On Aug. 20, SBA proposed replacing nearly 1,000 industry-specific size standards and exceptions with 338 broader ones.

In common IT services categories, the threshold would rise from $34 million in average annual receipts to $531 million. SBA estimates 37,002 firms already in the federal market would newly qualify, holding more than 105,000 contracts worth about $71 billion in fiscal 2025.

SBA has legitimate reasons to act. The system is complicated, inflation has eroded the thresholds and businesses need room to grow. But that raises a narrower question: Should a $10 million SDVOSB compete for the same set-asides as an SDVOSB approaching $500 million?

An SDVOSB must be small under the standard assigned to a contract, in addition to being veteran-owned and controlled. If these thresholds hold, veteran-owned companies at dramatically different stages will compete head-to-head, and they are not similarly situated.

A firm with hundreds of millions in revenue has more capital, deeper past performance, bigger proposal teams and more room to absorb delayed payments, protests and lost bids. Most newly eligible firms will be $40 million to $200 million companies, and the advantage is the same.

We should want veterans to build $500 million companies. But a program built for veteran entrepreneurs should not pretend that gap does not exist.

Nowhere is this more consequential than at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which by statute must set work aside for veteran-owned small businesses whenever two can perform it, and which awarded roughly a quarter of its prime dollars to SDVOSBs last year.

The veteran-owned IT firms that outgrew that program would walk back through the door and compete against the firm that won its first VA contract last year.

SBA acknowledges that a larger pool may reduce existing small businesses’ chances of winning, and says the greatest effect will fall on firms most similar in size to the new entrants.

In a set-aside decided on past performance, staffing depth and price, the firm most likely to lose is the one with the least of each: the emerging veteran-owned business the program exists to serve.

SBA also states it is “not possible for SBA to accurately predict which newly classified firms would be eligible for certification,” and expects firms near the threshold not to certify.

That may be true elsewhere. It is not true where certification is free, takes weeks and unlocks a category one agency funds at roughly $10 billion a year. And the data to test it already sit in SBA’s own systems: VetCert, SAM.gov and FPDS show every firm that has held or lost SDVOSB certification, its size and its awards.

Before finalizing, SBA should publish an analysis. How many larger firms would qualify on both size and ownership, what they already receive and where smaller SDVOSBs would face the most new competition?

Depending on the data, SBA should adopt an SDVOSB-specific safeguard. SBA already uses program-specific size definitions elsewhere, and Congress can settle any doubt about authority.

One option is a separate upper threshold for SDVOSB set-asides where the general standard would otherwise rise into the hundreds of millions. Something like $75 million, roughly twice today’s standard, would let a firm double before graduating. The principle matters more than the number.

Congress has a vehicle ready. The bipartisan Contract Our Veterans Act of 2026 would set a 5% government-wide goal for veteran-owned small business contracting. A goal is only as meaningful as the field it is measured against, and the same bill could define that field so the goal is met by veterans building companies, rather than by a few already large ones.

No soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, guardian or Coast Guardsman leaves the service and builds a $500 million company on day one. The SDVOSB program should be a working ladder to the open marketplace, not permanent shelter from competition. SBA can modernize and keep that ladder standing.

Comments are due Sept. 21, 2026, at regulations.gov, Docket SBA-2026-0199, and SBA must answer substantive comments in the final rule. If you own a veteran-owned business, tell SBA what this change would mean for you.

Justin Brown is CEO of The Nimitz Group, a Washington, D.C.-based government relations firm focused on veterans policy and federal procurement.

It was introduced to make civilians feel comfortable with what the military asks of its service members, shifting focus from the human beings carrying the weight to the audience watching them carry it.

America loves the perfect military family hanging in photos around the world: a service member reuniting with a supportive spouse and resilient kids — all smiles, happy tears and beautifully curated.

America kills to see a happy homecoming. We watch from the safety of our couches as loved ones run to embrace their hero.

I’ve lived that photo. I am that supportive wife who is proud of this life and its honorable purpose. My husband looks good in his flight suit, and my kids are strong as hell.

The issue isn’t the photo; it’s what exists outside the frame. The reality lives in the go-bag in the closet, tearful goodbyes, moldy base housing, paychecks stretched thin, deteriorating mental health and the solo-parenting that spouses do every day.

The photo op can’t hold it.

The reality lives within the human beings inside those uniforms: the service member who is scared, exhausted or living with post-traumatic stress disorder; the children who don’t understand; and the spouse who is angry because she has skin in the game.

We’ve decided the image of the hero is more important than the human wearing the uniform. The support is loud until they step out of the frame. The second they show exhaustion, fear or disagreement, support turns into silence, or worse, an accusation: “You signed up for this.”

Yes, we did, and proudly. But nobody signed up to have their basic humanity stripped away to become America’s pretty patriotism prop.

The second a service member says, “I am exhausted,” “My mental health is failing,” or “This policy is broken,” their limits become an inconvenience, and they are written off as a threat to morale. When a spouse speaks up about mold or destructive deployment schedules, she is framed as “ungrateful” and warned she’ll ruin her partner’s career. The institution offers performative “help” through commissions far removed from daily realities, while kids become collateral damage in a system that values silence over empathy.

The proof is in the current events section of every government-run newspaper. It’s just not the story the institution wants you to hear.

When asked if the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was getting too long, the response was, “Not nearly long enough.” When sailors and families raised legitimate alarms about mental health, leadership brushed it off, managed optics and expected everyone to endure. When independent press like Stars and Stripes exposes messy realities, they’re handled — shattering the illusion that service members are lethal war machines, rather than humans with limits.

When active-duty officers like Major Jason Watson raise their voice on the Capitol steps, leadership doesn’t ask why; they immediately condemn. Challenging broken policy is treated as a personal insult to fragile leadership that cares more about rank and optics than humanity. By hyper-focusing on protocol, leadership hands itself a convenient shield: It’s easier to court-martial a man than answer the uncomfortable questions he brought with him.

Which brings me back to the man in the flight suit.

My loyalty belongs to my husband, not an institution that sees him as a disposable asset, nor a leadership pushing a toxic narrative over well-being. My loyalty is to the human who willingly puts on that suit and honors his oath.

Loving my husband and being a proud military spouse does not mean silent compliance. It fuels the fire because my name sits next to his on our marriage certificate, and it’s the very reason I refuse to be quiet.

I can honor his service and still look military leadership in the eye and ask, “What are you doing to him?”

What happens to him directly impacts our family, and I refuse to let his humanity be a bargaining chip for a public relations campaign.

If America and the Department of Defense truly want to “support our troops,” they must start taking responsibility for inconvenient consequences. Stop demanding the perfect military family and start acknowledging the human beings inside the uniform; their limits, fears, exhaustion and truth.

Debunking the war machine and seeing soldiers as human beings is the absolute minimum. Human acknowledgment isn’t simply “the right thing to do”; it’s how a successful military culture is created. When a leader chooses humanity over optics, a foundation is built on genuine trust rather than quiet burnout.

Maybe then service members and families would willingly choose 20 years instead of walking away. After all, you can only push someone to their limit before they jump ship.

Alexa LeCureux is a military spouse and writer who explores the complexities of service, patriotism and family life in the armed forces. She has spent over a decade supporting her husband’s career, first as a loadmaster and more recently as an Air Force KC-135 pilot, while raising their children in military communities across the United States and overseas. Her writing reflects the lived experience of military families and the quiet weight of life behind the uniform.

Extensive damage to one of our most significant forward bases in the Middle East is likely to have profound tactical and strategic repercussions that are only now coming into focus.

The idea that this broad functioning hub, built over decades, was significantly degraded in the space of a few days by a regional player is unimaginable.

I have fond memories of Bahrain both from past port visits, where it provided much-needed rest and relaxation, decent shopping and fitness options, and from my time as a government trainer when I flew over for shipboard training once every six months. I always felt safe there.

That NSA Bahrain is now virtually uninhabitable, with families left in limbo, as described in recent reporting, is difficult to grasp.

The damage is estimated to be close to $400 million. Buildings reportedly harmed include the Fifth Fleet headquarters, a barracks, several warehouses, communications towers and a potable water station.

Ships, including several U.S. Coast Guard vessels, appear to have been relocated, along with a large portion of the staff and their facilities. Thankfully, no one was killed or severely injured at the base, according to U.S. military sources.

It’s important to understand that NSA Bahrain is more than just a headquarters. Among its many functions, the installation provides a regional naval operating base for U.S. Navy forces in the Middle East. NSA Bahrain is home to NAVCENT and U.S. Fifth Fleet, along with numerous tenant commands.

Whenever ships, aircraft, personnel or cargo are moving throughout the region, chances are they have been supported by NSA Bahrain.

The installation provides the physical infrastructure that keeps American military power continuously available in a strategically vital region. It is foundational to America’s ability to project maritime power in this critical theater.

The idea that the U.S. could not prevent and defend against a predictable attack on a Fleet Headquarters — and our sailors stationed there — is quite startling. It likely is just as alarming to our allies.

The depth of NSA Bahrain’s impact became clear as the stories of scarcities of parts, food, mail and supplies to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln hit the news. Before long, pieces of the puzzle began falling into place as to the connection between ship supplies and the lack of a familiar resupply source.

Stretching supply lines that were once hundreds of miles away out to thousands of miles has far-reaching implications for forward-deployed ships and is likely to become a significant constraint in maritime operations.

Having deployed to the area multiple times, I can attest to such impacts. The fact that the U.S. did not preemptively — or at least expeditiously — evacuate families and dependents is truly mind-boggling. Even now, six months later, well over a thousand evacuated troops and their families are still in limbo, with many separated from pets and belongings due to the devastation.

The potential loss of NSA Bahrain is effectively the equivalent of losing an aircraft carrier. It could not have come as a surprise that Iran would attack it in retaliation, yet it — and those living and working there — were left exposed and the facilities inadequately protected from Tehran’s ballistic missiles.

The U.S. has superb air defense capabilities that could potentially have formed a near-impenetrable “dome” over our citizens, as they have over Israel and parts of Ukraine in recent history. Ballistic missile defense destroyers boast incredible defensive capabilities and could have been stationed effectively at sea to protect the Fifth Fleet Headquarters.

Instead, there is now talk of “reducing the footprint” of U.S. forces in the region, a “strategic retreat” that will have a significant impact on logistic support for our ships and troops in the region, making them even more vulnerable.

I commend Vice Adm. Curt Renshaw, the commander of Naval Forces Central Command, 5^th Fleet, and Combined Maritime Forces, for his honesty and candor when he told Bahrain evacuees at a town hall, “When we started this journey, there were some pretty clear rules. As we’ve moved on, we’re really in uncharted territory right now.”

Adm. Renshaw’s frustration is understandable. What is striking is not simply the physical damage, but the continuing uncertainty six months later surrounding the operational status and future of one of America’s most important naval headquarters — and importantly, the status of the personnel and their families.

What, precisely, is the current operational status of NSA Bahrain and the Fifth Fleet headquarters, and what capability did the U.S. lose when Iran demonstrated that it could strike this critical naval hub?

Fifth Fleet is still functioning, but the infrastructure from which it operated has been badly degraded. While there is certainly a need for operational security, it is important for the American people to understand how this situation happened, the magnitude of the impact and how repeating it can be avoided.

If NSA Bahrain is not reconstituted to something near its pre-attack capabilities, it will fundamentally change how the U.S. Navy operates, supplies and maintains its ships. It will also upend how we support regional coalition partners in the Gulf region.

It is my hope that it is resurrected with sufficient support and security to make it safe and viable again.

John Cordle is a retired Navy captain who commanded the destroyer USS Oscar Austin and the cruiser USS San Jacinto during his 30-year military career. He is a recipient of the U.S. Navy League John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership.

While the military trains medics relentlessly to treat the wound, we do not train them to handle the question.

I have spent years on both sides of that moment. I am a 68W combat medic instructor and a Tactical Combat Casualty Care instructor with the West Virginia Army National Guard, and I am also an endorsed chaplain.

This role encompasses teaching soldiers how to control hemorrhage and manage an airway to sitting with them months later, when the physical injury has healed, though something else has not.

The Army should close the distance between those two conversations by building trauma-informed care into how we train medics.

I expect the first objection, because I’ve made it myself. There is no time for feelings under fire. A medic has minutes, sometimes seconds, and every one of them belongs to the casualty needing life-saving treatment.

That objection misunderstands what trauma-informed care is. It should not be viewed as a separate task competing for time on the timeline. Instead, it is intertwined in the manner in which a medic performs the tasks.

Telling a casualty what you are about to do before you do it costs three seconds and keeps the individual from experiencing treatment as one more thing being done without warning.

Keeping a level voice and clear instructions is not bedside manner, but a technique that lowers physiological arousal in a patient who is already flooded. These should not be viewed as soft skills bolted onto medicine, but medicine itself.

The reason this matters is simple: soldiers are people first. They come to us carrying whatever burdens were there before the uniform — childhood adversity, losses, things never processed or disclosed. The injury a medic is treating, therefore, may not be that soldier’s first trauma. A medic who understands that will read the situation and respond differently than one taught to see only the wound.

With this approach, there are three key things every medic should be trained to recognize:

• Acute stress reactions: panic, dissociation, a casualty who has gone flat and unreachable.
• Post-traumatic symptoms in the days and weeks that follow: hypervigilance, nightmares, intrusive memories.
• Moral injury: the toll of having done, or failed to prevent, something that violates what you believe about yourself.

That last point is an area in which I have spent most of my career as a chaplain, and it is badly under-recognized in medicine because it does not present as a symptom.

Medics are positioned to catch all three areas earlier than anyone else in the formation. They are often the first medical contact for troops — and sometimes the only one — which makes them the gate to every referral that follows. A medic who has never been taught what to look for will not make the call. We know this is not a deficiency of compassion, but a general lack of awareness about what call to make.

So the ask is concrete. Add trauma-informed care instruction to 68W advanced individual training, and build it into annual recertification alongside TCCC, where it will actually stick.

Teach psychological first aid as a skill with steps: active listening, normalizing the stress response and connecting the soldier to resources. Teach medics how to avoid retraumatizing a patient during treatment. And make the handoff to a chaplain or behavioral health a taught, practiced action rather than something a medic must figure out alone. Doing so will contribute to both wellness and readiness.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates that more than half of Americans have experienced a traumatic event, and the Department of Veterans Affairs reports higher rates of PTSD among women. Our formations reflect those numbers.

Soldiers whose psychological injuries are addressed early are more likely to return to their units and stay there. Every service member we lose downstream is a trained soldier who is not quickly replaced.

As the force plans for prolonged field care and longer evacuation timelines in future fights, medics will hold casualties longer before handing them off. Hours they spend with frightened, injured troops will matter more, not less.

Nothing in this approach is asking medics to become counselors. However, the Army must acknowledge that a medic is already doing psychological work in that moment, competently or not, trained or not. We might as well train to improve it.

Medics are taught to keep a body alive. We should also prepare them to help the soldier who walks away.

Staff Sgt. Jay Kotsko is a 68W combat medic instructor and Tactical Combat Casualty Care instructor with the West Virginia Army National Guard and an ecclesiastically endorsed chaplain. He holds a Doctor of Ministry in chaplaincy and is the author of “Even Here: Finding God in the Fractured Timelines of Trauma and Recovery.” The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official position of DoD, the Army or the West Virginia National Guard.

Human performance optimization, or HPO, is intended to improve health and readiness force-wide. Operator Syndrome, meanwhile, is a clinical construct that describes the cumulative health effects experienced by special operations personnel.

Comprehensive assessments of the two will require Pentagon leadership and the advisory council to establish a standardized, evidence-informed framework to assess special operations and other combat-focused jobs susceptible to cumulative operational injuries within the military health system.

The advisory council’s success will depend on both the recommendations it produces and its ability to develop a coherent, scalable framework for service members with suspected Operator Syndrome across the MHS.

Along the way, the council has a unique chance to shift the MHS from a fragmented, symptom-based approach to one that addresses cumulative effects of operational service through holistic, multidisciplinary care.

The value of this approach has been demonstrated by existing human performance and operator health programs such as the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Preservation of the Force and Family (POTFF) and the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) program.

Right now, the advisory council has an opportunity to leverage decades’ worth of lessons learned from these programs to establish evidence-based clinical standards for continuous evaluation and refinement.

As the science of Operator Syndrome evolves, this framework should function as a learning health system, with new evidence informing ongoing updates that improve health, function, and operational readiness.

Dr. Chris Frueh’s foundational work first introduced Operator Syndrome in 2020 as a multisystem effect resulting from allostatic load and cumulative operational exposure. This work has driven multidisciplinary research to develop standardized methods for its characterization and assessment.

One example of this ongoing work is the collaborative development and preliminary validation of a standardized self-report instrument to assess Operator Syndrome-related symptom patterns.

The Operator Syndrome Symptom Scale–Self Report, or OSSS-SR, is guided by existing scientific literature, multidisciplinary clinical expertise and principles of patient-reported outcomes. This multisystem screening tool is designed to identify common symptom patterns affecting the mind and body and to support occupational performance and overall health among operators.

Currently advancing to its next phase of development, the OSSS-SR includes items for the empirical evaluation of multiple symptom domains across physical, mental, physiological and other performance health systems.

As the advisory council establishes its agenda, it should actively encourage and leverage similar collaborations. The future of military medicine depends not only on government-led initiatives but also on strategic partnerships that unite operational experience and clinical expertise.

Ongoing research efforts, meanwhile, also reinforce an important implementation challenge.

A validated clinical framework should guide these new screening initiatives. Recognizing Operator Syndrome as a military health priority is an important first step, but sustainability will depend on the Pentagon’s ability to build the scientific infrastructure that supports evidence-based decision-making. The Pentagon should treat investment in measurement science as a foundational priority.

Implementing screening before establishing a validated clinical framework introduces avoidable risks. Without standardized assessment methods and evidence-based referral criteria, identification of Operator Syndrome will likely vary across providers and military treatment facilities, leading to inconsistent clinical decision-making, unnecessary referrals and missed opportunities to identify service members who would benefit from comprehensive multidisciplinary care.

These challenges are not unique to Operator Syndrome. Similar concerns have been raised by certain organizations — such as the Endocrine Society — about broad population-based testosterone screening.

The Endocrine Society supports targeted testing for individuals with specific symptoms and risk factors, emphasizing that no single symptom or biomarker should serve as the basis for identifying cumulative operational injury, and that laboratory findings should be interpreted in an appropriate clinical context to avoid unnecessary intervention.

While expanded screening may facilitate earlier identification of health concerns, testosterone testing should serve as the starting point — not the endpoint — of clinical evaluation.

Combining testosterone results with a comprehensive medical history, a validated assessment tool such as the OSSS-SR and additional laboratory testing provides a more complete picture of physiological dysfunction and supports more targeted, multidisciplinary care.

A holistic screening framework supports treatment of the impacts of occupational performance. This is essential for military readiness and retention and can improve screening and continuity of care during and after service.

Addressing Operator Syndrome through a single symptom or isolated laboratory value, such as relying on testosterone testing alone, or by evaluating the broader physiological systems increases the likelihood that the underlying condition will remain inadequately addressed.

Council members must understand military healthcare, its operational systems and clinical outcomes, and how to optimize health and wellness to enhance lethality.

Extensive research on Operator Syndrome and the development of a self-report instrument have emphasized the need for multidisciplinary expertise to enhance holistic assessments of special operations personnel.

It is imperative, therefore, that physical and psychological assessments and treatments be evidence-based and include continuous, cumulative diagnostics throughout a military member’s entire career.

The Pentagon must prioritize selecting a multidisciplinary group of health and policy specialists when evaluating the proposed advisory council’s nominated members. Relying on a single viewpoint for an entire advisory panel is as ineffective as isolating a single symptom in a comprehensive diagnosis.

Ultimately, ensuring warfighters can respond to conflict at a moment’s notice requires a fully functioning mind-body connection that supports both health and readiness.

Mackenzie Witt, Pepper Phillips, MPH, and KayleighBealer, MS, are with A-G Associates, which partners with federal agencies, public health systems, and mission-driven organizations to turn strategies into results across behavioral health, military and veteran wellbeing, and systems transformation.

Jennifer Byrne, OTD, and Kelli Cabrera, OTD, are with 5by5 Performance Therapy, an organization committed to contributing to blast-injury and operator-centric research and academia to improve knowledge and understanding of the Special Operator family’s strengths and challenges.

My little sister has been in the military for 19 years, serving in Germany, U.S. territories, South Carolina, and elsewhere. Since February, she’s called a base in the Middle East home.

I’ve known her location and her proximity to danger for months, but it had felt like she wasn’t really there. Iran seemed intent on attacking bases other than hers, and American casualties were rare. Our conversations were often about how bored she was. The lousy food. How unbearable the heat and the flies are.

Sometimes I send her articles and ask if what I’m reading about is happening near her. If she answers, it’s usually to tell me not to believe everything I see. But she doesn’t tell me much. She doesn’t want me to worry and can’t tell me information she’s not authorized to share. There are many reasons; none of them let me sleep better at night.

My sister and I couldn’t be more different. Growing up, I cared about good grades, college, and building a fairly traditional life, whereas she spent high school partying and then working while she figured out her path.

When we were young, our differences created distance in our relationship, but when my sister joined the Air Force — creating an actual, physical distance — it somehow brought us closer.

We haven’t lived in the same state in almost 20 years, but we talk and text almost every day. When she’s on leave from the military, it’s at my house. We’re now as close as two sisters can be. When her spouse suddenly died two years ago, I was in the car almost immediately, driving 13 hours to be with her.

It wasn’t until she was badly injured by a drunk driver while stationed overseas that I learned what it’s like to worry about her from so far away.

She was supposed to be home by Memorial Day. “Start looking for a lake house,” she told me. It made no sense without firm dates, but I still looked. Then Memorial Day passed, as did the next anticipated date in June. Now her departure date is at the end of August. But we both know that date isn’t any more real than the others.

On a Monday in July, I texted her a picture of the French toast I had cooked. She responded with a funny GIF and told me to fuck off because she’s tired of rice. She sent me a picture of some gray hair she found and I sent her a picture of mine. This is what middle-aged sisters send each other when they’re 6,000 miles apart.

Later that week, she video called me at 7:30 p.m. my time. It was 2:30 a.m. for her, and so dark that I could barely make out her helmet and vest. She calmly told me her base had just been hit. Her friend was in the dorm that was struck. He survived, but she didn’t know much more.

She turned around the camera for the briefest of moments to show me the dark sky and the pinkish-purplish smoke. She had heard over the radio that there were casualties.

The distance is not new, but the worry is different now. A few days ago, my sister was merely danger-adjacent. Now she has survived an attack on her base that killed three Americans. My heart and my concentration are gone. My phone’s primary use? News alerts and texts from my sister.

I don’t want to constantly ask if she’s alive. That’s morbid. But I need to know that she’s alive. I recently asked her if she was scared. In 19 years of service, it was the first time I ever asked her that.

“Yes, of course,” she wrote back. “Anyone saying different is lying.”

The news cycle is very slow. I knew what happened for almost 24 hours before it was in the media. So I scrolled through TikTok looking for something funny to send her — because when she hearts it, I know that she’s OK.

Here in the United States, we debate this war in the abstract — whether the Iranian regime is evil, if we should even be there, whether this administration made the right call.

My sister doesn’t get the abstract version. So I will keep sending her pictures of my food, the dogs, and funny TikTok videos — so she knows how much she is loved, and I know that she’s still there.

This War Horse reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Trey Strange, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

Karen Marks is the founder of Design Your Support, where she helps e-commerce brands build better customer support. She lives outside Buffalo, New York, with her husband and two sons. Her sister has served in the military for 19 years, first in the Air Force and now in the Air National Guard.

Sometimes it changes the outcome of a battle. Sometimes it means the difference between life and death. Eisenhower credited his meteorologists as one reason the Allied invasion of Normandy succeeded. They gave him the information he needed to make a decision at a moment when weather meant the difference between victory and defeat.

This underpins a simple reality: Weather does not accommodate the mission. The mission accommodates the weather.

That is why the Pentagon should be paying attention to the El Nino forecast now. Whatever one’s views on long-term climate trends, the military still has to operate in the weather it actually experiences. And the weather forecast for the second half of 2026 is giving the Department of Defense something commanders rarely get before disruption arrives: months of notice.

On June 12, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared that El Nino had formed, and current forecasts suggest it may become a very strong event by fall or winter, one of the strongest in the modern record.

That means significant warming of the Pacific Ocean will influence the broad weather patterns we experience through the rest of the year. It cannot tell us when and where extreme weather will hit, but it is a significant threat indicator.

NOAA is forecasting a below-normal Atlantic hurricane season. At the same time, El Nino conditions tend to shift typhoon activity eastward in the Pacific, toward Guam and the Marianas.

The region’s exposure is not hypothetical. This year, Guam and the Northern Marianas have already been hit by two major typhoons. Typhoon Sinlaku brought widespread blackouts, flooding, and infrastructure damage in April. Super Typhoon Bavi followed in July, its eye passing over Rota, leaving severe outages and flooded roads on Guam and Saipan while thousands were still recovering from the first storm.

Whatever the forecast holds, these storms are a reminder of what installations in the region face. The El Nino outlook says: Be ready for more.

The Pacific is not the only concern. El Nino is also expected to reshape weather across the United States as the year progresses, especially this winter.

NOAA’s historical outlooks associate El Nino with a stronger southern storm track: wetter conditions across the southern tier of the country; a greater risk of heavy rain and flooding in parts of California, the Gulf Coast and the Southeast; and a generally warmer northern tier.

For the military, that is not an academic forecast. It means installations across the South and Southwest may have to contend with more flooding, more drainage and access problems and more interruptions to training and maintenance, just as they are already operating through a punishing summer.

Heat stress remains part of the story as well.

Training bases in the South already face more days above safe thresholds for strenuous outdoor activity. El Nino will not create that problem, but it arrives on top of it, extending a year in which commanders may have to manage both the immediate effects of extreme heat and the prospect of a wetter, stormier winter ahead.

Years ago, after Hurricane Michael devastated Tyndall Air Force Base in 2018, I asked the base commander what he would have done if he had six months’ warning that the storm was coming. His answer was revealing. He did not begin with a five-year military construction plan or a new regulatory framework. He talked about operations. He would have done more hurricane drills. He would have made sure his people knew what to do. He would have prepared the force to absorb the shock.

That is the right way to think about this El Nino forecast. Six months of warning is not enough time to redesign a vulnerable installation. It is enough time to prepare to operate through disruption.

For commanders and installation leaders, that preparation is not mysterious. It means testing continuity plans and making sure the mission-essential functions of a base can continue if normal operations are interrupted. It means checking backup power, fuel, water, communications, drainage and access routes before a storm or heat emergency exposes the weakness for you. It means revisiting training calendars and work-rest cycles in places where extreme heat is increasingly likely to interfere with readiness. And it means asking the basic operational question: If a storm takes this installation offline for a week, what absolutely has to keep functioning?

The larger lesson is not limited to this one forecast.

El Nino will pass, but the baseline it returns to is not the baseline of thirty years ago. Each of these events now arrives atop a warmer ocean atmosphere, which means the same seasonal pattern delivers more water, more heat and stronger storms than its predecessors did. That is not a policy argument; it is an input to planning.

Another seasonal forecast will take this one’s place. Another storm season will come. Another heat wave will test the assumptions built into training schedules and installation operations. The military does not have the luxury of ignoring those warnings because they arrive under the label of “weather” rather than “war.” The weather is part of the operating environment. It always has been.

The Pentagon cannot control the weather, but it can use the intelligence it has been given. El Nino is a threat warning. The military should treat it like one.

John Conger served as the U.S. principal deputy under secretary of defense (comptroller) from December 2015 to January 2017.

In May 2026, South Carolina enacted Act 186 with overwhelming bipartisan support. Under an Americans with Disabilities Act framework, the law guarantees that autistic children can receive medically necessary behavioral health support, specifically Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy, inside public-school classrooms.

It was designed to ensure that no child must forfeit their public education to access required medical care.

Yet, active-duty military families stationed at Joint Base Charleston and across the state are being stripped of this protection.

The Defense Health Agency (DHA), operating through TRICARE’s Autism Care Demonstration (ACD), continues to enforce a rigid “School Exclusion” rule.

Under this administrative posture, TRICARE completely cuts off provider reimbursement the moment a behavior technician steps onto public school property. While civilian families with commercial insurance benefit from state law protections, military families face an impossible ultimatum: Either pull their children out of public school to maintain therapy in a clinical setting or drop medically necessary care so their children can attend school alongside their peers.

The operational cost of this bureaucratic conflict is staggering.

Summer 2026 field survey data from The Military Family Advocacy Group reveals that 100% of surveyed active-duty, mid-career operators navigating these TRICARE autism denials are actively planning early separation from military service.

When a specialized EOD technician or fighter pilot is consumed by an exhausting administrative war at home just to secure standard healthcare for their child, mission focus fractures and unit lethality suffers. The military spends millions of dollars and years of specialized training to build these operators, only to lose them over a TRICARE setting restriction.

Adding insult to injury is the financial cost-shift onto local taxpayers.

Denied in-school coverage by TRICARE, 80% of surveyed military families have been forced to enroll their dependents onto state-funded Medicaid waivers to cover essential care. This shifts an estimated $6,383 annual net tax burden per child directly onto South Carolina taxpayers for care that a federal defense program should be providing.

This systemic breakdown is not inevitable; it is the result of administrative intransigence.

In 2025, a comprehensive report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recommended that the Defense Health Agency discontinue the 12-year ACD “demonstration” status, authorize ABA as a standard TRICARE Basic benefit, remove arbitrary setting exclusions and eliminate onerous assessment mandates.

Because the Defense Health Agency has repeatedly failed to self-correct or adopt these independent scientific recommendations, Congress must step in.

As lawmakers finalize the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, they must include statutory language that legally compels the secretary of defense to terminate the ACD demonstration status, align TRICARE with NASEM standards and prohibit the Defense Health Agency from restricting medically necessary care based on geographic or educational settings.

South Carolina has done its part to protect military children. It is now time for federal lawmakers to enforce those protections, end the school exclusion rule and preserve the readiness of our total force.

Mariah Wilkins is the executive director and principal policy advisor of The Military Family Advocacy Group.

The intent — a stronger, more capable force — is a good one. Policies built on good intentions, however, can still go wrong, and this one deserves careful scrutiny before it is implemented at scale.

The goal of having a more effective military is understandable, but the question remains whether the science supports the strategy.

Testosterone replacement therapy is an important treatment for men with true hypogonadism, a carefully diagnosed medical condition. But expanding hormone screening across hundreds of thousands of healthy service members represents a significant shift in military medicine — one that deserves far more public discussion than it has received.

The military has always embraced innovation, but medicine is different. Good intentions are not enough. Before introducing any intervention on a broad scale, policymakers should be confident that the benefits outweigh the risks for the entire force.

So, does the evidence actually show testosterone makes troops more lethal or better fighters? Not clearly.

The Army’s own research is instructive. In the service’s first Optimizing Performance for Soldiers study, men given weekly testosterone injections during a simulated combat energy deficit preserved more lean muscle than men on placebo, but their physical performance declined at about the same rate as the untreated group.

The hormone helped the body hold onto muscle, but did not translate into better fighting performance. Put simply: the case that testosterone will make service members deadlier hasn’t been made.

It’s also worth considering what a low testosterone reading often actually represents. A low laboratory value may reflect the normal physiological demands of military service rather than a chronic hormonal disorder.

Sleep deprivation, combat deployments, chronic stress, obesity, alcohol use and intensive physical training can all temporarily suppress testosterone levels. Low testosterone is often a symptom rather than the underlying problem.

If the Department of Defense wants to build a stronger military, investments in sleep, nutrition, physical conditioning, behavioral health and recovery science are likely to produce broader and more lasting benefits than widespread hormone replacement.

Without careful evaluation, including repeat testing and assessment for reversible causes, many healthy service members could be labeled as testosterone deficient and begin long-term treatment they may never have needed. That decision carries consequences.

Once testosterone therapy begins, the body’s own production is suppressed. Fertility may decline. Testicular atrophy can occur. Some men become dependent on continued treatment because normal hormone production does not fully recover.

Ongoing monitoring is required to watch for elevated red blood cell counts, prostate-related concerns, sleep apnea and other potential complications. Researchers continue to study the long-term cardiovascular effects, particularly in younger, healthier populations.

Behavioral effects deserve equal attention. Testosterone influences mood, confidence, motivation and aggression. When appropriately prescribed, these effects may improve quality of life in men with genuine deficiency. But unnecessary treatment, or excessive hormone levels, may increase irritability, impulsivity, emotional volatility or impaired judgment in susceptible individuals.

In a military that depends on discipline, restraint and sound decision-making under extreme pressure, even uncommon adverse effects warrant careful consideration.

Testosterone therapy has an important place in modern medicine. That is indisputable. The key issue, though, is whether routine screening and expanded hormone treatment across one of America’s healthiest working populations will strengthen military readiness or create long-term health challenges that outweigh the expected benefits.

Many of these issues will need to be addressed by the Department of Veterans Affairs after the service member transitions to civilian life.

America’s military superiority has never depended on a laboratory value. It is built on leadership, training, discipline, resilience and the judgment of the men and women who serve. Those remain the greatest sources of our strategic advantage.

David Shulkin, MD, was secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs during the first Trump Administration and served as VA’s under secretary of health during the Obama Administration.

The hard truth is this: America cannot dominate the modern battlefield if the Department of War does not know where its critical materials, components and software come from.

A fighter jet, missile battery, naval vessel, radar system, drone or armored vehicle does not begin on the factory floor of a prime contractor. It begins with minerals, metals, magnets, chips, chemicals, software, castings and forgings — thousands of components moving through supply chains that stretch across the world. In a major defense program, those chains may run five or six tiers deep, while government visibility often stops at the first or second.

That gap is the danger. America’s vulnerabilities are buried in the lower tiers — the subcontractors and vendors supplying specialty metals, electronics, chemicals, software and raw materials that Washington is not watching.

And that is exactly where President Trump’s new executive order, “Securing America’s Defense Supply Chains and Ensuring Domestic Acquisition of Critical Materials,” strikes.

For too long, Washington has pretended a weapons system is “American” if final assembly happens in America — even when critical inputs come from foreign adversaries or suppliers vulnerable to foreign ownership, control or influence. That fiction may satisfy a lobbyist. It will not survive a war.

Congress recognized the danger in 10 U.S.C. 4872, which restricts acquiring covered materials from covered nations. But laws are only as strong as their enforcement — and waiver culture, contractor convenience, and bureaucratic inertia have hollowed out those rules.

That era is over. The Trump policy is simple and tough: end the loose waiver process, expose hidden supply chains, vet the lower tiers, qualify trusted sources and hold contractors accountable.

Beginning January 1, 2027, waivers under 10 U.S.C. 4872(c)(1) and (e) will no longer be business as usual. A contractor seeking relief must identify the noncompliant source, document exhaustive efforts to find compliant material or prove none was available, lay out the steps to remove it from the supply chain and commit to a strict timeline.

Failure to qualify a domestic source will not count as “non-availability” unless the contractor shows active, adequately funded and ongoing efforts to qualify one. In plain English: No more, “We tried nothing, and we’re out of options.”

To expose hidden supply chains, the order directs the Secretary of War to begin rulemaking requiring contractors to map critical supply chains for national-security acquisitions identified by the department — from raw materials to the end products delivered to the military — through a tier-by-tier bill of materials tracing components, parts, software and materials back to their origins.

This is not paperwork. It is battlefield preparation. If a missile system depends on a foreign-controlled supplier, the Department of War needs to know before the shooting starts. If a naval platform relies on a sole-source supplier vulnerable to bankruptcy, takeover, cyber disruption or production bottlenecks, that risk must be surfaced and mitigated. If a supply chain runs through an adversary-controlled chokepoint, that is a strategic exposure, not an accounting detail.

To vet the lower tiers, contractors must screen suppliers and subcontractors supporting critical supply chains for financial risk; foreign ownership, control or influence; and manufacturing and supply risk. They must report significant risks and fix them on a strict, tracked timeline.

On trusted sources, the message is blunt: qualify or replace. For decades, contractors have hidden behind slow qualification processes while adversary-linked suppliers stayed embedded in America’s defense industrial base. No more.

Contractors relying on supply chains that include materials or components supplied by unreliable foreign suppliers must promptly qualify and use alternatives, consistent with law, safety, mission requirements and contract terms. The Department of War will speed the testing and qualification of new sources and materials. And when outdated regulations block rapid qualification for defense production, those roadblocks must come down.

On the accountability front, national security contracting is not a game of hide-the-ball. Contractors that fail to qualify required alternatives can lose task orders, contract options or the contract itself. And contractors who commit fraud, deliberately mislead the government, or knowingly or willfully fail to implement approved mitigation plans face every lawful action and contractual remedy the secretary deems appropriate, with possible referral to the Attorney General.

The broader message of this new Trump administration EO should be clear. America’s arsenal of democracy begins in the mine, the refinery, the forge, the foundry, the chemical plant, the semiconductor fab and the machine shop.

Peace through strength requires strength through secure supply chains: American weapons built with domestic, allied, and trusted materials; sunlight, enforcement, qualification and accountability.

And one overriding rule for every defense contractor: Never put an American warfighter at risk because an adversary-linked supplier was buried five tiers down.

Peter Navarro is the White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing.