuclear installations. The B-2s made roughly the same 7,000-mile journey this time.

At the six-week mark of the assault against Iran, CENTCOM reported that U.S. forces had struck over 13,000 sites across the country. Other bombers in America’s squadrons, such as the B-1 and the B-52, have played prominent roles in the current campaign, Pentagon officials say.

Cooper’s directive coincided with a high-stakes search-and-rescue effort focused on two American airmen who ejected from a fighter jet over Iranian territory on Friday. President Donald Trump would later liken that operation to a Hollywood scene during a press conference at the White House.

“You would call it central casting if you were doing a movie for location,” he said Monday, revealing that hundreds of personnel were involved in the extraction. “Those pilots came in so fast and so quick and got out of there.”

Moments after extolling U.S. forces from the lectern, the president declared that when it came to the reach of the American military, nothing was off-limits. He warned he could destroy Iran’s critical infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.

The following day, in a post on Truth Social, Trump escalated the rhetoric even further, threatening to eradicate Iranian civilization if Tehran did not capitulate to his demands by 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Military Times that “only the president knows where things stand and what he will do.”

In the proposed budget for the Department of Defense, released this week, all troops ranked E-5 and below would receive a pay raise of 7%. The budget also allots 6% pay bumps for military personnel ranked E-6 to O-3, as well as 5% raises for those O-4 and above.

“The Administration recognizes the importance of America’s warfighters and their families,” the budget request reads.

Junior enlisted service members typically serve in pay grades E-1 to E-4 for their first enlistment term, which usually lasts four years. Mid-level noncommissioned officers include those E-5 to E-7, but the officers would receive different raise increases based on their rank. The proposed budget lists those ranked E-5 and below to receive a 7% boost, while E-6 and E-7 ranks would receive a 6% raise.

Across the military, troops received a 3.8% pay increase in fiscal 2026. Traditionally, the annual pay raise for troops ranges from roughly 3% to 5%. But in 2025, junior enlisted service members saw a large 14.5% pay hike, adding between $3,000 to $6,000 to their basic pay.

Prior to that increase, the annual base pay for junior enlisted service members could be less than $30,000, but with the raise, it brings the base pay to around that figure before housing stipends and other pay incentives.

As of September 2025, there are around 540,000 active-duty junior enlisted service members E-4 and below across the branches, making up 50% of the enlisted military, according to a 2026 Congress Defense Primer.

There were approximately 378,000 personnel ranked E-5 and E-6 across the military in September 2025, per Congress’ report.

“This enduring investment, far above the standard annual military pay raise, builds on the President’s recruiting and retention success, by doubling down on the Administration’s goal to restore America’s fighting force,” the proposal says.

The White House proposed the fiscal 2027 budget on April 3, outlining the Trump administration’s requests to Congress for federal spending beginning on Oct. 1, 2026.

President Donald Trump is requesting $1.5 trillion for the Defense Department in fiscal 2027, a 44% increase from the already historic amount of nearly $1 trillion requested in fiscal 2026, per the proposal. The budget allocates $1.1 trillion in “base discretionary budget authority” for the DOD, the proposal says.

Before the upcoming fiscal year, presidents are required to submit their budget recommendations no later than the first Monday in February, but usually that deadline is missed. Congress then works to pass its own budget resolution after hearings. That can prove to be a challenge, as past stalemates in federal funding negotiations have led to government shutdowns.

If approved, the new budget, including the pay raises for lower-ranked service members, would begin Jan. 1, 2027.