The reason: advances in DNA technology.

During a Sept. 1 webinar, Kelly McKeague, the director of the DPAA, told Stars and Stripes that “We will petition Arlington National Cemetery to disinter the remains at the Tomb of the Unknown simply because the probability is high that we will be able to identify that unknown,” he said.

According to McKeague, the agency now possesses DNA samples from 94% of the roughly 7,400 American service members still listed as missing from the Korean War.

While the agency plans to petition the Army, which oversees Arlington, the potential exhumation and identification process will not commence until all Korean War unknowns — currently residing in the Honolulu cemetery — are exhumed and identified.

There are fewer than 50 Korean War unknowns left, Lance Pridemore, assistant director at the cemetery, told Stripes. And that process should be complete by the end of November.

The Korean War Unknown has rested in the national cemetery since May 30, 1958, when both the Korean and WWII Unknowns were interred during ceremonies presided over by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The former five-star general and commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force during the Second World War presented the Medal of Honor to each Unknown.

The exhumation would have some precedent.

In the decade following the Vietnam War, there were calls from the American public to designate another unknown.

Known only as X-26, the remains of an American service member were being held in the U.S. Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii. Found near a stream in An Loc in 1972, X-26 had remained unidentified for over a decade when the remains were selected to represent the nation’s missing from that war and buried at Arlington on Memorial Day, 1984.

During the ceremony, President Ronald Reagan awarded the Medal of Honor to the unknown.

However, in 1994, in the face of mounting evidence that their son, Capt. Michael J. Blassie, was the Vietnam War unknown, the family of the Air Force pilot submitted a formal request to the DOD to exhume X-26’s body and submit it for DNA testing.

Of the exhumation, then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen remarked that, “We disturb this hallowed ground with profound reluctance. And we take this step only because of our abiding commitment to account for every warrior who fought and died to preserve the freedoms that we cherish.”

The remains were taken to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the test result confirmed on June 28, 1998, that the Unknown Soldier was indeed Blassie.

Several weeks later, an MC-130E aircraft from his former unit, the 8th Special Operations Squadron, flew his remains back to his home state of Missouri. He was then re-interred at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in Saint Louis County, Missouri, according to the Society of the Honor Guard.

The marble crypt that once honored him was ultimately changed to read: Honoring and Keeping Faith with America’s Missing Servicemen, 1958–1975.

During a panel regarding counter-drone defenses at the Air and Space Cyber Conference, Hiatt noted that “everyone talks about cost asymmetry… and how important that solving that cost asymmetry problem is. But for the folks that are on the ground, the battle captain trying to make that assessment, it’s not a cost asymmetry problem. It’s a magazine doubt issue.”

“When you have a problem like UAS threats, they’re coming in mass,” Hiatt continued. Trust in an airman’s system, he emphasized, is crucial when the threat time has been cut down to seconds.

“I know that my DE [Directed Energy] weapons are gonna be able to take it out, and do so in a low-collateral way, in a very low cost per shot way, and most importantly, in a way that preserves my magazine — my scarce interceptors, and then they’ll be able to push that button.”

The challenge, according to Hiatt, is “putting that work in and building that trust. It’s not science fiction. It’s physics fact.”

For Hiatt, utilizing AI in counter-drone defense is a tool with humans initially “in the loop” but ultimately working towards a system where humans start the loop and then end up on the outside of the operating system. However, building that trust amid an industry that is still formulating its own AI policy regulations is difficult, the panelists concede.

But despite this, the panelists argue, the proverbial cat is out of the bag regarding artificial intelligence, and the U.S. military must work on how to combat fast and reckless enemy AI agents that don’t necessarily operate with the same oversight.

The military must continue “to evolve, because the threat is evolving,” said panelist Colton Wood, chief technology officer of Digital Force Technologies. “And if we don’t evolve our defenses to basically counter that, we’re just gonna always be on our heels.

During the panel, “Rethinking the Stockpile: Building the Right Mix for Future Conflict” at the Air and Space Cyber Conference on Monday, Lyons noted that the service is working to balance “capability, capacity cost and the adaptability to produce at the speed and scale for future conflicts.”

Citing the conflict in Ukraine, where battlefield adaptations can come within hours and minutes, not months and years, panelist Bryon Kroger, founder and CEO of Rise8, noted that “when it comes to software, we’ve just historically been really bad. Like, in some cases, we’re building software slower than hardware. It’s wild.”

“You wouldn’t think about not establishing a refueling apparatus for aircraft that need to get across long distances,” said Kroger. “But we haven’t really thought about, from an enterprise IT perspective, how to create a similar refueling apparatus or the ability to continuously deliver software to the field in the way that you should. It’s not getting nearly enough attention and we need to start.

“We really have to decouple the software cycles from the hardware cycles. … We [need to be] deploying multiple times a day, where we can get an update to the field on demand. As soon as we need it.”

Ryan Hartman, chief executive officer of Ondas Sentinel, agreed.

“Inventory on the first day of the conflict is one important equation. But it is the ability for that inventory to evolve with the conflict. In my 27 years in the industry, I haven’t seen an adversary comply with our acquisition system yet. And therefore, we have to make sure that our acquisition system enables us to keep up with the pace of the conflict and the adaptability necessary to stay relevant in the conflict.”

When addressing how the government and industry can work together to address stockpile bottlenecks, both Hartman and Kroger offered simple, if possibly difficult to enact, solutions.

For Kroger, the biggest bottleneck Rise8 faces is something simple: a calendar.

According to him, “80-85%” of his company’s time is spent waiting on government authorization to operate — time spent “waiting in the queue” to get on the ”authorizing official’s calendar… if it takes six months to get on the ATO’s calendar, right there you’re at a minimum of six months to fill the system, but they’re going to find something because we always find things during test and evaluation. And now we go back, redevelop, and wait another six months to get on that calendar. This is how you get 12–18-month ATO cycles,” he noted.

For Hartman, the bottleneck within U.S. industry is clear: “The first is the supply chain, the second is the supply chain, the third is the supply chain and the fourth is testing.”

With technological advancements unfolding at breakneck speed amid conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, time is not a luxury the U.S. Air Force and its industry partners have much of.

That has been a boon to people like Kroger, who notes that a government that unleashes performance-based outcomes means that the defense industry is not an insider game anymore. Rather, contracts go to companies that offer solutions-based, scalable products.

As for the most important action the government and industries must take to be better positioned in the next few years, Hartman was blunt:

“Make sure we have capacity prior to a conflict.”

Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Ken Wilsbach announced Monday at the Air and Space Cyber Conference that the service is advancing two initiatives in the wake of devastating Iranian attacks on U.S. bases across the Middle East in recent months.

“First,” said Wilsbach, “we will establish the point defense weapons system, bringing together kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities to secure our air bases.”

“Second,” he continued, “we established a new career field of point defense airmen. This new career field will be operational in two years.”

Two airmen, Senior Master Sgt. Andrew Lewis and Senior Master Sgt. Brandon Spears, are the first field managers within that career track, Wilsbach added.

While details regarding the new career field are sparse, a June 2026 release notes that these specialized units will include units drawn from multiple career fields operating at select Air Force installations.

The need for base defenses in light of the Iran war has become imperative.

Far from isolated, America’s sprawling — and easy-to-find — Middle East footprint has been repeatedly subjected to assault since the start of the Iran war. In July, three U.S. soldiers were killed when an Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack penetrated air defenses around Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. Six U.S. soldiers were killed in March when an Iranian drone struck a tactical operations center at Port Shuaiba, Kuwait.

“For 20 years we didn’t have to worry about anything coming out of the sky, and we lost proficiency that I think we had trained in the Cold War era — through the ’80s and ’90s — where we were worried about adversaries who had fixed-wing aircraft and the capability to send long-range precision fires at us,” Lt. Gen. James P. Isenhower, the commanding general of CAC, told reporters during a Pentagon briefing last Thursday. “That wasn’t the case in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Now, with precise, long-range missile and drone assaults blowing “the hell” out of bases like Bahrain, with its latest initiatives, the U.S. Air Force is rapidly seeking to contend with the ever-evolving threats from the enemy.

Eve Sampson contributed to this report.

Buzz Bissinger, author of The New York Times bestselling book Friday Night Lights, and its subsequent film’s director, Peter Berg, are teaming up to deliver the true story of The Mosquito Bowl, which saw 65 Marines of the 4th and 29th regiments, 6th Marine Division, facing off on the “gridiron” of Guadalcanal before being shipped off to Okinawa.

Based on Bissinger’s 2022 book The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II, the film follows four of America’s top college football stars, who traded a pigskin for an M1 Garand.

Netflix dropped the official teaser trailer Wednesday, featuring Nicholas Galitzine (The Idea of You) as John McLaughry, Bill Skarsgård (It) as Bob Bauman, Ray Nicholson (Smile 2) as Tony Butkovich and Tom Francis (Broadway’s Sunset Boulevard) as Dave Schreiner.

Berg, who penned the adaptation alongside Mark L. Smith, produced the film with Alex Gayner and Brian Grazer for Imagine Entertainment. Grazer and Imagine Entertainment previously collaborated with Berg on Friday Night Lights. Ezra Emanuel is the executive producer.

As the days of December 1944 passed on Guadalcanal, the island was beset with rumors of where and when the Marines would ship out. It also became the home to some lively trash talk.

Relief from the daily drudgery came over sips of beer and the promise that the “29th would kick the 4th’s ass if there was ever a football game between the two,” writes Bissinger.

That promise swiftly took shape into an all-American sporting event — some thousands of miles from home.

These men were not, according to Bissinger, run-of-the-mill former collegiate football players. Within the 29th alone came an “All-American running back from Purdue who had set a scoring record in the Big Ten; an All-Missouri Valley Conference end; starters from Cornell, Notre Dame, Illinois and Duquesne; and five former captains, including from Notre Dame, Illinois and Purdue.”

The 4th was no slouch when it came to its “roster” either. The unit touted a two-time All-American wide receiver from Wisconsin and another at center from the University of California; an Ivy Leaguer who had started with the New York Giants; and starters from Wisconsin, Michigan State, Fordham, Montana and Ohio Northern, according to Bissinger.

On Dec. 24, 1944, the 65 Marines strode out onto a “field” made up of dirt, pebbles and shards of sharp coral, wearing cut-off dungarees and T-shirts with numbers stenciled on the front. Roughly 1,500 Marines ringed the field with a broadcast on Guadalcanal-based Mosquito Network going out to various Navy and Marine units fighting across the Pacific. The score, according to Bissinger, was occasionally flashed to destroyers at sea.

Tragically, it would be the last game many of the footballers-turned-Marines would play. Fifteen of the 65 players who suited up for The Mosquito Bowl were killed during the Typhoon of Steel.

The film is set to hit theaters on Oct. 30 and premiere on Netflix on Nov. 25.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That, Sanders said, was very much deliberate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In its updated accounting method, the Defense Casualty Analysis System’s category labeled “Overseas Operations (OO) Casualty Summary” lists U.S. casualties suffered in the conflict since July 7 — effectively removing the totals from those associated with Operation Epic Fury.

The new page comes in the wake of criticism that the Pentagon had dropped the number of U.S. troops killed and wounded in the war with Iran.

On July 17 three U.S. service members were killed when an Iranian missile hit their sleeping barracks at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The fourth death occurred two days later in a separate incident in Erbil, Iraq, during a controlled detonation of an attack drone.

The Pentagon initially updated its system to 18 killed before lowering that number to 14 once again.

On July 23, Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, refuted a New York Times article on the lowering of the KIA number, writing on X that “Our Pentagon Press Office gave the New York Times a courtesy off-the-record phone call explaining in detail that the site errors on the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) were due to a temporary data disruption. Our team explained we are working on it being resolved in coordination with the Military Services.”

Under the “overseas operations” system, the Pentagon reports that 207 U.S. service members have been wounded in action. It lists 417 wounded during Operation Epic Fury. Combined, the two categories account for 624 wounded service members. The total number listed as killed is 18.

The post-July 7 tally comes one day prior to the collapse of the tenuous June ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran, resulting in U.S. Central Command delivering 13 continuous nightly strikes against the Middle East nation.

The collapse of the ceasefire, the Trump administration argued, restarted the 60-day clock that allows the president to use military force without congressional approval.

The new accounting system is in line with President Donald Trump’s assertion that the latest escalation between the U.S. and Iran is part of a new conflict with the Islamic Republic, not a continuation of the one that began in February.

On July 10, the president formally notified Congress that hostilities with Iran had resumed, a position that administration officials contend allows them to bypass the War Powers Resolution and restart the clock again on the war.

In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth controversially claimed that the ceasefire with Iran meant that Trump did not yet have to seek congressional consent to extend the war.

Hegseth argued that the pause in hostilities froze the ticking clock that would otherwise require the president either to get agreement from lawmakers or to end military operations after 60 days.

“We are in a ceasefire right now, which [in] our understanding means the 60-day clock pauses, or stops,” Hegseth told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

“I do not believe the statute would support that,” Kaine said, adding that he has “serious constitutional concerns and we don’t want to layer those with additional statutory concerns.”

Congress has not technically declared war since World War II, and yet more than 100,000 service members have died in conflicts spanning the globe since 1945.

Admiral, who currently serves as the commander of III Corps and Fort Hood, Texas, could take over the top job from Gen. Christopher Donahue, who unexpectedly relinquished command earlier this month after only 18 months in the role. Since Donahue’s exit, Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie has been serving as acting commander.

If confirmed, Admiral would also serve as commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, coordinating with 104 countries in USAREUR-AF’s area of responsibility. He would remain a three-star, despite the role previously being a four-star position.

Prior to leading III Corps and Fort Hood, Admiral served as the commanding general for the 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas, and in Poland, and director of force management in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, according to his official Army bio.

Donahue’s early July departure came amid the Pentagon’s broad senior leadership changes under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who in April asked U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George to step down and retire ahead of the typical four-year term.

Since taking office, Hegseth has removed more than a dozen senior military leaders, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown and former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

Eve Sampson contributed to this report.

The Defense Department on Tuesday identified Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, New York, as the third soldier killed during an enemy attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, Jordan.

In the wake of the assault, U.S. Central Command confirmed the deaths of U.S. Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, and 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, who died July 17 and July 18, respectively, according to a DoD release.

CENTCOM originally noted that a third U.S. service member was missing, however, the command announced on July 19 that, “After a thorough search, U.S. military personnel found unidentified remains at the location earlier today. An examination process to verify the remains is ongoing.”

The missing third service member appears to be Rampersad.

The Pentagon noted that the incident is under investigation, with the soldier status updated from “missing” to “believed to be deceased.”

According to the release, Rampersad enlisted in the Army in 2019 and was assigned to 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 10th Army Air & Missile Defense Command, Ansbach, Germany.

“Today, we mourn the loss of Sgt. Angel Rampersad,” Brig. Gen. Glenn Henke, commanding general of the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, said in a statement. “We extend our deepest, most heartfelt condolences to her family and all those who are navigating this unimaginable loss. The 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command is grieving, and we will continue to support one another as we process this tragedy.”

Rampersad’s awards include the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the National Defense Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.

The latest casualties bring the toll of American troops killed in the war with Iran to 18. More than 400 U.S. troops have been wounded in the campaign, which began Feb. 28.

J.D. Simkins and Christina Stassis contributed to this report.