The overall jobless rate ticked down from 4.2% in September to 4.1%, BLS said, while the jobless rate for all veterans fell from 3.5% in September to 2.7%. The unemployment rate for the nation’s post-9/11 generation of veterans also came down from 4.1% in September to 3.4% in October, the BLS report said.

The data for the report was collected in mid-October, well before the historic midterm losses suffered by the Republican Party, and the massive stock market selloff Thursday that saw the Dow drop by more than 1,800 points and the Nasdaq plunge 5.5% in what amounted to a gut check for the artificial intelligence and data center boom. The selloff erased $2.3 trillion in market value.

But markets appeared to stabilize in early trading Friday. The S&P 500 was up 72 points, or nearly 1%, erasing losses after it suffered its worst day since April 2025 on Thursday, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 437 points, or 1.8%.

The BLS report showed employment increased in professional and business services, adding 70,000 jobs, and in health care, adding 40,000 jobs.

“It’s a strong report,” Heather Long, chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a phone interview with Military Times. “It’s strong in every dimension.”

“Inflation is still wiping out wage gains,” she said, “but more people are coming into the labor force. The big surprise was the hiring in professional and business services,” she said, suggesting that white-collar jobs could be making a comeback.

Kevin Rasch, a retired Navy Commander and the Warriors to Work Regional Director for the Wounded Warrior Project, said in a phone interview with Military Times that he always takes the government reports with a grain of salt, but the BLS report Friday reflected some of the success the Wounded Warrior Project was having in job placements.

“We’re still being very successful,” he said, but it remained to be seen how the grassroots movement against the data centers might impact the job market. “It will be interesting to see how that plays out,” he said.

“I hate data centers,” Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa, D-Texas, said on CNN Thursday night. “I hate the way they’re taking advantage of Texans.” Yet President Donald Trump has maintained that opponents of the data centers would be cutting themselves off from unfathomable riches if they succeeded in canceling their construction.

In a Truth Social post Monday, Trump said that communities mounting opposition to the server warehouses “want to end up backwards and poor. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame,” Trump wrote. “China could not be happier with the anti- Data Center movement.”

III Marine Expeditionary Force Commander Lt. Gen. Benjamin T. Watson updated the liberty guidance in a Thursday statement after meeting with representatives from the Okinawa Area Coordinating Committee. The new restrictions will take effect once the current Period of Reflection ends Sunday and will cease Dec. 7.

The mandate continues the midnight to 5 a.m. curfew for service members in the grades of E-1 through E-4, but no longer requires those in E-5 and above to be subject to the curfew. All service members are forbidden from purchasing or consuming alcohol outside their primary residence after midnight, per the announcement.

“Commanders retain the ability to establish more restrictive liberty policies within their respective commands when conditions warrant and are encouraged to clearly communicate those decisions to the force,” the directive reads.

The new order was based on analysis, feedback from joint and interagency leaders and in agreement with U.S. Forces Japan, which previously executed a two-day operational pause for all military personnel to conduct a Period of Training to engage service members with standards, discipline and troops’ responsibilities as members of the Okinawa community.

The operational pause came directly after the arrest of Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Devin Jacob Ballard, assigned to the III Marine Expeditionary Force headquartered at Camp Courtney in Okinawa, for the suspected robbery and murder of Anna Yagi, a 39-year-old Naha resident. 

Japanese prosecutors recently indicted Ballard, alleging that he strangled Yagi with a phone cord at a hotel in the city and then stole her backpack with her wallet and other belongings inside.

An investigation of the body found that Yagi died from suffocation. Hotel security footage shows a person with hair and tattoos resembling Ballard’s entering a hotel room with a woman and leaving with items.

Directly after the Period of Training, personnel transitioned to the Period of Reflection slated to end Sunday, which set new curfews and enhanced supervision and installations’ gates.

Late last month, Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, imposed a junior enlisted alcohol ban and a 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

Some establishments on the island have been found to serve alcohol to military personnel during curfew hours and allow them to stay past their curfew in violation of the Period of Reflection, causing a temporary Emergency Off-Limits Order for one bar in Okinawa.

The Okinawa Area Coordinator will share results of the broader analysis and recommendations from the Period of Reflection to U.S. Forces Japan for consideration in the next couple of weeks, the recent release says.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan George Glass shared the order on social media, reinforcing that “shared values of trust, responsible behavior and mutual respect” built the U.S. alliance with Japan. 

“The measures announced today by III Marine Expeditionary Force in Japan reaffirm our unwavering commitment to these fundamental principles,” Glass wrote.

The local murder and subsequent arrest and indictment of Ballard raised concerns among Okinawa residents over the large American troop presence on the island, with officials lodging what Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi described as a “strong protest” against the U.S. while demanding full cooperation with local authorities in the investigation. 

In a Nov. 4 letter to Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and Ranking Member Ro Khanna, D-Calif., requested a briefing by Nov. 20 on the service’s resourcing and personnel decisions for the institute, known as CASI. CASI falls under Air University, which oversees the Air Force’s officer and enlisted schools.

“Under-resourcing CASI’s mission could risk undermining the ability of military leaders and civilian policymakers to understand the PRC’s aerospace strategy and capabilities and, by extension, deter Beijing from using them in a military conflict,” the lawmakers wrote. “Any potential loss of such expertise is particularly worrisome given the PRC’s continued efforts to rapidly modernize its aerospace forces while expanding its aggressive activities in the Indo-Pacific region.”

The letter, posted by the select committee, said that without CASI’s in-house experts, the Air Force and other agencies would presumably have to turn to costly outside contractors. It also said understanding the capabilities of China’s People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, is critical for deterring conflict and, citing CASI’s charter, for “improving [the U.S.] ability to be successful in strategic competition.”

CASI Director Brendan Mulvaney told Defense News Friday that official comment on the institute now must come through public affairs at Air Education and Training Command, which runs Air University, or from Air University itself. 

Speaking as a private citizen, Mulvaney said he did not know about the committee’s plans but was “extremely pleased to see that Congressional Leadership acted in a fully bipartisan manner, showing strong support,” even during the midterm election season. “I am gratified that the accomplishments and contributions made by CASI are highly valued across the aisle and across the government,” he said.

Two CASI civilians have already left, Mulvaney said, and their now-defunded positions cannot be refilled.

An Air Force spokesperson told Defense News that the service “will respond directly to the committee.” The spokesperson did not answer questions about the Air Force’s plans for CASI or whether vacated positions would be refilled. It is unclear whether any additional military personnel have been assigned to the institute since Oct. 1.

The lawmakers’ letter to Meink follows the Air Force’s decision, confirmed in September, that civilian positions would no longer be assigned to CASI as part of an ongoing civilian restructure within Air Education and Training Command. 

An Air Force spokesperson told Defense News at the time that “the CASI mission continues, with the organization leveraging assigned military service members to accomplish its objectives.” 

Mulvaney described the move differently in September, saying that eliminating all of the institute’s civilian positions was “effectively ending CASI.” No military positions are affected, he said, noting the institute has two master sergeant positions and a deputy position that has remained unfilled for over a year.

Asked how the civilian cuts would affect CASI’s research, Mulvaney said, “All of the research has always been done by the civilian personnel.”

The cut “had nothing to do with CASI’s mission,” Mulvaney said in September, but stemmed from the fact that the institute does not produce professional military education graduates, Air University’s primary mission.

Asked whether another organization would take on CASI’s China aerospace research, Mulvaney said, “Nothing has been identified.”

In a Sept. 22 statement, later removed from Air University’s website, Mulvaney said Air University had “decided to close” CASI and that all of its civilian positions would go into unfunded status Oct. 1. Employees would keep working and getting paid in “surplus” status while they looked for new jobs, he said, adding, “I will do my best to make sure they all land someplace that will truly appreciate their talents.”

Mulvaney said, “CASI has commitments that it has made and will honor, to the best of our ability, through at least March of 2027.” Once the civilians leave, he said, “CASI will close.”

CASI was established in 2017, formally chartered June 15, 2021, and tasked with studying “everything that flies” in China. CASI’s research is unclassified by design, drawing on publicly available Chinese-language sources. It also runs a free three-day PLA Fundamentals course, most recently in August, according to the lawmakers’ letter.

The biennial CASI Conference, held in May at National Defense University, drew more than 250 attendees and featured the release of the fifth edition of CASI’s “PLA Aerospace Power” primer. In 2025, nearly 80,000 people visited CASI’s website and downloaded more than 50,000 reports, according to the institute.

Mulvaney has said the CASI cuts do not affect the Navy’s China Maritime Studies Institute, the Army War College’s China Landpower Studies Center or the Marine Corps War College’s China Warfighting Initiative.

The department published a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement that will assess “potential social, economic, and environmental effects” of training and operations at Saipan International Airport, Tinian International Airport, Tinian North Field and Rota International Airport. The islands are part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an unincorporated U.S. territory. 

The proposed training and exercises will support the Air Force’s Agile Combat Operations concept, which emphasizes dispersal of forces across airfields and the ability to maneuver between them while sustaining operations under a range of conditions, with the goal of thwarting an adversary’s ability to shut down those operations by targeting a single base. ACE, as it’s known, has developed largely in response to the Chinese military’s growing reach and expanding missile arsenal. 

The notice said the four airfields provide “a unique opportunity” to support ACE, with infrastructure that varies from “fully developed commercial airfields to expeditionary operating locations.” The three islands are within a few dozen nautical miles of each other, which would allow for training that reflects the complexity of distributed operations while reducing transit time between them. They are less than 100 nautical miles north of the major military bases on Guam, another U.S. territory, which would support the staging and deployment of forces for those exercises. 

The three airfields “collectively provide a training environment that enables [the Air Force] to exercise distributed operations, test and employ tailorable force packages, strengthen sustainment and maneuver capabilities, and enhance operational resilience,” the notice reads. 

The environmental impact statement will evaluate the potential effects of the proposed activities, which include small, medium and large trainings and exercises held several times a year for a few weeks at a time and consisting of up to 1,200 fixed-wing and 320 rotary-wing operations, like takeoffs and landings, annually at each airfield. It will also assess an alternative scenario with up to 1,400 fixed-wing and 384 rotary-wing operations per airfield annually and a “No Action Alternative.” 

The trainings and exercises would be supported by up to 550,000 gallons of fuel at each airfield, up to 1,000 personnel per airfield, the temporary installation of expeditionary infrastructure, the handling of munitions like chaff and flares, as well as support services and pre-and post-training and exercise activities. 

The proposed activity comes after several years of work to upgrade the airfields in question, especially the airfields on Tinian, which were built and heavily used during WWII. North Field was inactive after the war and was largely covered with vegetation when the rehabilitation effort began in late 2023. The Air Force also upgraded port and roadway infrastructure, fuel pipelines and airfield surfaces, and utilities to facilitate expanded operations on Tinian. 

The airfield rehabilitation efforts have created some questions among Air Force leaders about resourcing and funding, particularly as the war with Iran has placed new demands on the force. Island residents also have misgivings about the projects. While some welcome the investment that the construction and military operations will bring, others have doubts that the increased activity will really benefit the islands’ populations and that the Pentagon will be transparent about its activity and responsive to local concerns. 

The Department of the Air Force will hold public meetings this month on Saipan, Tinian and Rota to get feedback on the proposal, with written comments due by Nov. 29. The department plans to produce a draft environmental impact statement for public comment in fall 2027 and a final version in mid-2028. 

The Royal International Air Tattoo will move from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, England, to MOD Boscombe Down in Wiltshire after four decades at its longtime home, organizers announced Wednesday.

Following discussions with the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Air Force, organizers canceled the 2026 air show in late May, calling it a difficult decision that was prompted by “uncertainty” over access to RAF Fairford given the base’s involvement with the war in Iran. 

The U.S. Air Force housed a dozen B-1B Lancers at RAF Fairford during Operation Epic Fury to use in strikes against Iranian missile sites that were attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

But following the suspected terrorist plot targeting the base, the U.S. promptly removed all bombers from the installation and returned them back to their home stations.

British officials said there are “strong indications” that Iran was involved in the late September suspected plot targeting the base, but Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi denied the accusation on social media. Five men were initially arrested and released on bail. Two men were rearrested and charged under the U.K. National Security Act.

Although the organizers did not cite the plot at RAF Fairford as the reason for the move, they described the relocation essential for the air show’s long-term future.

“The decision to move RIAT to Boscombe Down is about much more than a new location,” RAF Charitable Trust Chief Executive Gavin Gager said in the announcement. “It is about securing the future of the world’s greatest military airshow and the charitable impact it generates for future generations.”

The air show usually attracts more than 150,000 spectators. Its first show at MOD Boscombe Down is scheduled for July 16 to 18.

MOD Boscombe Down is a British military airfield used for aircraft testing and evaluation. It hosts two air squadrons and six units.

The two airmen are listed under the “non-hostile” category in the Pentagon’s recently updated Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, meaning their deaths are not related to direct combat operations. One of the deaths was illness- or injury-related, and the other is listed as “pending,” according to the DCAS.

One airman was an active-duty service member, an Air Force spokesperson told Military Times, while the other was in the Air National Guard.

Although typical Department of Defense policy dictates that the names of deceased service members be released to the public 24 hours after next of kin notifications, the Air Force has yet to announce their identities. The spokesperson declined to comment on why their names have been withheld thus far and if the service has been in contact with their families.

Both airmen were white men and mid- to senior-enlisted personnel in E5 to E9 grades, according to DCAS. One was between 31 and 35, while the other was over 35.

One of the airmen passed away in the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility, which spans from Northeast Africa across the Middle East to Central and South Asia, the spokesperson said.

The other airman died in the United States; however, the spokesperson declined to comment on where the second airman was operating out of and how they were transported to the U.S.

CENTCOM referred Military Times to the Air Force when asked for comment.

The airman whose death is listed as “pending” is under investigation currently, the spokesperson said, but did not specify by which department.

Another service member whose death was listed as “pending” in DCAS was an Army captain who suffered a medical incident while aboard a military flight on the way to Saudi Arabia in late September.

DCAS lists both of the airmen’s deaths under the Overseas Operations category, instead of Operation Epic Fury, with a Pentagon official telling Military Times it is because the U.S. deems Epic Fury as concluded. The Overseas Operations lists the start date as July 7, aligned with the continued U.S. pressure campaign against Iran.

Officials have been tight-lipped on the exact date Epic Fury was considered terminated, but a defense official previously specified May 5 to Military Times.

The Pentagon’s classification of the operation as an Overseas Operation category faced criticism from Democratic members of Congress, who accused Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth of trying to hide the casualties.

The Overseas Operation category now includes eight service members: four listed as hostile and four as non-hostile. Combining the two categories together makes for a total of 23 service members who have lost their lives since the war in Iran began on Feb. 28, with the Epic Fury category listing 15. 

In total, 866 service members have been wounded in action since the war’s beginning across both categories. That includes 417 under Operation Epic Fury and 449 in Overseas Operations, according to DCAS.

In a Wednesday letter to his Democratic colleagues, the Washington representative called for more public testimony from senior defense officials and the restoration of a dedicated oversight subcommittee, listing strikes in the Caribbean and the U.S.’s war with Iran — the latter of which he called “illegal” — among his top concerns. Smith also questioned the need for a defense budget exceeding $1 trillion, arguing that Congress must reassert its authority over military policy under what he described as a “runaway Executive Branch.”

Smith, who won re-election in his district on Tuesday, currently serves as the committee’s ranking member. It’s chaired by Alabama Republican Rep. Mike Rogers.

Democrats took control of the House and Senate in this week’s midterm elections, and new committee chairs will be elected for the next legislative session. Smith previously chaired the committee from 2019 to 2023.

Smith blasted the Trump administration’s approach to national security, contending that its reliance on military force and unilateral action — he described the administration’s view as one that believes “might makes right” – has destabilized the globe and alienated the U.S. He called for a strategy that prioritizes partnerships, military deterrence and avoids expensive conflicts.

Smith also called for a shift in Pentagon spending priorities, advocating for more investment in low-cost munitions, uncrewed systems and drone and missile defenses. The war with Iran has used up to two-thirds of U.S.’s missile interceptor stock, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis, in a drastic depletion that could take at least five years to restore. The U.S. has burned through expensive interceptors, which can cost millions of dollars per missile, to counter adversarial drones built at a fraction of the cost.

While acknowledging the need for advanced weapons systems, Smith said the Pentagon must strike a better balance between expensive platforms and cheaper, expendable capabilities.

He also criticized Trump’s proposal for a fleet of battleships.

“We need an appropriate mix of high-end survivable systems and lower-cost attritable capabilities, not a fleet of nuclear-powered battleships as proposed by the President,” he wrote.

Smith also raised concerns about how the Pentagon awards contracts and divvies out financial support to private companies, calling for closer examination of whether those awards serve taxpayers or are influenced by favoritism. While acknowledging Congress’s efforts to streamline the Pentagon’s notoriously bureaucratic acquisition process, Smith also argued that lawmakers still needed to know how defense dollars are spent, particularly as the military invests in new weapons systems.

Despite his criticism of the Trump administration, Smith insisted that he remained committed to passing the annual National Defense Authorization Act, though he acknowledged that working with Republicans would be “extraordinarily difficult.” The NDAA, an annual law that sets military policies and funding levels, remains unfinished this year after Senate Democrats blocked a procedural vote in July amid disagreements over the war in Iran and provisions involving Israel.

“Put bluntly, the Air Force has spent decades building exquisite kill chains while too often housing the airmen who sustain them in tents, trailers, and flat-walled structures that were never designed for the threat environment now arriving overhead,” admitted the Air Force’s Small Business Innovation Research solicitation, which will close in January 2027.

Concrete printing, in which printers deposit layers of material to form structures, is gaining traction in commercial construction. The Air Force already used 3D printing to rebuild hurricane-damaged Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, in 2023, while a Maryland Air National Guard civil engineer squadron is developing its own mobile concrete printer.

But the new SBIR, which is a direct-to-Phase II project, suggests the Air Force wants 3D construction capability imminently. The goal is to enable “military engineers to rapidly print protective structures using automated or semi-automated construction workflows, reduced skilled labor, and locally available cementitious materials where feasible,” the Air Force said.

While 3D concrete printers exist, the Air Force is concerned that the technology is not yet ready to build structures that can survive bombardment by missiles and drones. Hundreds of U.S. military buildings across eight Middle Eastern countries were damaged by Iranian attacks, according to a September 2026 report by the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General.

The problem is that “the existing state of the art has not yet fully addressed the combined problem that matters most for combat survivability: printable expeditionary materials, field-executable operator workflows, and structure geometry deliberately optimized to mitigate blast-wave behavior and fragmentation effects,” said the SBIR.

The project will evaluate cement-like materials for qualities such as strength, adhesion and the availability of local components. It will develop new construction geometries “that improve survivability beyond conventional flat-wall construction, including shapes intended to reduce blast reflection, limit pressure amplification, interrupt fragmentation paths, and improve internal occupant protection.”

Ultimately, the Air Force wants a mobile concrete printer that can quickly and consistently erect structures while being operated “in austere conditions by lightly trained military personnel.”

The Air Force foresees “substantial” dual-use applications for the mobile concrete printers, such as critical infrastructure and humanitarian relief. However, the SBIR also notes that commercialization will likely require numerous approvals in areas such as building codes.

The aim is to “transition the capability from ‘we can print something interesting’ to ‘a civil engineer unit can deploy, set up, print, inspect, and use protective infrastructure fast enough to matter,'” the service said.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote in a lengthy social media post Wednesday morning after Democrats won control of the U.S. House and Senate during Tuesday’s elections. His comments came after President Donald Trump on Tuesday night told The New York Times that going to war with Iran was a “very wise decision,” and that Republicans largely lost because he was not in the race.

Though votes were still being tallied as of Wednesday afternoon, Democrats had secured enough victories for a majority in Congress, flipping Senate seats in historically red states like South Carolina, Texas and Kansas.

“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” Vance continued on X. “But everyone knows why we lost,” he added, calling for “honest conversation” about the country’s next steps.

Public support for the Trump administration’s war with Iran sank in July, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, which found that just one in three Americans supported the conflict. The poll also found that four in ten Republicans — and 69% of Americans — did not think Trump had “clearly explained the goals of U.S. military involvement in Iran.”

The U.S. military has spent more than $47 billion on its war with Iran, Reuters reported last month, a number more than 25% higher than the Defense Department’s July estimate. That estimate included $6 billion to replace military equipment lost during the war, such as aircraft and drones, and more than $29 billion to replace costly munitions.

The war has depleted up to two-thirds of the Pentagon’s missile-defense interceptors since July 2025, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis, leaving the U.S. military with fewer available for future conflicts. The analysis found that rebuilding those stores could take at least five years.

Trump has reportedly been polling his advisors on whether he should fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CBS reported Wednesday afternoon. Hegseth has been the subject of increasing scrutiny over the Pentagon’s handling of the war, with some lawmakers previously calling for him to be impeached.

Hegseth has blamed the war’s mounting costs on former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and prior Pentagon leadership.

“The amount of neglect, the amount of stale thinking and bureaucracy was staggering when we took over,” Hegseth told senators during a July hearing to request additional emergency funding — $67.1 billion — for the Iran war and other department expenses, such as the National Guard deployments to the U.S. southern border and Washington, D.C.

The U.S. launched its war against Iran on Feb. 28, and since then, more than 860 troops have been wounded and at least 23 have been killed, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System.

When Hurricane Helene ripped up the East Coast in the fall of 2024, water from the New River flooded towns and destroyed bridges across parts of West Virginia, North Carolina, and Virginia.

In Radford, Virginia, floodwaters crested at 31 feet. Just downstream, the river surged into the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, tearing through warehouse doors and washing out more than a dozen storage containers with thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals inside.

The Army didn’t warn residents until weeks later about the containers filled with dibutyl phthalate, a key component of rocket propellant that has been linked to cancer and reproductive problems in humans — along with hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel and more than 100,000 pounds of wastewater contaminated with calcium sulfate — that had been washed away in the flood. Officials said later that they assumed the containers would sink to the bottom of the river and floodwaters would dilute any chemical leakage.

At least one container, however, washed up on nearby land, where it was partially drained. Two years later, three remain unaccounted for, according to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which found that more than 1,500 gallons had leaked into the environment.

Radford Army Ammunition Plant had already been cited earlier in 2024 for discharging excessive levels of pollutants into the New River. It faced a similar penalty in 2023. And in 2022, Virginia environmental regulators listed Radford as the state’s top releaser of toxins.

“They’re constantly being cited for putting excessive levels of lead into the water, or other toxic releases into the air, or burning more chemicals than they’re supposed to,” said Alyssa Carpenter, a founder of Citizens for Arsenal Accountability, which advocates for stronger environmental practices at Radford.

Radford is also a critical part of the nation’s munitions supply chain: It is the only domestic producer of certain types of propellant used in artillery and rockets. As the Pentagon moves to replenish its depleted munitions stockpile and increase production, it is relying in part on a network of aging Army ammunition plants like Radford, several of which have long histories of violating environmental and safety regulations.

Advocates say the military has too often treated those risks as secondary to production, leaving workers and nearby communities to absorb the consequences.

“The track record of the Department of Defense agencies is not good,” said Mathy Stanislaus, who helped oversee toxic cleanup efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration. “It’s always defense. ‘That’s our mission.’ Everything else is secondary.”

Now, advocates worry that pressure to produce more ammunition could intensify the risk to local communities. They argue that the costs of rebuilding America’s arsenal are being borne disproportionately by plant workers and the mostly rural communities surrounding the facilities.

“It’s cheap for the military, but it is very expensive for us, for our entire lives,” Carpenter said. “You can’t increase production without increasing the toxic byproducts that come from that production.”

An Aging Arsenal

As the United States entered World War II, the Army built a network of ammunition plants across the country that became part of Franklin Roosevelt’s “arsenal of democracy.” Many were decommissioned after the war and more closed by the end of the Cold War.

Today, much of the defense industrial base is run by private companies, but the Army still manages a network of specialized arsenals, ammunition plants, and maintenance depots, many of which help manufacture, test, and repair missiles, heavy ordnance, and their components, handling work that ranges from creating raw explosive chemicals and rocket propellant to loading warheads and artillery shells.

The United States military is running low on several critical munitions. A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies published this summer estimated that U.S. inventory of Patriot interceptor missiles had fallen from more than 2,300 at the start of the Iran War to around 800 by the end of July. Stocks of THAAD interceptors, which shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, had likewise fallen by nearly half, from roughly 450 before the war.

The strain predates the Iran War, however. U.S. inventories of precision-guided weapons and heavy conventional ordnance stockpiles had already been under pressure from decades of post-Cold War factory consolidation and shipments to allies overseas.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States produced about 14,000 155 mm artillery shells a month. At times, Ukrainian soldiers were burning through that many rounds in just a few days.

And historically, munitions production has often lost out to other priorities in Pentagon budget fights.

“When you’re putting together a budget, you can’t just ask for everything,” said Carlton Haelig, who works on defense strategy at the Center for a New American Security. “When there need to be cuts to pay for an extra squadron [of fighter jets] purchased, another set of transport aircraft, surface ships, whatever, the place that is often considered for making those cuts is in the munitions portfolio.”

In recent years, however, concern about a potential confrontation with China has pushed the Pentagon to expand munitions production. Last year, the Defense Department established a new council tasked with dramatically increasing production of 14 weapons systems, and it has poured billions of dollars toward accelerating production of 155 mm artillery shells.

Environmental advocates worry that pushing more production through aging Army facilities could worsen existing problems with pollution, worker safety, and transparency.

“Measured by the number of sites where hazardous substances have been released into the environment, the military is far and away the largest polluter in the United States,” said Lenny Siegel, an expert on military contamination who leads the Center for Public Environmental Oversight. “I see the simple issue of math. If you’re releasing X into the environment now, you’re going to release 10X when you multiply your production by 10.”

Justine Barati, a spokesperson for the Army Sustainment Command, which oversees these facilities, disagreed.

“The U.S. Army does not, and will never, compromise the safety of our workforce or our surrounding communities to meet production quotas. Protecting our people and the environment is foundational to national security,” she said. “We cannot sustain warfighter readiness without safe, resilient, and compliant installations.”

Barati pointed to a sweeping $18 billion modernization effort across these facilities, saying the Army’s “highest priority” in the modernization is to improve environmental compliance and workplace safety.

But that project is not scheduled to be completed until 2038, and the Army is already accelerating production at some facilities.

“At the same time, the Ukraine war started to get hot and heavy, and we were given the edict that’s like, ‘hurry up and go fast’,” Maj. Gen. John Reim, head of the joint armaments and ammunitions program executive office, told Breaking Defense last year.

EPA records show that all the Army ammunition plants and arsenals involved in producing, testing, or storing weapon components have been cited or flagged for noncompliance by the EPA or state regulators in the past five years. Four of them have been flagged for “significant noncompliance” by the EPA, designating them severe or chronic violators of environmental law. Many of them have also violated state environmental regulations.

EPA records show Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Pennsylvania, for instance, which helps forge steel 155 mm shell bodies, was flagged for violating the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act multiple times during 2024 and 2025. At the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in 2023, regulators found workers improperly detonated explosives in a detonation chamber, among other issues. At Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Kingsport, Tennessee, BAE Systems, which operates the plant, was fined this October by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s air pollution control division for improper record-keeping and reporting of data.

Federal and state regulators can inspect and penalize these facilities, but the fines are often small compared with the sheer size and resources of the Defense Department. After EPA inspectors found alleged violations at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, in 2024, the EPA fined the Army and plant operator American Ordnance just under $40,000 — compare that with a $53 million Army contract American Ordnance was awarded this year for its work at the plant.

“The biggest problem is that the Department of Defense is effectively self-regulating,” Stanislaus, the former EPA official, said.

“When the rubber hits the road, EPA and state agencies simply do not have the authority to mandate certain activities, everything from preventing harm to doing the cleanup.”

A Whistleblower’s Safety Concerns

The fire that erupted on a July night in Crane, Indiana, burned for 15 hours.

Workers at Crane Army Ammunition Activity, which disposes of old munitions, had been storing mortar rounds outdoors in wooden crates beneath a tarp in the baking sun. Temperatures had climbed into the high 90s for several days.

The rounds contained red phosphorus, which can generate heat and flammable gases as it degrades. On the evening of July 6, 2022, nearly 115,000 pounds of red phosphorus ignited, sending flames and smoke billowing into the sky.

What happened before and after illustrates how difficult it can be to hold these facilities accountable.

Three years earlier, Rick Ward, the newly hired safety chief at Crane Army Ammunition Activity, which is housed at Naval Weapons Station Crane, had concerns with safety at the facility. A safety program for controlling hazardous substances was not fully implemented. Hazardous processes weren’t properly classified. Slings used to move heavy explosives didn’t have current certifications.

Ward pointed to an earlier explosion at Crane, in 2013, that sent five people to the hospital. An OSHA inspection afterward identified three dozen safety violations, and an Army “lessons learned” report cited a lack of clear safety procedures.

Ward worried that the safety culture at Crane hadn’t changed. He began bringing concerns up with his supervisors, according to documents he shared with The War Horse.

“Can you imagine taking over as a safety director and knowing that you’ve been handed 36 OSHA violations that never got corrected?” he said.

The year before Ward arrived, EPA had also cited Naval Weapons Station Crane — the base where Crane Army Ammunition Activity is housed — for improperly storing hazardous waste. But Ward felt his concerns were not being taken seriously. So in 2020, he filed an anonymous complaint with OSHA.

Because of COVID-related restrictions, OSHA asked the Army to investigate the allegations itself. Ironically, Crane leaders assigned Ward to conduct the investigation.

About an hour after Ward submitted his report, he said, he was put on administrative leave. He was fired several months later, according to a statement from his lawyers.

Ward has struggled to find work ever since. Crane barred him from the installation, and the Air Force, where he serves as a reserve officer, revoked his security clearance.

“It’s really hard to get a job when you’ve been on the front page of every newspaper in Indiana,” he said.

Barati, the Army Sustainment Command spokesperson, disputed Ward’s account.

“The Army did not retaliate against Mr. Rick Ward in any form or manner. The Army takes workplace safety very seriously and welcomes safety concern feedback from all our employees,” she said.

Many of Ward’s concerns were later substantiated.

A whistleblower investigation partially or fully upheld five of his eight allegations. Among them: Crane did not maintain an accurate list of locations where hazardous work occurred and lacked a complete safety plan for controlling and handling hazardous substances.

EPA inspections in 2023 and 2024 found additional problems at Naval Weapons Station Crane. Inspectors reported materials were still stored in ways that could create fire risks, hazardous materials lacked proper labeling, open containers held corrosive waste, and hazardous waste was kept onsite for more than three times the legal time limit.

“If you mislabel a particular compound, and you put it into a vessel that cannot handle the corrosiveness of that, then it leaks through that vessel and contaminates the ground,” Stanislaus said. “Terrible things can happen.”

Last fall, EPA notified Naval Weapons Station Crane that it planned to assess nearly $250,000 in penalties for the violations.

That is a significant EPA penalty. But for Crane, it’s barely a line item in the budget.

Toxins in the Air

Not long after Alyssa Carpenter graduated from Virginia Tech in 2017, just a few miles from the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, she had to have her thyroid removed. She was 26, otherwise healthy, and had no family history of thyroid cancer. Doctors told her the gland was covered in suspicious nodules.

Carpenter cannot say for sure what caused her condition. But as a student at Virginia Tech, she had advocated for better environmental controls at the plant, and she worries the chemicals the plant releases into the environment may have played a role in her illness.

For decades, Radford and other military facilities have disposed of old munitions and production waste by burning or detonating them in the open, releasing toxic gases, particulate matter, and volatile organic compounds into the air.

The United States generally banned open burning and open detonation of hazardous waste in 1980 but created an exception for explosive waste that could not safely be treated another way. That exception has allowed the practice to continue at military and civilian munition facilities.

In 2025, 45 years after the ban, 64 public and private facilities across the United States were still allowed to burn or detonate hazardous waste.

Residents around Radford have long raised concerns about thyroid disease in the area, though a 2022 review of cancer-registry data by VPM News, a local NPR station, found mixed evidence of unusually high rates. What is clear is that the plant regularly releases hazardous pollutants into the air. According to EPA data, in 2024, Radford released into the air — along with other chemicals — 19,000 pounds of ammonia, which reacts with the atmosphere to create a fine particulate matter known to cause respiratory distress, and more than 900 pounds of lead compounds or lead, a neurotoxin with no known safe level of human exposure. EPA requires facilities to report lead emissions if they exceed just 100 pounds a year.

Barati, the Army Sustainment Command spokesperson, said that Radford had reduced the amount of waste treated by open burning by more than 50% since 2017. She also pointed to a new energetic waste incinerator under construction at the facility that will ultimately replace the need for open burning. The incinerator, originally scheduled to be completed in 2025, will not be operational until 2027, Barati said.

Open burns are subject to environmental limits, and facilities are supposed to account for wind patterns and other factors to make burns safer. But those safeguards can be difficult to enforce.

At Crane, for instance, EPA inspectors cited the facility in 2023 for conducting burns when its own records showed weather conditions outside permitted limits. (Crane officials told the EPA weather was recorded at a different time of day and that the weather was in parameters when it conducted the burns).

Technology has changed since the U.S. allowed an exception for the open burning or detonation of military munitions in 1980. Many other countries, including Germany and Canada, have banned open burning and open detonation of hazardous waste, and military munitions are disposed of in contained burn chambers or closed incinerators. In 2024, the EPA proposed new rules that would further restrict the practice and push facilities toward safer alternative technologies. But the rulemaking has stalled. An EPA spokesperson told The War Horse that the agency plans to finalize the regulations by the end of this year.

The military has moved away from open-air waste burning in recent years at overseas bases.

For decades, troops stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries burned everything from medical waste and plastics to old explosives in open burn pits. Military officials defended the pits as a practical necessity in remote war zones.

Like the residents of some communities near ammunition plants in the U.S., service members at bases with burn pits breathed in toxic air containing particulate matter that irritated their throats and lungs, and heavy metals that accumulated in their tissues. When they came home from deployment, they began developing rare cancers and other diseases.

But as veterans reported respiratory illnesses, cancers, and other health problems after breathing in the smoke, public pressure grew. The military eventually curtailed the use of burn pits overseas, and Congress passed the PACT Act in 2022, expanding VA benefits for millions of veterans exposed to the toxic substances during military service — but there are no such benefits for civilians exposed to domestic burn pits.

For Carpenter, that history shows the military can change when the risks become impossible to ignore.

“If it’s toxic for service members, then it’s going to be toxic for community members as well,” she said.

This article from The War Horse was edited by Paul Szoldra, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.