“More U.S. military service members have died in aircraft mishaps over the past year than have died while serving in Afghanistan,” the Ohio Republican said.

Sadly, he’s right.

The death of any military service member is a tragic loss. But there is something especially troubling about deaths that occur at home during training.

A recent Military Times investigation highlighted some of those fatalities, finding that at least 133 service members died in aviation mishaps during the five-year period from 2013 through 2017.

The vast majority of those deaths occurred during training flights.

If an overseas operation targeting Islamic extremists had taken the lives of 133 troops over five years, it would be the central focus for the Pentagon’s leaders and the American people they serve.

But the problems in military aviation have emerged slowly over time and have commanded far less attention.

It’s easy to blame Congress for failing to properly fund the military.

And Capitol Hill’s year-after-year habit of playing politics with military budgets set in motion the aviation crisis back in 2013 with the defense spending caps.

But there’s plenty of blame to spread around the Pentagon, too.

In the week since the investigation was published, military personnel have told Military Times another factor behind the mishaps is the inability of the military to say no to additional missions — and the idea that the military is the solution for every global problem.

A close look at the data charting the rise in aviation mishaps over the past five years also reveals a critical fact:

The problem is far worse in the Navy and Marine Corps than it is in the Air Force and Army.

The rise in aviation mishaps also reveals one of the Defense Department’s historic weaknesses: managing its people.

The services failed to properly track their mid- to senior-level aviation maintainers, and they failed to notice when they left the force in droves a few years ago. At least one service has been able to tie the loss of senior maintainers to a rise in accidents.

Now, with a critical skills gap among the senior enlisted force, the services face the daunting task of rebuilding that institutional knowledge.

It’s hard to imagine a commercial aviation company failing to notice for years as it hemorrhaged the skilled workforce needed to maintain a fleet of aircraft.

Concerns about aviation readiness were compounded recently by a report that revealed the stunning shortage of fighter pilots in today’s force.

According to the Government Accountability Office, the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps have 25 percent fewer pilots than they actually need.

In other words, roughly one in four fighter pilot billets is empty.

Measuring military readiness is a complex and imprecise mission. There is no single metric that captures the nation’s ability to defend itself.

But a rise in aviation mishaps is a pretty good canary in the coal mine.

Leaders in Congress and at the Pentagon should take note.

That’s why it was so disturbing to read the recent Military Times investigation from reporter Karen Jowers, which revealed how the Army and the Air Force have been handling — or mishandling — the health records of military children.

For years, the Army and the Air Force have been quietly merging the ­childhood medical records of former military ­dependents with the medical records of new military recruits.

This looks like a deep violation of trust between the Defense Department and military families. Arguably, it’s a violation of federal health care privacy laws — or, at least, an ethical violation.

To illustrate the problem that likely ­affects hundreds, if not thousands, of ­former military children, the story focused on one Army family, the De La Rosas.

Years ago, as their daughters struggled with the routine angst of adolescence as well as the stress of their father’s repeated deployments to Afghanistan and their frequent moves, the parents encouraged their daughters to seek counseling for better coping skills, which they did.

In 2016, when daughter Juliet De La Rosa was in basic training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, she was called in for a medical review. Air Force health providers saw mental health notations in her dependent medical record, and they promptly forced her out.

“Never once were we or Juliet told that she was being diagnosed with disorders. Never once was Juliet medicated,” her father, Army Maj. Rudy De La Rosa said.

And despite multiple clean bills of health from DoD and civilian mental health providers, both girls have been denied waivers to join the military.

What’s wrong with this policy?

Federal law protects most Americans’ medical information under a 1996 health care privacy law known as HIPAA.

The military medical system doesn’t provide parents with any disclaimers about how behavioral health visits could affect their child’s future military service.

This policy unfairly penalizes military children because children raised in the civilian health care system would never — ever — find that their records were automatically shared with DoD.

Most importantly, this is the definition of stigmatization. This policy will discourage military children from seeking help, which is exactly the opposite of what military leaders for years have encouraged.

The Navy told Military Times that it does not merge electronic records for military children who join the Navy and Marine Corps. But we’ve heard first-hand from people who say that’s not true.

The Navy has since clarified that it’s a matter of semantics — while those records aren’t merged, they’re available for Navy health care providers who have access to the electronic records.

The Pentagon should change this policy. Service members like Army Maj. Rudy De La Rosa should be allowed to deploy knowing the Defense Department is ­providing good, reliable — and confidential — health care for the children they leave at home.

Right now, that’s not happening.

Since August, the crew has discovered the long lost sunken remains of the USS Juneau, the USS Lexington and the USS Indianapolis.

The cruiser Juneau was struck by Japanese torpedoes during the Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942. A total of 687 men died in the attack, including all five Sullivan brothers, who insisted that they serve aboard the same ship.

The aircraft carrier Lexington, along with its aircraft, was struck by multiple Japanese torpedoes and bombs on May 8, 1942, during the Battle of the Coral Sea. More than 200 Lexington sailors were killed in the fight.

And in August, the crew found the wreck of the Indianapolis, which remains the Navy’s single worst loss at sea, about 5,500 meters below the surface.

Allen and his team’s incredible discoveries, all made in some of the deepest depths of the ocean, shine a spotlight on some of the Navy’s most important history — and ensure that the sailors who gave their lives for this nation are truly never forgotten.

The retroactive date allows the families of Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson, Sgt. La David Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright to collect an additional $225 a month for the time the soldiers were assigned there.

The four soldiers were killed in an October ambush in Niger that is still the subject of an ongoing investigation.

While this is welcome news, the Pentagon should have approved this pay a long time ago.

U.S. troops have quietly been operating in these countries, and in many parts of Africa, for many months. And it wasn’t until the four soldiers were killed in the deadly ambush in Niger that Congress and the public became aware of the true extent of U.S. involvement in the region.

When troops are called upon to serve in harm’s way, they should be taken care of properly.

It shouldn’t take a tragedy like the one in Niger to prompt DoD to act.

Marines seeking to do that will require a medical chit to prove and explain why they can’t run. But it will allow fit and hard-working Marines to still earn a top score on their fitness test without risking unnecessary injury.

It comes at a time when the entire military is wrestling with issues of standards and fitness. The Pentagon wants to crack down on one in 10 service members who are “non-deployable” for one reason or another. And the Pentagon is working to put together a new force-wide policy on fitness and body fat standards.

It’s heartening to see the Marines push ahead with common-sense change that maintain high standards while also considering the unique needs of individual service members who might be contributing to the Corps readiness in non-traditional ways. Other services – and Pentagon bureaucrats – should take note.

Pico Rivera, California, high school teacher and city councilman Gregory Salcido is currently on administrative leave after a recording of him berating a student wearing a Marine Corps sweatshirt was posted to social media.

“Don’t you ever freaking bring the freaking military into this classroom,” Salcido can be heard saying. “I don’t understand why we let the freaking military guys come over here and recruit you at school. We don’t have pimps come into school.”

While we have a few colorful words we could share, we’ll let retired Marine general and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly speak for us.

“Well, I think the guy ought to go to hell,” Kelly told Fox News Radio on Wednesday. “I just hope he enjoys the liberties and the lifestyles that we fought for,” the Washington Post quotes him as saying.

One Army veteran challenged Salcido to “make the short trips to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego or to Camp Pendleton to meet some of the ‘dumb sh*ts’ who are training to go fight overseas for his life and his freedom.“

Salcido, what say you?

In a shocking development, surely unique to the 99th Force Support Squadron, Tech. Sgt. Geraldine Lovely endured subordinate attitude problems. Tragic. It may be the first documented case of attitude problems in military history.

Instead of confronting what she perceived as contempt for leadership head on, she sought the therapeutic comfort of her cell phone and a Facebook audience.

“It pisses me the [expletive] off that they [black female airmen] have no [expletive] respect and constantly having an attitude,” Lovely said. “What the [expletive] is up with that? … Why is it that every time I encounter, you know, my subordinates that are black females, they have a giant [expletive] attitude?”

Powerful.

Only one day earlier, a high school teacher in Pico Rivera, California, went on a recorded tirade in his classroom when he saw one of his students wearing a Marine Corps sweatshirt. So incensed by mere cotton fabric, Gregory Salcido decried military members as “dumb shits” and “the freaking lowest of our low.”

Tech Sgt. Lovely partaking in online ignorance was bad enough, but in doing so, she also declared not only herself, but her uniform and the country it represents to be the exact embodiment of Mr. Salcido’s proclamations.

God Bless Command Sgt. Maj. John Wayne Troxell for these motivating words.

Troxell, the top enlisted adviser for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, directed these words to ISIS scum. To his credit, he gave them the option of surrendering. But that seems unlikely, and there are plenty of troops more than happy to go with Plan B.

In his message, shared via social media, Troxell succeeded in rousing the troops and boosting morale. His plainspoken prose even evokes the master of quotation, Gen. Jim Mattis.

And just for fun, here’s Troxell’s stunning display from 2016 on WWE.

Some lawmakers said immigration programs were being used as a political football. Some thought child health care became a political football. House Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii and an Army National Guard major, scolded fellow lawmakers for “playing political football with issues of humanity,” which covers … well, pretty much everything.

It’s impossible to carve out exceptions for every “political football.” If lawmakers were able to take everyone’s concerns and balance them against the needs of the nation, then fund them commensurate to their importance, they’d be creating what’s known as a “budget.” That’s crazy talk, and you can’t spell “crazy” without “CR.”

But there’s a fix that needs made: Lawmakers should follow the advice of Ken Fisher, chairman and CEO of the Fisher House Foundation, and make it clear that in any future federal shutdown, the military’s $100,000 death gratuity will be paid out in accordance with the wishes of the fallen service member.

Fisher’s foundation stepped up in 2013 to pay the benefit as the government went dark. It offered to do so again this time around. It’ll likely offer again, if necessary, next month.

It shouldn’t be necessary. Ever.

Kudos to the foundation for trying to make things right, but if lawmakers can’t get out of their own way in the ongoing battle of budget brinkmanship, they can at least pass a bill that would make paying the gratuity an essential government function — maybe even more essential than other services that continue during the shutdown, such as the processing of lawmakers’ paychecks.

The Air Force has found something younger ― and a bit larger ― with more horsepower and better sensors, that can fly higher and faster, and carry more ordnance: the MQ-9 Reaper.

The phase-out of the MQ-1 already has started, so it’s an appropriate time to say thank you to the Predator for 20-plus years of selfless service.

The Predator was the original unmanned recon and intel drone, and has helped keep troops safe the past two decades. It wasn’t designed to carry weapons, but it did, and it has quite an impressive hit list.

“The Predator has been a workhorse in Iraq, Afghanistan and the fight against ISIS.” said Lt. Col. Douglas, 361st Expeditionary Attack Squadron commander, in an Air Force press release. “When you see the results everyday on the battlefield, it’s unfathomable at times.”

Though the Air Force will save money using the MQ-9 full-time, we can’t say goodbye without saying thanks to the Predator for paving the way.

“It’s a very humble aircraft, but we’ve brought a lot to the fight with its modest capabilities,” Douglas said. “The aircraft’s mission is tremendous and it has opened the doors to the future.”