James Lyon, 80, admitted to submitting fraudulent documents to the VA to help him pocket over $124,000 in disability payments, lying about his military service and claiming he earned combat accolades — including the Silver Star and the Bronze Star — during the Vietnam War.

Lyon never served in combat and confessed to refusing Marine Corps training roughly 60 years ago. Still, he claimed to serve over three different periods and lied about being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS, federal prosecutors said. He used that diagnosis to submit fake paperwork for VA disability payments.

Lyon has not yet been sentenced. He faces up to 10 years in prison without parole, the maximum sentence specified by Congress.

“Veterans’ benefits represent a sacred national promise that is rooted in our gratitude to the men and women who have sacrificed and served our country,” R. Matthew Price, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said in the statement.

“When individuals fraudulently obtain these benefits for their own personal gain, they undermine the integrity of these vital programs and divert resources from the veterans who earned them and need them most. That is unacceptable,” he said.

The case was investigated by the Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General and is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney James Kirkpatrick.

Gone are the days when America fought from sprawling command posts with overwhelming air superiority. Now faced with adversaries toting long-range fires and drones, the U.S. military is relearning a basic principle: how to hide.

As services adopt new strategies, the Army’s Combined Arms Command, or CAC, an outfit responsible for overseeing the service’s leadership and doctrine development, is changing how it teaches troops about concealment.

“Hiding in plain sight has become an imperative on the modern battlefield,” Lt. Gen. James P. Isenhower, the commanding general of CAC, told reporters during a Pentagon briefing on Thursday.

“We think very differently about how we employ ourselves [and] how we remain dispersed” compared to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, he explained, pointing, in particular, to the size of command posts. “We have to work really hard to look like that which we are not.”

Isenhower’s remarks come as details begin to emerge about the true scale of destruction wrought by an Iranian strike on a major forward base in the Middle East.

On Feb. 28, the Islamic Republic struck Naval Support Activity, or NSA, Bahrain with missiles and one-way attack drones following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. Initially, the Pentagon reported no major impacts to military operations. However, the Wall Street Journal later reported that damages amounted to approximately $400 million.

In one of the most stark official disclosures about the war thus far, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao told an Epoch Times reporter that Iran “blew the hell out of Bahrain.”

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.

While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan saw bases attacked with mortars and rockets, U.S. forces did not have to contend with precise, long-range missile and drone assaults.

“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,” Isenhower said during the briefing. “That wasn’t the case in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Over the course of the Global War on Terror, air dominance allowed American bases to be havens, according to Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, where the U.S. could concentrate supplies, personnel and command centers without facing constant surveillance and threats from above.

“These bases were sanctuaries,” she told Military Times, calling the installations “an aberration, historically.”

The U.S. is now returning to a “period of warfare where the base itself is a vulnerability and something an adversary can attack,” she said, which can lead to the scattering of resources.

Exacerbating that susceptibility has been the U.S. military’s reliance on costly interceptor munitions to combat Iranian ballistic missiles and cheap, one-way attack drones, actions that have significantly depleted interceptor stocks.

A recent CSIS report estimated that between February and July, the U.S. had expended approximately 65% of its Patriot interceptor inventory. The number of THAAD ballistic missile interceptors, meanwhile, decreased by 38% since the start of the war, according to the report.

Grieco said that dispersing troops to account for these new vulnerabilities comes at a cost. Instead of funneling fuel, ammunition, food and other supplies through large hubs, the military must spread across more locations, potentially further apart.

“We’re now trading efficiency for survivability,” she said.

After the damage to NSA Bahrain, U.S. ships were forced to rely on a logistics hub at Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that sits more than 2,000 miles away from the service’s carrier strike groups in the Middle East.

The distance required personnel to place food orders 30 days in advance, which proved challenging due to the unpredictability of frenzied military operations.

Isenhower noted that as a division commander, meanwhile, he watched command posts shrink smaller and smaller during training because opposing forces — soldiers meant to act as the enemy during exercises — kept finding and precisely attacking them by using electronic signatures.

Units responded by dispersing and employing deceptive tactics to make it harder for the enemy to determine what they were seeing.

“We’ve got to create the benefits of mass without presenting the vulnerabilities of concentration,” he said. “It affects the squad differently than it affects a battalion, but we’ve seen in current combat operations: the vulnerabilities of a large, distinct signature, whether it’s physical, visual or something on the electromagnetic spectrum.

“It fundamentally changes how we operate.”

That vulnerability extends from command posts to moving equipment and aircraft.

In April, Iran downed a U.S. fighter jet after deploying a swarm of drones that were able to identify the aircraft’s GPS location, speed and direction, then feed that data to Iranian commanders, The New York Times reported.

Education about electromagnetic and drone warfare has been incorporated into all levels of the Army, Isenhower said.

Soldiers are learning to use electromagnetic data “to try to get a bearing or pinpoint a fix on the enemy,” he said, while learning “how to operate in that environment so they don’t do the same to us.”

The policy incorporates directives issued throughout 2025 into a set of standards for the services. Among them: commanders must allow time for physical fitness every duty day and troops in jobs designated as “combat arms” must be held to male fitness standards on regular fitness tests.

Many changes are already underway across the services. In March 2025, Hegseth ordered the services to identify their combat-arms specialties and develop sex-neutral, mission-related physical standards.

Hegseth has railed against “fat troops,” and “fat generals,” and pledged to return combat arms jobs to “the highest male standard only.”

The changes have unfolded alongside a Pentagon review of women in front-line jobs. In December, the Pentagon’s personnel chief, Anthony Tata, announced a study on the effectiveness of integrating ground combat units, prompting concerns among some that it could be used to justify restricting women from combat roles.

Critics have questioned the study’s independence after it was transferred from the Institute for Defense Analyses to Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory and placed under a researcher involved in a controversial 2015 study Hegseth has cited to argue against women serving in combat jobs.

The new document replaces the Pentagon’s 2022 fitness policy.

Here is what to know:

Fitness tests

Active duty troops are slated to take two fitness tests per year, and National Guard and Reserve members will take one. Under the Pentagon’s new policy, active-duty service members will take their service’s regular fitness test and a second assessment aimed at measuring their combat readiness. Those in designated combat arms jobs will be required to take a Combat Field Test, or CFT, while troops outside of those specialties will take a Combat Readiness Test, or CRT. The services can decide to use a regular fitness test in place of a CRT.

The regulations identify more than 80 occupations as combat arms across the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, including infantry, armor, artillery, some engineering jobs and special forces roles. No Space Force jobs are listed.

Combat arms troops will be held to male-based standards on their regular service tests and required to score an average of 70% across events. Those in non-combat roles will have sex and age-based scoring.

Each service is responsible for developing its own CFTs that adhere to Pentagon standards.

Body composition

Active-duty troops will have body composition testing twice annually; those in the National Guard and Reserve will have testing once per year. All service members must meet a waist-to-height ratio of less than 0.55, which is calculated by dividing a person’s waist circumference by their height. Troops who exceed that standard will be subject to a service-specific body fat assessment. If they fail that assessment, service members will be enrolled in a remedial program to meet benchmarks.

Branches may also set stricter requirements.

The body composition policy also gives a minimum 12-month exemption from fitness and body composition testing after childbirth, miscarriage or stillbirth. Postpartum troops may be granted additional time exemptions based on healthcare provider input.

Accountability and Tracking

The policy makes commanders responsible for giving troops time to stay fit. Leadership “will allow such members to perform physical fitness training every duty day,” the regulation reads, except when mission requirements dictate otherwise.

Starting on June 1, 2027, each service must submit a report on its fitness and body composition programs to the Pentagon with data that enables officials to analyze results based on sex, age, race, ethnicity, rank and military specialty. The services are also required to keep electronic records of troops’ test results throughout their careers.

Additionally, the services must provide the Pentagon with the information about the scientific basis used to create their fitness and body composition standards.

The “Summer Surge Incentive,” announced this week with other recruiting reforms, is open to current members who reenlist and airmen transferring from active duty or the Air Force Reserve.

The incentive, first reported by Task & Purpose, comes as other services are offering large bonuses to retain talent. The Army is offering bonuses exceeding $200,000 to keep aviation warrant officers in the ranks, and the Navy is offering up to $150,000 for select aviation roles.

In addition to the bonus, the Guard said that it is now sending its highest-performing recruiters to wings struggling to meet recruiting goals, rather than limiting them to their home states. Other initiatives include a 179% increase in local market funding and a social media collaborator program.

U.S. Air Force Col. Mark Williams, director of Recruiting and Retention for the Air National Guard, said the changes are meant to modernize the force.

“It is all part of an effort to continue reaching individuals seeking purpose, growth and the opportunity to make a lasting impact,” he said.

The Guard also instituted a policy allowing wings that maintain at least 90% manning strength to temporarily fill positions above their authorized numbers.

The change, according to Chief Master Sgt. James Chubb, chief of the Air National Guard Recruiting and Retention Accessions Branch, said was designed to prevent recruiting momentum from stalling once units reach their prescribed limits.

“One of our greatest challenges is balancing recruiting success with limited authorized vacancies,” Chubb said in the announcement. “As recruiters successfully fill formations, available positions naturally become scarce, creating an artificial ceiling on continued growth.”

For fiscal year 2026, the Air National Guard is looking to recruit 8,842 enlisted airmen, 1,123 line officers, 68 chaplains and 53 warrant officers.

With the acceptance of the 359th — and final — tiltrotor aircraft, the Marine Corps marked the end of the MV-22B Osprey program of record, a milestone that will now shift efforts towards “sustaining and modernizing the fleet for decades to come,” the V-22 Joint Program Office, which manages the Osprey program, said in a statement.

“The MV-22B … fundamentally changed the way the Marine Air-Ground Task Force generates combat power,” Lt. Gen. William Swan, the Marine Corps’ deputy commandant for aviation, said in the statement. “It provides commanders with decision space that only speed and reach can provide, connecting ships, bases and distributed forces in ways previous generations could only imagine. Today, Marine commanders build operations around the assumption that the MV-22B will be there.”

Though the Navy and Air Force also use variants of the Osprey, the Marine Corps maintains the majority of the fleet.

The Corps intends to keep the Osprey operational through 2055 with efforts that include improving wiring, working towards pro-rotor gear boxes, standardizing the fleet and redesigning parts of the aircraft for better safety.

The aircraft has a history of safety issues and accidents that have led to the deaths of over 60 service members since 2000, according to prior Military Times reporting, and in 2023, the Defense Department grounded the aircraft after eight service members were killed when an Air Force Osprey crashed.

A 2025 government watchdog report found that the services had not appropriately shared information about Osprey issues amongst each other.

The Osprey was developed to reduce the gap between rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft. Since going operational in 2007, the platform has been involved in 114 deployments and flown more than 683,300 hours, according to the program’s office, which also said the Osprey represents three quarters of all Marine Corps rotary wing support.

The Osprey is produced jointly by Bell and Boeing and according to a Wednesday release from the companies, has been involved in various high-profile missions, including the ongoing Venezuela earthquake response, the 2022 earthquake response in Haiti, operations to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips in 2009 after his ship was hijacked by Somali pirates.

And it may accompany fighter jets, but no pilot will ever buckle themselves into a seat in the cockpit of a Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat.

Australia’s flight-ready uncrewed aircraft made its Farnborough International Airshow debut this week, the static display representing what the company this month said was the first collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA, to participate in a multinational, joint operational exercise.

The Ghost Bat in June soared alongside crewed aircraft around the Marinas Island Range Complex in the Western Pacific as part of Exercise Valiant Shield 2026. According to Boeing, the CCA participated as F-35A, F-35B and other crewed coalition jets honed tactics.

The aircraft were included with U.S. Pacific Command forces to support the U.S. Air Force’s Experimental Operation Unit.

“Having MQ-28 participate in such a significant military training exercise is a first, and this is just the start of demonstrating how advanced human-machine teaming extends the reach and awareness of crewed platforms and enhances joint force operations,” Steve Parker, the president and chief executive officer of Boeing Defense, Space and Security, said in a release. “We’ve proven that it’s combat capable.”

The integrated exercise came after the Ghost Bat successfully completed a live fire demonstrating, shooting an AIM-120 AMRAAM missile to destroy a drone.

With a range of more than 2,000 nautical miles, the Ghost Bat was designed to support crewed jets by performing missions like surveillance and electronic warfare.

The aircraft has “length of a trainer and the full wingspan of a modern stealth fighter,” according to Boeing, and it can reach a ceiling of over 40,000 feet.

For years, industry leaders have seen autonomous aircraft as a market primed for potential growth, as experts push for crewed-uncrewed teaming as a key difference maker in beating a near-peer rival like China.

This year, some companies took that a step further, as they prepare for an era of air combat characterized by unmanned aerial systems — like the Ghost Bat.

Betting on the need for future crew to manage drone wingmen — fleets of drones under human command — BAE Systems unveiled a helmet to help pilots manage more data than ever before.

The U.S. Air Force has also introduced incorporating uncrewed aircraft into missions, and in June it awarded CCA contracts to Anduril, for its FQ-44A “Fury,” and General Atomics, for its FQ-42A.

Models of both were on display at the airshow.

At Farnborough Airshow this week in London, BAE Systems unveiled a helmet-mounted prototype it says is intended to explore how future pilots may be able to operate under battlefield conditions they anticipate to be saturated with unprecedented amounts of data.

Called Project Intuity, the demonstrator is intended to help pilots manage input from multiple sources by projecting information onto the helmet’s visor.

“As allies move towards aircraft that act as combat command centers, future operations will demand that pilots process more information from more sources than ever before,” Andrew Macklin-Smith, the company’s product line director for helmet-mounted displays, said in a release.

“Through Project Intuity, we’re addressing that challenge by integrating the technologies to allow pilots to command fleets of drones in the skies,” he added. “This system will achieve that by filtering and presenting the most important information clearly and within the pilot’s natural field of view.”

BAE did not yet say whether the demonstrator is tied to a specific program or provide a timeline for when this technology could enter service but the project comes as the U.S. is experimenting with having pilots command drone wingmen.

During an exercise last summer, Air Force pilots controlled Valkyrie drones during flight and in January, the Navy announced that F-35 pilots had used touchscreen tablets to control uncrewed autonomous drones during training.

“Modern warfare is demanding more from our aviators,” Rear Adm. Todd Evans, commander of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, said in a release about the Navy’s human-machine teaming milestone. The exercise, he added, gave pilots “the advanced tactics they need to win future battles.”

The U.S. Air Force has for years broached the possibility of integrating drone wingmen — used for reconnaissance, electronic warfare and attacks — alongside fighter jets. The teaming, experts have said, would make the difference in between winning or losing wars against advanced adversaries like China.

In a first this year, the Air Force asked Congress for nearly $1 billion to start procuring Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA, a fleet of jet-powered, semi-autonomous drones fly alongside crewed aircraft like the F-35 and F-22.

The service’s national plan pairs two CCA with each fighter jet, but testing suggests pilots may be able to command higher numbers.

The Air Force logged another CCA milestone recently when it conducted its first-ever live-fire test using the Anduril-made YFQ-44A.

BAE says its prototype is designed with flexible architecture so that novel and emerging components — such as eye tracking capabilities and new optics — can be added or replaced over time. Currently, it combines head tracking and 3D audio cueing.

According to the company, the demonstrator’s visor has twice the display area of current helmet-mounted systems and what it describes as “quad high-definition resolution.” The bigger display is aimed at keeping pilots’ eyes directed at the skies, with information within their field of view, and thus reducing their need to look down at cockpit instruments during flight.

The company said it already has more than 1,000 helmet-mounted displays in use in 10 different countries, but that this is lighter than other models. BAE did not give design specifications, but attributed the drop in heaviness to new materials and better microelectronics, among other things.

Technology tested through prototypes could eventually be integrated into new helmet-mounted systems or added to existing ones.

Joseph Lavar Davis, 47, was convicted of stealing over $1.1 million worth of the military’s pre-packaged Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, in El Paso, Texas, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Texas, said Tuesday, in a scheme involving three other co-defendants and more than 200 pallets of the shelf-stable rations.

MREs, typically sealed in distinctive brown branding, are used to feed troops basic nutrients in austere situations and training exercises.

Known for their energy content as opposed to their taste, the emergency rations can be eaten hot or cold and are notorious for producing foul flatulence and blocked bowels — oftentimes contributing to the MRE’s other moniker of Meal, Refusing to Exit.

According to a statement from the office, the group used false paperwork to acquire MREs from Fort Bliss and Davis created false requests, rented vehicles to move the calorically dense provisions, fixed prices and collected compensation in the operation.

The FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division agents executed a search warrant on a civilian warehouse in August 2020 and found scores of pallets of MREs that an investigation showed was a holding facility for a company that purchased the rations from people who had pillaged them from Fort Bliss, the statement said.

Davis was named in the February 2025 indictment — along with the three others — for conspiracy to commit theft of government property and a substantive count of theft of government property between Feb. 4, 2020, and Aug. 12, 2020.

The office said that Davis learned the Army’s food procurement process while working in food service supply in the service. When he retired, the statements said, he got a job as a civilian contractor in a similar position.

“Joseph Davis betrayed the very country he once swore to protect in an effort to satisfy his own selfish ambition and a jury of his peers held him accountable for it,” said U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons.

Davis served as a culinary specialist in the Army from May 1998 to May 2018, according to an Army spokesperson. He left the service at the rank of sergeant first class.

The U.S. struck Iranian missile, drone and radar sites on Friday, U.S. Central Command said, in what the military described as a response to Iran’s attack on a Singapore-flagged cargo ship sailing the Strait of Hormuz.

The attacks came after Iran struck the M/V Ever Lovely with a one-way attack drone on Thursday, the command announced in a statement, adding that the vessel was leaving the Strait of Hormuz along the coast of Oman when hit.

The military said Iran’s strike violated the already-precarious ceasefire signed between the two countries last week.

The 60-day ceasefire included a 14-point memorandum of understanding that called for the reopening of the strait for commercial ships.