At the commission’s second meeting, members reviewed two service-level efforts: an Air Force and Space Force pilot in which the commission reported a 60% increase in military spouse placements over three weeks.

Members also called for measuring actual hires, promotions and retention rather than relying on participation figures alone.

The pilot matches spouses with hiring managers before they arrive at their next duty station.

Spouses can use the Air Force Civilian Careers website to identify where they expect to move, even before receiving formal permanent change of station, or PCS, orders. The program then facilitates introductions to hiring managers at the gaining installation.

The pilot entered its second phase in September, expanding to additional installations in the United States and overseas, according to the commission.

The military spouse commission also reported a 70% year-over-year increase in completed job profiles through SpouseWorks, a career and education resource for military spouses. Officials said they are working to make the platform easier to use and improve its ability to connect spouses with employment opportunities. The commission also announced that SpouseWorks is now available to spouses of all ranks.

Jennifer Hegseth, commission chair and wife of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said the increase in completed job profiles suggested that spouses were ready to pursue employment but needed a better way to connect with opportunities.

“So that just shows that spouses are wanting to work, they’re ready to apply, and they just needed the right outlet,” she noted in the meeting.

The Army’s Department of the Army Voluntary Reassignment Program, or DAVRAP, takes that approach a step further by helping eligible civilian employees maintain career continuity when a permanent change of station requires them to relocate.

Launched in May 2025, the voluntary program allows eligible Army civilian employees to seek noncompetitive reassignment to positions at their gaining installations.

The commission reported that more than 11,000 candidates had created profiles since the program launched, with more than 12,000 hiring managers participating across Army installations in the United States and overseas. Members in attendance did not discuss in detail the number of completed reassignments nor specify how many candidates were military spouses.

Linda Lelande, a Coast Guard representative, asked that the Coast Guard be kept in mind along with the other services, and said spouses can face similar employment disruptions when moving between Coast Guard installations.

“They often experience this very same problem where they have a job, maybe in childcare and then they go to another Coast Guard base and have to start over,” Lelande said.

She asked whether the service could adopt elements of the Army’s reassignment model. Commission members said they wanted to identify existing programs that work and expand them rather than create new initiatives without first examining what the services already offer.

Navy representative Angela Perryman urged the commission to measure whether employer partnerships lead to actual hires.

“It’s one thing to say you’re hiring military spouses, but I want to see numbers,” Perryman said. “I want to see how many military spouses have actually been hired into these positions.”

Members also discussed tracking employment outcomes by region and in relation to PCS moves.

The commission did not announce a finalized department-wide expansion plan or implementation deadline. Member discussions underscored the need to assess whether existing programs deliver measurable employment results before determining how they might be adopted more broadly.

Meyer will now serve as Hegseth’s senior advisor to the task force, which is tasked with addressing the military’s “unacceptable” living conditions, the defense secretary announced Monday in a video on social media.

“Our warfighters should be focused on training, readiness and defending this great nation,” Meyer said during the video. “They shouldn’t have to fight for basic living conditions when they come home at night.”

As senior advisor, Meyer will travel to installations across the country, looking at their barracks, meeting with service members and identifying how to curtail any issues blocking the resolutions.

The first group of installations Meyer is expected to visit are all located in California, with Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms on Thursday and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on Friday.

If sticking to schedule, Meyer will have visited 21 bases across the country, with most along the East Coast, by the end of December, according to a map displayed during the social media video.

“I want you to ask this question for the next couple of months: Where’s Dakota?” Hegseth posed during the video. “Could he be coming to my base, to my installation, to my camp, my fort? Because he might be.”

“He’ll be traversing the country on behalf of the Barracks Task Force, on behalf of me personally inspecting, holding town halls, getting real input, and then providing real solutions,” Hegseth continued. “Be on the lookout for him.”

Hegseth first formed the task force in October 2025 to be led by the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment. The group is meant to identify investment opportunities and create department-wide policies for barracks standards.

The One Bill Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law in July 2025, gave the Defense Department $1.2 billion for barracks improvement, with $230 million allotted for the Marine Corps Barracks 2030 initiative and $425 million for enlisted boot camp barracks and other related facilities, as well as $1 billion for Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force restoration and modernization of military housing.

A Government Accountability Office report from August found that the Defense Department does not request enough funding to meet its installation maintenance and improvement needs, resulting in an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

Previous GAO reports found that some barracks were “chronically neglected,” resulting in poor conditions that impacted enlisted service members’ quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in subpar barracks, with some having potentially serious health and safety risks, according to a 2023 report.

Recently, the Barracks Task Force funded various projects at installations across the nation, including modernized housing at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, and a housing installation at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Washington.

“From this point forward, there’s no confusion about who’s accountable,” Meyer posted on social media. “If we don’t get this fixed, there’s only one person to blame. Me.”

Former President Barack Obama awarded Meyer his Medal of Honor in 2011 for his service during the Battle of Ganjgal in Afghanistan in 2009 when he repeatedly entered an enemy ambush zone to rescue wounded comrades and recover the bodies of fallen service members. His actions were credited with saving 13 Americans and 23 Afghan personnel.

Meyer left the Marine Corps in 2010 and reenlisted in the reserves in April 2025, with his oath of enlistment administered at the Pentagon by Hegseth.

The F-22 completed airborne tactical command and in-flight control of a YFQ-44A Fury earlier this month, the Air Force announced.

The fighter jet’s pilot served as an airborne “quarterback” and gave high-level directives to an Anduril-made Fury CCA. The unmanned, semi-autonomous aircraft’s onboard autonomy software interpreted and executed the directives in real time, per the release, performing in-flight maneuvers and simulated combat tasks.

“This achievement demonstrates what is possible when we are aligned with industry on a shared imperative: delivering capability to the warfighter at unprecedented speed,” Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said in the announcement.

“We are driving urgency into every part of acquisition from rapid integration and flight learning to disciplined assessment, so we can turn promising technology into combat capability at the pace the threat demands,” he continued.

Personnel from the 412th Test Wing, 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron, 309th Software Engineering Group, Experimental Operations Unit, F-22 System Program Office and the CCA Software Autonomy and Teaming Branch collaborated during the demonstration.

The service plans to use data from this event to inform software integration, developmental testing and further CCA concepts, the announcement says.

This test follows other milestones in the CCA development after the service announced its intention to have 500 combat-ready, semi-autonomous systems by 2032, with an overall fleet size of 1,000.

The Anduril-made Fury executed its first live-fire test by conducting an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target during a live-fire test at Edwards Air Force Base, California, in July.

Alongside Anduril’s CCA, the service has made strides with General Atomics’ FQ-42A Vengeance, which was delivered to Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, last month to continue regular test and evaluation operations.

Anduril has yet to announce which Air Force base will house Fury, but Creech airmen conducted an Agile Combat Employment exercise earlier using the defense company’s aircraft, allowing airmen to complete sorties and build foundational tactics and procedures that will mold how CCA are integrated into the force.

Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the prime minister, later confirmed to Reuters that Netanyahu had met with Hegseth at the Uvda Air Force Base in Israel’s southern Negev desert region.

Netanyahu and Hegseth discussed “the threats in the region” and the U.S.-Israel partnership in dealing both offensively and defensively with those threats, he said in a brief phone call.

Hegseth also thanked Israel for hosting U.S. forces, which Spielman said numbered in the thousands, and discussed President Donald Trump’s support for the prime minister.

“There’s a deep personal relationship here that was at the core of this discussion,” Spielman said.

On Sunday, Trump endorsed Netanyahu in next week’s parliamentary election in Israel, the country’s first ballot since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel.

The Pentagon has not publicly commented on Hegseth’s visit.

Hegseth earlier posted on X that he had visited U.S. service members in the Central Command area of responsibility, which covers the Middle East, northeast Africa and parts of Asia.

He did not specify where he had met with the forces.

Hegseth’s visit comes as tensions flare between the U.S. and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz and as Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthis intensify their attacks on Saudi Arabia.

U.S. and Israeli forces launched joint strikes against Iran in late February, setting off the wider Middle East war. Netanyahu told Israeli media this month that he’s not seeking to attack Iran before the Oct. 27 Israeli election. Trump has said he will not attack Iran before U.S. midterm elections in November.

Israel has hosted additional U.S. forces, including military aircraft, since at least February as part of the war with Iran.

APKWS kits convert unguided 2.75-inch rockets into laser-guided munitions. All four services field them, and the weapon has become a cheaper alternative to air-to-air missiles for shooting down drones.

Congress still has to approve and fund the buy, the department said. BAE said it will increase production while the two sides work out a multiyear contract. Neither side announced the deal’s cost.

The framework also outlines a path to increase output to 35,000 kits a year for U.S. allies. The department said that added capacity will come online as partner nations formally request kits through the Foreign Military Sales program.

“By securing multi-year demand, this agreement keeps production lines running at capacity, provides our forces with interceptor inventory, and flips the cost calculus in the taxpayer’s favor,” Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, said in the announcement.

BAE, which builds the kits in Hudson, New Hampshire, and Austin, Texas, said in February that it had delivered its 100,000th kit.

The 25,000 figure in this framework agreement matches capacity BAE has cited before. A company official said in 2023 that APKWS was in full-rate production with room to grow to 25,000 units a year.

“APKWS delivers proven, reliable and affordable precision at scale to counter evolving threats and ensure our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage,” said Tom Arseneault, president and CEO of BAE Systems Inc.

The Navy’s current five-year APKWS contract with BAE, awarded in August 2025, is worth up to $1.74 billion. It covers up to 55,000 kits for the Navy, the Army and foreign customers, with work expected to be completed by December 2031.

Among allied buyers, Saudi Arabia won State Department approval in July for a possible $1.96 billion package that includes up to 20,000 APKWS kits, split evenly between air-to-air and air-to-ground versions. Italy is also weighing a buy of 5,031 kits for counter-drone defense.

The APKWS agreement is the latest in a series of framework deals the Pentagon has signed this year to boost munitions production.

In January, Lockheed Martin agreed to more than triple production of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement, or PAC-3 MSE, interceptor.

In March, BAE and Lockheed agreed to quadruple production of seekers for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, interceptor. A separate THAAD framework signed in January led to a June contract worth more than $35 billion for the interceptors themselves.

Around 11 p.m. Sunday, seven or eight members of the National Guard were “monitoring” a situation on the 400 block of 8th Street SE when a shooting broke out, Jeff Carroll, interim chief of police of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, said during a press conference following the incident.

The guardsmen were sitting in a van when they observed a fight break out near the sidewalk and exited their vehicle to intervene. Then, an individual involved in the fight pulled out a firearm and began shooting.

When members of the National Guard instructed the individual to put down the gun, the suspect turned toward the guardsmen and began discharging, Carrol said.

The guard members returned fire. In the shootout, both the suspect, who was placed under arrest, and a guardsman were struck and transported to local hospitals for treatment.

The guardsman was shot in the leg, and the suspect was struck in the abdomen. Both are expected to survive the non-life-threatening injuries, Carrol said.

The incident occurred a mile from the Capitol building near the Eastern Market Metro Station in front of Cafe 8, a hookah bar and restaurant.

Councilmember Charles Allen, D-Ward 6, who represents the area where the shooting took place, said that the city has seen “repeated issues” outside of Cafe 8 involving gunshots, prompting him to urge an emergency closure until “this business changes how they operate.”

The MPD Internal Affairs Division and Criminal Investigations Division are investigating the incident, and there is no further threat to the community.

Sunday’s shooting comes one year after two members of the West Virginia National Guard, who both later received Purple Hearts, were shot blocks from the White House in front of the Farragut West Metro Station. Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, succumbed to her injuries a day after the shooting, while Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, survived after undergoing surgery.

There are roughly 4,500 soldiers currently deployed to D.C., costing taxpayers about $1.5 million per day. The National Guard is scheduled to remain in the District through January 2029 at a total cost of $1.4 billion.

In August, the Defense Department ordered 30 private and state universities to review their ties with foreign institutions listed under Section 1286 of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which seeks to restrict nations like China and Russia from gaining access to American research and technology.

Failure to comply could have resulted in a cutoff of federal research funding.

“All 30 universities have fully mitigated identified relationships with foreign entities of concern,” according to a DoD announcement on Monday. “Overall, the audits resulted in more than 80 termination-related actions across the 30 universities.”

The Pentagon did not publicly list the 30 institutions but hailed seven of them on Monday for going “above and beyond” by “quickly terminating problematic relationships.” Those seven included: Oklahoma State University, The Pennsylvania State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of South Carolina, University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin and Virginia Tech.

“These academic institutions that went above and beyond deserve immense credit for setting the benchmark in domestic research security,” said Joseph Jewell, assistant secretary of defense for science and technology. ”Rather than settling for minimum compliance, these institutions took bold, self-initiated steps to protect their labs, faculty, and intellectual property from foreign exploitation.”

In addition to auditing their ties with foreign institutions listed in the 2019 NDAA, the Pentagon ordered the universities to review partnerships with “organizations associated with rebranded Confucius Institutes” that teach Chinese language and culture — but which the U.S. government fears actually spread Chinese government propaganda on college campuses.

The August review followed the July release of DoD’s fiscal 2025 update of “foreign institutions engaging in problematic activities.” The list named 130 academic and research institutions located in China, Russia and Iran.

“These institutions have been confirmed to engage in activities that increase the likelihood of U.S. government-funded research and development efforts being misappropriated,” the Pentagon said.

In addition to severing ties with the designated entities, American colleges also conducted “precautionary terminations involving entities not specifically identified on the list,” the Pentagon said Monday.

The U.S. government has been cracking down on both military and civilian research collaboration with China. In August, Ohio State University agreed to a $2.1 million settlement after civil allegations that it failed to disclose employee affiliations with Chinese institutions regarding NASA and National Science Foundation projects.

Other nations are also scrutinizing ties between local universities and Chinese colleges. Last month, the UK ordered British universities to cease working with the China General Technology Research Institute, which British security services believe to be a front for Chinese espionage. Beijing denied the allegations.

Tech. Sgt. Ian Patterson, a Tactical Air Control Party instructor assigned to the 6th Combat Training Squadron, Detachment 2, at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, fell from the stadium’s rafters during a rappelling demonstration before a football game Saturday between the University of Texas at San Antonio and the U.S. Naval Academy.

Videos taken by spectators at UTSA’s annual Salute to Armed Forces & Veterans game show Patterson wearing combat fatigues and rappelling down to midfield from the Alamodome’s rafters before falling onto the field at full speed, feet first. Subsequent videos show medical personnel assisting the airman on the field before he was transported to a local hospital.

Representatives of UTSA and the Navy met with Alamodome management, local authorities, the American Conference Commissioner Tim Pernetti and a working group to discuss next steps, according to a UTSA statement.

The groups decided to continue the game shortly after the incident to mitigate speculation about Patterson’s medical status and to avoid additional distress for his family. The conference also wanted to adhere to the military’s next-of-kin notification and identification process.

Around 11:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, confirmed that Patterson died at the hospital.

The 6th Combat Training Squadron is based at Nellis Air Force Base, but Detachment 2, Patterson’s unit, is housed at JBSA.

“This tragedy is felt deeply across the 57th Wing,” Brig. Gen. Scott C. Mills, 57th Wing commander, said in an Air Force release on Sunday. The release identified the airman as Patterson.

“Tech. Sgt. Patterson and his service mattered immensely to our wing, and to the family, friends, and teammates who had the privilege of knowing and serving alongside him,” Mills continued. “Our team is now focused on standing beside Ian’s family, loved ones, and fellow Airmen as we navigate this profound loss together.”

Four service members, including Patterson, were scheduled to participate in the rappelling demonstration. Those who participated were from Detachment 2 in the 6th Combat Training Squadron, trained in rappelling from heights of 100 feet or more. The rafters at Alamodome are around 170 feet above the stadium floor.

Patterson, who hailed from Fort Stewart, Georgia, served for 15 years. His decorations include the Air and Space Commendation Medal with three oak leaf clusters, as well as the Army Commendation Medal, Air and Space Achievement Medal and Army Achievement Medal, each with one oak leaf cluster.

He was named the Air Force Special Warfare Enlisted Instructor of the Year at the headquarters level in 2022.

The incident is currently under investigation, according to the release.

The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, alongside two other groups, asks a federal court to enforce their request for information about why the Pentagon commissioned the study.

In a statement, Gillian Thomas, senior counsel for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, argued that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has “repeatedly, without evidence, questioned women’s ability to serve in ground combat,” aims to deliver research to validate his “biased” views.

“Now, without explanation, he has commissioned a study of women’s performance and assigned it to a researcher with a record of criticizing women’s combat readiness,” she said. “The public has a right to know why, and what he plans to do with the results.”

In January, the Defense Department commissioned a non-profit research group called the Institute for Defense Analyses, which is largely funded by the federal government, to study the topic for six months.

However, according to the lawsuit, the study was reassigned to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, or JHU/APL, in April 2026, where the lead researcher, Jane Pinelis, authored a 2015 study for the Marine Corps that found “negative effects of mixed-gender units.”

The lawsuit adds that the 2015 study “was widely criticized for its flawed design and biased analysis.” Those critics, including the Navy Secretary at the time, described it as attempting to show that men are stronger than women rather than establish minimum standards and see who could meet them.

Additionally, The War Horse reported that Hegseth relied heavily on that study to support his argument that women shouldn’t serve in combat roles in his book The War on Warriors.

“Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” he wrote in the book. “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”

In a November 2024 interview on the Sean Ryan Podcast, Hegseth shared his explicit view on the issue: “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.”

Although he has since softened his rhetoric on women in combat, critics say he continues to push the agenda under the guise of military standards.

According to the lawsuit, the ACLU, the National Women’s Law Center and the Service Women’s Action Network want Defense Department records showing the scope, purpose, methodology and anticipated use of the study.

According to the research, published Thursday in JAMA, 20% of male soldiers younger than 30 years had testosterone levels less than the threshold established by the American Urological Association of 300 nanograms per deciliter, or ng/dL. Roughly a third of service members — 32.8% — aged 30 and older fell below the threshold.

According to the analysis, one-time testosterone testing of troops determined that 100,691 active-duty soldiers had morning testosterone levels of less than 300 ng/dL.

The results are an example of what the Department of Defense may encounter under a new program that requires all male service members 30 years and older to be screened for low testosterone, said the researchers from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, Massachusetts.

The results, the researchers said, “suggest that routine testosterone screening will result in confirmatory testing and clinical evaluation for many male service members.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in July that the Pentagon would begin screening testosterone levels of all service members over age 30 and would be voluntary for those below 30 request it and are experiencing symptoms such as fatigue, low libido, depressed mood, impaired concentration or diminished physical performance.

In a video posted to social media, Hegseth said maintaining proper testosterone levels was a way to ensure that troops stay on the “leading edge of lethality.”

“This initiative is not about artificial enhancement. It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain and fight,” Hegseth said.

Environmental exposures, including lead exposure, combat, physical injuries, sleep deprivation and mental health conditions can contribute to low testosterone in service members.

Treatment for severe cases — medically known as hypogonadism — can have serious side effects, such as mood swings, irritability and aggression, blood clots and low sperm count that can cause infertility.

Under the new Defense Health Agency clinical practice guidelines, service members will be screened in the morning on two separate days and assessed for further evaluation if they fall below the 300 ng/dL standard. They may choose to undergo treatment, which involves once- or twice-weekly injections depending on the medication, or a daily oral medication or gel. Treatment will not be mandatory.

The interest in testosterone replacement therapy in the DoD follows a growing $4.5 billion industry centered around testosterone, with the hormone touted as a supplement that contributes to increased physical performance, sex drive, concentration and youthful energy.

Studies in 2018 by the NIH on 800 older men demonstrated that testosterone therapy improved erectile dysfunction, libido and mood, but had little or no improvement on measures such as fatigue, memory or overall well-being.

The research, published Thursday, was based on an analysis of data from the Military Health and Nutrition Examination study, a survey conducted at five Army bases from August 2024 through January 2026.

The authors noted that the low testosterone levels in service members do not indicate that they all had hypogonadism.

A study conducted last year of active-duty men found that .43%, or 12,112 of more than 2.8 million service members, were diagnosed with hypogonadism, and those with the highest rates were the most senior, largely general officers and warrant officers.

The authors of the JAMA research letter cautioned that testing could result in excess medical visits, costs and treatment.

“Positive screening result requires clinical interpretation and typically prompts repeat testing, further evaluation, counseling regarding modifiable factors, and consideration of treatment if indicated. Because testosterone replacement therapy is long term and has potential adverse effects, distinguishing an isolated low screening value from clinically significant hypogonadism is essential,” the researchers wrote.