The budget proposals — which outline the president’s priorities for next fiscal year — are expected to undergo significant revisions in coming months as lawmakers add and adjust to the spending outline.

That work usually begins in February, but delays in finalizing the fiscal year 2024 budget have pushed back that timeline. Congress is expected by the end of this month to finalize plans for Defense Department spending and other agencies which have been operating without a full-year fiscal plan since Oct. 1.

On Tuesday, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young is scheduled to testify before the Senate Budget Committee about the president’s budget plan.

Tuesday, March 12

Wednesday, March 13

Thursday, March 14

The deployment makes the North Chicago complex the final Defense Department medical site to begin using the new record system, and the first Veterans Affairs site in 21 months to launch the software. VA officials announced a halt to all new site deployments in April 2023 amid growing concerns about staff training and system readiness.

Whether the deployment to Lovell FHCC would go ahead as scheduled this month was in doubt just a few weeks ago, with lawmakers and advocates questioning whether enough fixes had been made to VA processes to ensure patient safety.

VA halts all new work on health records overhaul

But Neil Evans, acting director of VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office, told reporters this week he is confident that patient safety will be improved — not jeopardized — with the launch of the new records system.

“We believe that it is important for us to operate as an integrated system,” he said. “We want to make sure that we are integrated and functioning as a cohesive whole, and making sure this will work as expected. We’re not concerned about unleashing new issues.”

Since President Donald Trump announced plans to put VA and the Defense Department on the same health records system in 2017, the effort has been fraught with software problems, employee frustrations and patient safety concerns.

After deployment to just five sites, VA Secretary Denis McDonough halted all future installations at veterans medical centers until officials were confident that those issues had been corrected.

Several lawmakers have openly questioned whether VA’s $16 billion contract with Oracle Cerner will ever produce a workable system for the department. But McDonough and Oracle officials have insisted the problems can be fixed, given time and focus on the issue.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department’s version of the software — MHS Genesis — has largely been installed with only minor technical setbacks. In a statement, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Lester Martinez-Lopez said deployment of the system to Lovell FHCC “will help DOD and VA deliver on the promise made to those who serve our country to provide seamless care from their first day of active service to the transition to veteran status.”

The Illinois medical center is a joint VA and Defense Department facility which provides care to about 75,000 veterans, service members and family members annually. It is the only joint health care complex of its kind in the nation.

Evans said bringing all of those patients into a single records system will help with coordinating care and provide important insights for VA’s future software deployments.

But in the short term, the move will leave some VA patients in the North Chicago region who use multiple health care sites with two sets of medical records: one in the new Millennium software, and one in VA’s legacy VistA platform.

Those double records have led to problems in the past, particularly with fulfilling pharmacy orders. Evans said officials have made adjustments in recent months and will be closely monitoring the issue going forward.

Over the next 60 days, roughly 1,000 troops will deploy to the Mediterranean Sea to build a floating platform where cargo ships can offload aid onto smaller military vessels, which will transfer them to a causeway attached to the beach, where trucks can pick it up and distribute it within Gaza, Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.

“The concept that is being planned involves the presence of U.S. military personnel on military vessels offshore, but does not require U.S. military personnel to go ashore,” Ryder said.

President Joe Biden first announced the effort on Thursday night during the State of the Union Address.

The capability, dubbed Joint Logistics Over-The-Shore, has most recently been used during Exercise Talisman Sabre, Ryder said, an annual event based in Australia.

The modular causeway will be assembled offshore and driven to the beach, where it will be anchored ashore.

Biden outlines military plans to build port in Gaza for aid

The Pentagon is identifying units to deploy to the Mediterranean to start construction, he added, which will include soldiers from the 7th Transportation Brigade at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia.

What remains to be hammered out is how U.S. Central Command will be able to protect both the offshore pier and the causeway itself from attacks by Hamas, though Ryder said Israel is part of the planning process and could provide security through its own forces.

“If Hamas truly does care about the Palestinian people, then again, one would hope that this international mission to deliver aid to people who need it would be able to happen and unhindered,” Ryder said.

The causeway has the potential to increase the amount of aid flowing into Gaza by several orders of magnitude, supplementing trucks arriving daily through the border with Israel, as well as ongoing air drops by the U.S. military.

The U.S. carried out its fourth drop of aid via C-130 Hercules on Friday, Ryder said. Each plane carries about the same amount of aid as a truck does over land. Though at points during the Israel-Hamas war, up to 200 aid trucks drove into Gaza daily, the Pentagon said Monday that the pace has dropped to 100 or fewer trucks a day.

The fight in Gaza will be hell, military experts in urban combat say

The temporary port has the potential to pick up some of the slack, Jonathan Lord, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Military Times on Friday, but with the same distribution concerns as aid arriving over land.

“How do you get aid not just onshore, but then securely distributed, such that it goes to everyone who needs it, and isn’t otherwise blocked in by Hamas insurgents, criminal gangs, vigilantes or others that might be taking advantage of emerging security vacuums?” he said.

Non-government organizations, the United Nations and other regional partners could be tapped to accept and distribute the aid ashore, Ryder said, though those details aren’t finalized.

Another issue is the inspection process for aid, which has slowed down the flow in land shipments.

“If you ask, the Israelis would argue that they, in fact, are not the bottleneck. They are inspecting more trucks than are actually going in on a day-to-day basis,” Lord said. “And when you ask them to what do they attribute that delta, they would say that the groups operating in Gaza don’t have enough drivers.”

Others, including two U.S senators, say Israel’s “cumbersome” and “arbitrary” inspection process is holding things up, comments the lawmakers made after a trip to Egypt to observe the Rafah border crossing in January.

“So that poses a question: Is, in fact, the problem one of a deficit of aid or deficit of aid distribution?” Lord said. “Likely, we’re going to find out, because if you can bring containerships worth of aid up to Gaza, you’re going to find out very quickly what your logistical supply line and your interior lines look like, and whether you have the capacity to effectively distribute it, in pretty short order.”

In any case, Lord said, the U.S. will continue to pressure the Israeli government to ease restrictions on incoming aid, as well as open up more land crossings, as Biden mentioned in his speech Thursday night.

The study from the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed U.S. government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more popularly known as UFOs.

It found no evidence that any of them were signs of alien life, or that the U.S. government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and were hiding it.

“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” said the report, which was mandated by Congress. Another volume of the report focused on more recent research will be out later.

U.S. officials have endeavored to find answers to legions of reported UFO sightings over the years, but so far have not identified any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life. A 2021 government report that reviewed 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories found no extraterrestrial links, but drew few other conclusions and called for better data collection.

The issue received fresh attention last summer when a retired Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress that the U.S. was concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon has denied his claims, and said in late 2022 that a new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects — the same one that released Friday’s report — had received “several hundreds” of new reports, but had found no evidence so far of alien life.

UFO sightings linked to military training locations, report finds

The authors of Friday’s report said the purpose was to apply a rigorous scientific analysis to a subject that has long captured the American public’s imagination.

“AARO recognizes that many people sincerely hold versions of these beliefs which are based on their perception of past experiences, the experiences of others whom they trust, or media and online outlets they believe to be sources of credible and verifiable information,” the report said.

“The proliferation of television programs, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centered on UAP-related topics most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic, and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population,” it added.

Army Gen. Michael Kurilla told lawmakers on March 7 that he would “love” to have the Navy deploy more directed-energy arms capable of downing drones. Having supplemental directed energy on hand, he added, would also mean expending fewer U.S. missiles, which can cost millions of dollars a pop. Iranian drones being funneled to extremist groups can cost thousands of dollars each.

“The bigger concern is if you start talking about swarms. We need to continue to invest in things like high-power microwave to be able to counter a drone swarm that is coming at you,” Kurilla said during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington. “Nothing is 100%. At some point the law of statistics will come up. You have to have a layered defense.”

High-energy lasers and microwave weapons are capable of zapping overhead threats in ways dissimilar to traditional munitions and at a fraction of the cost. Lasers can fire at the speed of light and punch holes through material, while microwaves can fry electronics at a distance, rendering tech obsolete. Both are considered a critical element of layered defense, or having multiple countermeasures ready to thwart different threats in different situations.

The Defense Department has for decades pitched money into directed-energy weapons, an average $1 billion annually in the past three years, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog.

Amid Red Sea clashes, Navy leaders ask: Where are our ship lasers?

At least 31 directed-energy initiatives are underway across the department, with some more mature than others. Among them are Lockheed Martin’s High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance, or HELIOS, installed aboard the Navy destroyer Preble in 2022, and Epirus’ Leonidas, delivered to the Army in 2023 in furtherance of its Indirect Fire Protection Capability.

Bringing such systems to fruition — let alone mass production — has proven tricky. Aside from their technological complexity, laser- and microwave-based weaponry demand precious components and materials such as germanium and gallium.

Kurilla on Wednesday said the Army “sent us some directed-energy mobile short-range air defense” that are being experimented with. He provided no details about initial results. The service dispatched four Stryker-mounted 50-kilowatt laser prototypes in February, Breaking Defense reported.

Militants across the Greater Middle East have in recent months conducted more than 175 attacks on U.S. and allied forces. A drone strike in Jordan, at the Tower 22 installation near al-Tanf garrison, killed three troops in January. A Houthi missile attack on a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden this month killed three crew members, as well, and forced an evacuation of the vessel.

“This is not the same central region as last year,” Kurilla said. “Iran’s expansive network of proxies is equipped with advanced, sophisticated weaponry, and threatens some of the most vital terrain in the world with global and U.S. implications.”

Steve Nikoui, the invited guest of Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., was escorted out of the House chamber after screaming “Abbey Gate” and “Marines” multiple times at President Joe Biden as he spoke about violent crime in America. Biden glanced briefly at Nikoui before Capitol Hill security forced him out of the chamber.

The New York Times reported that Nikoui was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for disrupting the speech.

Nikoui’s son, Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, was one of 13 service members killed in the August 2021 attack, along with hundreds of Afghan civilians, when a suicide bomber attacked the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport. Defense Department officials blamed the attack on the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate.

I am honored to have Steve Nikoui as my guest to #SOTU. He is the father of LCpl. Kareem Nikoui, who was KIA due to Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.@JoeBiden may try to turn the page on Afghanistan after his incompetence cost American lives, but NOT ON MY WATCH. pic.twitter.com/wE3uKrMlEa

— Rep. Brian Mast (@RepBrianMast) March 7, 2024

Republican lawmakers and family members of several of the service members killed have blamed Biden for the deaths, insisting they came as a result of the rushed departure of U.S. military forces from the country.

Mast was one of several Republican lawmakers to invite family members of the deceased troops to the speech. The Republican lawmaker backed Nikoui’s outburst in a series of social media posts after the incident.

“For the last three SOTU speeches, Joe Biden REFUSED to say the names of the 13 U.S. [service members] who were killed by his disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal,” he wrote. “I couldn’t support this effort more.”

The Sergeant at Arms is holding my State of the Union guest for yelling at @POTUS in protest because his son was killed in action at the Abbey Gate due to Biden’s incompetence.

So much for the right to petition our government for the redress of grievances.

— Rep. Brian Mast (@RepBrianMast) March 8, 2024

Nikoui has been an outspoken critic of the administration in the past. Several Republican lawmakers also interrupted Biden during his address, though none were removed from the chamber.

The misdemeanor charge typically carries a small fine and no jail time.

The Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy will immediately start refreshing troops’ training and changing maintenance procedures as prerequisites for resuming normal operations, leaders from each of the services told reporters Wednesday.

But they acknowledged it will be months before the tiltrotor aircraft are fully back to flying real-world missions.

The Ospreys will receive no equipment modifications before they return to the air.

What is the Osprey, the aircraft at the center of multiple tragedies?

Marine Corps Col. Brian Taylor, the V-22 joint program manager, told reporters his office and the services “have high confidence that we understand what component failed and how it failed.” It’s still unclear why the part in question did not perform as intended.

Taylor and other service officials declined to say which component’s failure caused an Air Force Special Operations Command Osprey to crash into the sea during a training mission Nov. 29, killing all eight airmen aboard. They also declined to answer whether the aircraft would be restricted from flying under certain conditions or in certain areas due to the risk of a repeat problem.

The accident is still under investigation. The Air Force has shared its findings with the joint program office — which manages V-22 acquisition and maintenance for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps — and the other services to better understand the material failure that led to the crash.

Because the wreckage of the Osprey sat under the Pacific Ocean for about a month before being recovered, the drive system is corroded such that engineers may never understand why the unnamed component failed, Taylor said. But investigators created a “fault tree” to map out potential causes, which are addressed in the services’ mitigation plan.

The main change will increase the frequency of an inspection that is already done on the aircraft — like upping the number of oil changes on a car, Taylor said. He said the change gives the component a greater “perimeter of safety” during operations.

Though Taylor repeatedly declined to offer information about the component, he said it is not the input quill assembly that attaches the Osprey’s engine to its proprotor gear box — the component that began wearing out early and caused a series of clutch malfunctions for Marine Corps and Air Force pilots in 2022. A portion of the Air Force and Marine Corps fleets were grounded in 2023 as those services studied how to mitigate the risk of so-called “hard clutch engagements” and when to replace worn-out parts.

NBC reported Feb. 19 the November crash may have involved “chipping,” where tiny pieces of metal wear off during use and can damage the engine. Taylor did not specify whether chipping played a role in the crash, but characterized it as a normal phenomenon for a mechanical system and said the V-22 has a sophisticated monitoring system that looks for small metal bits and alerts the pilot if any are detected.

Taylor made clear the November crash was unrelated to other previous V-22 mishaps.

“This is the first time that we’ve seen this particular component fail in this way, and so this is unprecedented” in the 750,000 flight hours amassed over the life of the V-22 program, he said.

Due to that long track record, Taylor said: “We are confident in the system.”

The ‘Gundam 22′ crash

The Nov. 29 accident was the deadliest Air Force mishap since 2018, and the fourth fatal Osprey crash in a two-year span. Twenty U.S. troops have died in Osprey incidents since March 2022.

The downed crew of “Gundam 22″ included Osprey pilots Maj. Jeff Hoernemann, Maj. Luke Unrath and Capt. Terry Brayman; medical personnel Maj. Eric Spendlove and Tech. Sgt. Zach Lavoy; flight engineers Staff Sgt. Jake Turnage and Senior Airman Kody Johnson; and airborne linguist Staff Sgt. Jake Galliher.

Six were stationed at Japan’s Yokota Air Base; two worked at Kadena Air Base. All were assigned to the Air Force’s 353rd Special Operations Wing.

The weeks-long, multinational search effort successfully recovered the bodies of all but Spendlove.

The U.S. military now flies hundreds of V-22s, largely operated by the Marines. The tiltrotor aircraft is known for its towering nacelles that allow it to launch and land like a helicopter, and speed forward like a fixed-wing plane. Troops use the unique aircraft to slip in and out of areas without established runways, where fixed-wing planes may not be able to land with troops and supplies.

The Marine Corps owns nearly 350 Ospreys; the Air Force and Navy operate smaller fleets at around 50 and 30 aircraft, respectively.

Beyond the safety and accident investigation boards studying the most recent crash, Air Force Special Operations Command is also conducting a deep-dive into its CV-22 Osprey program to determine whether it provides adequate training, resources and other factors to ensure airmen’s safety.

The Government Accountability Office and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability have also launched their own probes into the V-22. On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House oversight committee, said it had not yet received information from the military as it looks into the aircraft’s safety and performance.

“Serious concerns remain, such as accountability measures put in place to prevent crashes, a general lack of transparency, how maintenance and operational upkeep is prioritized, and how DOD assesses risks,” Comer said in a statement. “We will continue to rigorously investigate the DOD’s Osprey program to attain answers to our questions on behalf of American taxpayers and protect U.S. service members defending our nation.”

Marines prepare

As the biggest user of the V-22 platform by far, the Marine Corps has been most affected by the monthslong grounding. It relies on the Osprey to move people, supplies and weapons, and operates from ship decks and from ground bases.

Brig. Gen. Richard Joyce, the assistant deputy commandant for aviation, told reporters the Marine Corps has focused on keeping up troops’ proficiency on the Osprey since the grounding began in early December so the service could resume flights as quickly as possible.

“Our simulator utilization has been maximized to keep proficiency as much as possible in the virtual environment,” he said.

How the Osprey grounding affected a Marine unit in the Indo-Pacific

The service has gone as far as sending MV-22 pilots in Djibouti thousands of miles away to use simulators in Japan, and shipping MV-22 pilots who are deployed to the Middle East with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit back home to North Carolina for simulator training.

Now that the program office has cleared the aircraft to fly, the Corps’ most experienced pilots and aircrew will begin maintenance-check flights to get the Ospreys up in the air, then retrain on “core and basic skills,” Joyce said. Once those top personnel have brushed up on the fundamentals, they’ll pair with junior pilots and crew for additional basic training.

Joyce said it would take about a month for a squadron to get everyone back up to speed basic skills.

However, it will take more time for the personnel to retrain on more advanced skills and mission-specific tasks for combat assaults, transport flights and other missions.

The general said it would take until late spring or early summer to get back to pre-grounding readiness levels.

V-22 squadrons will go through more consumable parts, like filters, as they take on additional inspections and maintenance, he said. Those parts and training support will first go to deployed units, followed by squadrons with upcoming deployments, squadrons participating in key exercises or service-level training events, and eventually to test-and-evaluation units and those farthest from a future deployment.

The amphibious assault ship Boxer and the 15th MEU are set to deploy from California this spring, and Joyce said it’s not clear yet if they’ll be ready to bring the V-22 along. It’s one of the most pressing decisions related to resuming V-22 flight operations, he said.

Air Force’s ongoing studies

Airmen have done the work required to keep the Air Force’s Osprey fleet healthy during the three-month standdown, but “there’s only so much they can do with aircraft that are not flying,” Air Force Special Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind told reporters Wednesday.

He described a 12-week road map to getting the Ospreys back in the air that adds new maintenance requirements and allows experienced airmen to lead the way. The service will deviate from that plan as needed if work isn’t progressing on schedule.

Returning the aircraft to service begins with ground and simulator training that will include new safety controls and briefings, a review of aircraft maintenance records and refining squadron-level training plans to implement the new safety protocols, Bauernfeind said.

The Air Force did not elaborate on what new safety protocols will be introduced. AFSOC held an all-hands for Osprey crews Feb. 22-23 at Hurlburt Field, Florida, to explain the new safety protocols.

“We received very positive feedback that it was very beneficial to the crews,” Bauernfeind said.

The second phase will focus on returning air crews and maintainers to basic proficiency, initially targeted at senior aviators, instructors, evaluators and weapons officers. Simulator training has helped keep skills sharp during the standdown.

The phased approach gives the service time to absorb findings from the service’s initial safety investigation, an internal report meant to root out the cause of a mishap and prevent future occurrences. Bauernfeind received and accepted the findings of the safety board March 1.

He expects it will take the service more than three months to reach the level of proficiency it had on the Osprey before the Nov. 29 crash.

Bauernfeind said he’s confident in the service’s ability to safely resume Osprey operations before wrapping up two ongoing investigations. The Air Force has kept the families of the downed crew informed about the process, but has not told them the results of the recently completed safety investigation board.

“I have confidence that we know enough now to return to fly,” he said.

Navy’s path to at-sea missions

The Navy will take a similarly cautious approach to resuming its flights, putting only its most experienced personnel in the air first for basic flights in daytime-only conditions, Commander of Naval Air Forces Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever told reporters.

Those top personnel will then pair with junior sailors and eventually resume night operations and other, more complex training. The Navy will lastly resume training new pilots and aircrew at the fleet replacement squadrons.

But Cheever warned that returning to flight wasn’t the same as returning to mission: It may be several more months until the Navy sees its CMV-22Bs flying operational missions to haul cargo and people to aircraft carriers at sea.

Cheever said the Navy would avoid long, over-ocean flights until all personnel had built up sufficient proficiency. But when asked about any restrictions on the aircraft regarding duration of over-water flights, he deferred to NAVAIR. Taylor, from the V-22 program office under NAVAIR, declined to say whether there were or were not any operational limitations for the planes under the new return-to-flight plan.

Cheever highlighted the Navy’s flexibility and said all carriers at sea had fared well during the V-22 grounding. The Navy relied on its C-2A Greyhound, which is set to sundown in 2026 as it’s replaced by the CMV-22B, to resupply carriers at sea, including the Theodore Roosevelt deployed in the Indo-Pacific today.

He said the Navy also relied more heavily on its replenishment ship fleet and looked to load more goods onto carriers when they were in port.

But he noted the importance of getting the CMV-22 back to its mission, saying it can conduct medical evacuations and haul large F-35C engine components — unlike its aging predecessor.

President Calvin Coolidge presented Torpedoman’s Mate 2nd Class Henry Breault the military’s highest military decoration on March 8, 1924.

Actions in the Panama Canal the year before led Breault to become the silent service’s first Medal of Honor recipient.

On the Atlantic side of the canal, Breault was serving aboard the USS O-5 on Oct. 28, 1923, when a commercial vessel struck the sub, sinking it in less than a minute, according to his Medal of Honor citation.

Breault was in the torpedo room at the time of the collision but managed to make it to the hatch and escape.

But according to Navy General Orders 125 from Feb. 20, 1924, he soon realized a fellow submariner was left behind.

“Upon reaching the hatch, he saw that the boat was rapidly sinking,” the orders read. “Instead of jumping overboard to save his own life, he returned to the torpedo room to the rescue of a shipmate whom he knew was trapped in the boat.”

That shipmate was Chief Electrician’s Mate Lawrence Brown. The ship’s compartments were flooding fast, but Breault secured the watertight door to the torpedo room, giving the pair precious air and time. Breault locked himself and Brown inside. Safe there, they planned to wait for salvage divers.

Brown’s account made it into an article called “The O-5 is Down!″ by Capt. Julius Grigore, Jr., published in a 1972 edition of the U.S. Naval Institute magazine “Proceedings.”

“Breault and I separated to pound on each of the boat’s sides. In this way, the rescuers would know there were two of us,” Brown recalled. “Breault played a kind of tune with his hammer, indicating to the diver that we were in good shape and cheerful. Neither of us knew Morse Code. We had no food or water, and only a flashlight. We were confident we could stay alive for forty-eight hours.”

It took 31 hours, but the pair was rescued.

“Breault’s shipmate almost certainly would have died had Breault not intervened at the risk to this own life,” note National Medal of Honor Museum records.

This action prompted the vessel’s commanding officer, Lt. Harrison Avery, to submit Breault for a Navy Cross.

Researcher Ryan Walker speculates in a 2022 article that the reason Avery did not recommend the Medal of Honor is because Avery’s lower rank didn’t permit him to do so.

Control Force Commander Rear Adm. Montgomery Taylor ultimately made the adjustment and upgraded the recommendation to a Medal of Honor.

“The unusual heroic conduct of Breault and his devotion to duty, particularly in that he almost surely saved Brown’s life at the risk of his own and in that his devotion to duty saved a [considerable] loss of Government property, deserves recognition,” Taylor wrote.

Breault reenlisted several times and was promoted to the rank of Torpedoman’s Mate 1st Class, according to his service record. His last duty station was at the submarine base in New London, Conn.

He ultimately served in the Navy for 20 years before developing a heart condition, which claimed his life on Dec. 5, 1941. He was 41 years old.

The Vermont state legislature is honoring his service 100 years later with a resolution to be presented on March 15.

Though born in Connecticut, he is accredited to Vermont, according to his citation.

Breault specified that he was from Vermont when he received the award, Bill Mattoon of the Green Mountain Base Submarine Veterans group wrote in an email to Military Times.

“For us Submariners in Vermont, this is a special moment in our history,” Mattoon said.

“No U.S. boots will be on the ground,” Biden said. “A temporary pier will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day. And Israel must also do its part. Israel must allow more aid into Gaza and ensure that humanitarian workers aren’t caught in the cross fire.

“To the leadership of Israel I say this: Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.”

Senior administration officials told reporters earlier Thursday the mission would route humanitarian aid through Cyprus to the temporary port in Gaza. The White House is also pushing Israel and Egypt to allow more aid through the land crossings at Rafah and Kerem Shalom.

The announcement, which drew bipartisan applause from lawmakers gathered, came amid calls from Biden for Congress to pass his long-stalled foreign aid bill to arm Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.

The Senate passed the $95 billion foreign aid plan by a 70-29 vote in February. It includes $14 billion in Israel military aid, $48 billion in security assistance for Ukraine and $4 billion to arm Taiwan.

Israel receives an annual $3.8 billion in U.S. military aid, but the White House has said the Defense Department lacks the replenishment funds needed to continue arming Ukraine from U.S. stockpiles.

There’s also $2.4 billion in the bill for U.S. Central Command to respond to the uptick in attacks on American forces since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023; as well as $542 million for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in response to its fiscal 2024 unfunded priorities list.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has so far refused to put the bill on the floor amid growing resistance to additional Ukraine aid from Republican lawmakers as well as opposition from former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary race.

“Now assistance to Ukraine is being blocked by those who want to walk away from our world leadership,” said Biden, invoking former Republican President Ronald Reagan. “Now my predecessor tells Putin ‘do whatever the hell you want.”

The reference to Trump’s remarks at a campaign rally last month in which the former president voiced frustration with some NATO allies underspending on defense drew “boos” from Republicans in the crowd.

“Send me the bipartisan National Security Bill. History is watching,” Biden said, staring down Republican members of Congress who have opposed the measure. “If the United States walks away now, it will put Ukraine at risk, Europe at risk, the free world at risk, emboldening others who wish to do us harm.”

Biden also promised a strong response to other national security threats, including strikes to degrade Houthi capabilities in the Red Sea. “As commander in chief, I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and military personnel.”

Despite limited details about the plan for a humanitarian port, the idea drew immediate praise from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., and fellow panel member Angus King, I-Maine, who last week urged the administration to deploy a Navy hospital ship to the region.

“The civilian suffering in Gaza must be alleviated, and a maritime aid route will enable large quantities of food, shelter, and medical supplies to be delivered to those who need it most,” the pair said in a statement. “This temporary port, along with the ongoing airdrop campaign, will help ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Only 17 women have attempted Marine Raider training in that same timeline. None of those applicants went on to secure a position on a SEAL or Raider team.

That’s according to new data compiled by the military services at the request of the Pentagon-appointed Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

The information provides a rare snapshot into military efforts to breach what is effectively the last frontier of gender integration: the elite and physically demanding units that operate in secrecy and conduct the most complex and high-stakes missions.

Why getting more female troops into Special Operations will take time

Data shows some services have had more success than others in attracting female candidates for special operations.

In the Air Force, 54 women have entered training to join the special tactics, combat rescue and pararescue, tactical air control party and special reconnaissance career fields since 2016, with a handful successfully completing training and joining units.

Today, the Air Force has one female special tactics officer and one officer and two female enlisted tactical air control party airmen. The data also reveals for the first time that the Air Force quietly welcomed its first female enlisted special reconnaissance airman in 2022.

The Army has seen 41 women volunteer for Special Forces assessment and selection ― the first phase of the service’s Special Forces Qualification Course, also known as the “Q” Course.

Three female soldiers have graduated from the Q Course, earning the coveted Green Beret, and received assignments in Special Forces groups, according to service data. One female soldier, at the time of the data compilation, was currently attempting the course.

And in the Navy, a few women have entered special operations via the combatant craft crewman boat teams. Data shows nine women have entered the pipeline for small boats, and two have graduated and are currently serving on teams.

For U.S Special Operations Command, which oversees the services but does not conduct recruiting efforts, bringing more women to the table is not a neutral proposition, according to Gen. Bryan Fenton, Special Operations Command commander.

“Strong teams are diverse,” Fenton told Military Times in a statement. “Diversity of thought, education, experiences, culture, gender, race, and creed … all provide value to special operations.”

Fenton added that the number of uniformed women serving in special operations ― including those in operator and support roles ― has increased significantly in recent years. The overall proportion of women in special operations forces has ramped up from 7.9% in 2016 to 12% in 2023, officials said.

“To ensure that U.S. Special Operations Command draws upon the widest pool of talent,” Fenton said, “the SOF Enterprise has continued to progress in supporting women’s ability to join, serve, and advance within the SOF community, including among our most elite units.”

These efforts vary in approach and specificity from service to service.

Information provided by Special Operations Command specifically cited the Army’s Women in Army Special Operations Forces study, the results of which were first reported by Army Times and pointed to a need for greater cultural acceptance of women as well as practical considerations including better-fitting equipment and accessible child care.

Officials also pointed to a 2023 Naval Special Warfare initiative that expanded the number of female instructor billets from four to 11 at Naval Special Warfare Basic Training Command and Naval Special Warfare Assessment Command in Coronado, California, “to normalize the presence of women in the training pipeline.”

As the service with the fewest female operator candidates, the Navy has also made “a concerted effort” in recent social media postings and website material to get the word out about opportunities to potentially qualified candidates, officials said.

Naval Special Warfare spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Chelsea Irish further expanded on these efforts.

Since 2016, the command has “significantly enhanced” recruitment, she said. That has included standing up a Naval Special Warfare Assessment Command focused on national outreach in 2022.

In 2023, she said, that new command organized 40 events across the country and brought diverse groups, including female athletes, on visits to Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, California. A Naval Special Warfare Assessment Command digital campaign featured NASCAR driver Hailie Deegan, she said.

It’s not yet clear how effective these measures are. Between 2022 and 2023, three women attempted combatant craft crewman training and one entered SEAL training, data shows.

“As (Naval Special Warfare) continues to develop a dynamic and capable force ready to take on the demands of strategic competition, we do so together with inclusive teams that benefit from unique experiences and perspectives,” Irish said.

The Marine Corps, which unlike the other services draws all its Raider critical skills operators and officers from the population of currently serving Marines, has held steady on its recruiting approach, according to Maj. Timothy Irish, a Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, or MARSOC, spokesman.

Irish said the command’s recruiting team engages with 100% of eligible enlisted women before holding screening events, and sends “awareness” cards to all boot camp and Officer Candidate School attendees.

“We believe our efforts to make 100% contact with the eligible officer and enlisted population of female Marines is the answer,” Irish said. “MARSOC has made a concerted effort to address existing recruiting ads, videos, and other materials to include images of women.”

While 17 women have attempted Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command assessment and selection, none have progressed to the command’s Individual Training Course, which formally begins the Raider training pipeline. Interest in opportunities at the command may be increasing: Between 2022 and 2023, seven women attempted assessment and selection, more than in the previous three years.

The Air Force, which saw a peak of 14 women entering the special operations training pipeline in 2021 and had 10 pipeline entries over the past two years, credits its relative success in recruiting female candidates in part to grassroots efforts including the airman-led Air Force Special Operations Command Women’s Initiative Team, which identifies barriers to service and presents solutions.

Among efforts spearheaded by this team include policies allowing Bluetooth-enabled breast pumps in secure spaces and on aircraft, and advanced bladder relief devices on Air Force Special Operations Command planes to allow female airmen to urinate in comfort, said spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rebecca Heyse.

Heyse acknowledged the women already serving on elite teams, including two officers and three enlisted airmen.

One of those officers was the subject of a 2022 controversy after a leaked letter alleged she had quit training and been offered the chance to return, counter to service policy. An Air Force inspector general probe found the candidate did not receive preferential treatment, and the incident resulted in clarifications to training policy.

“For (operations security) purposes, we do not discuss young operators, male or female, in detail to make sure we preserve all future developmental and assignment possibilities,” Heyse said. “These women will develop as operators at the units and when the time comes ― probably in a couple of years ― we’ll be able to talk about them more.”

Of all the services, the Army perhaps has been the most aggressive in working to attract women to special operations.

While just 41 women have attempted Special Forces assessment and selection, another 916 have attempted assessment and selection for civil affairs and psychological operations, which also fall under Army Special Operations.

U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesman Col. Mike Burns pointed to the command’s Women in Army Special Operations Forces Initiative, which identifies opportunities to create equitable policies.

During a partnered event with the XVIII Airborne Corps, Burns said, the group collected size measurements from female soldiers to assist with the creation of better-fitting future uniforms.

The event, he said, resulted in 50 new leads for women interested in learning more about Army Special Operations Forces opportunities. United States Army Special Operations Command Command Sergeant Major, JoAnn Nauman, also plans to engage with women during an upcoming command visit to West Point during a physical training session, an address to the women’s lacrosse team and a leadership panel, Burns said.

In 2022 and 2023, 10 female soldiers attempted Army Special Forces assessment and selection. The highest enrollment year was fiscal year 2019, with 19 candidates.

“The unique talents and attributes allow the command to defend the nation without fear, without fail, without equal,” Burns said. “Together we will continue to provide the nation’s premier special operations element by attracting and retaining America’s top soldiers.”

Leathernecks from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force are in Norway for the U.S. European Command’s Nordic Response 2024.

At the same time, Marine Corps Reserve units alongside Marine with the Chemical Biological Incident Response Force are participating in a large-scale field exercise dubbed Arctic Edge that spans various locations in Alaska, according to a Marine news release.

In January II Marine Expeditionary Force Marines in Norway began prepping for the exercise, which kicked off March 4 and will run to March 15, according to a Norwegian Armed Forces release.

A Marine fight in the Arctic may look like this

The exercise coordinates U.S. and Norwegian forces with the United Kingdom-led Joint Warrior, a naval exercise that takes place between Scotland, Norway and Iceland the week before Nordic Response.

The joint, multinational exercise is part of the larger NATO Steadfast Defender exercise that takes place throughout Germany, Poland and the Baltic region.

All of which are aimed at countering Russian military aggression in Eastern and Northern Europe.

The Pentagon recently announced it would release a new Arctic Strategy in 2024, following the previous strategies released by both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden that sought to increase training and troop presence in the region to counter ongoing efforts by both the Russia and China to increase their military footprint in the area.

The II Marine Expeditionary Force Marines are assigned to the Marine Rotational Force–Europe.

“Norway is special to us. Our countries have been working together for more than a century,” said II MEF commander Lt. Gen. David Ottignon in the Marine release. “II MEF has trained side-by-side, strengthening bonds and operating as one cohesive team in Norway during the last decade of Cold Response exercises.”

The Alaska-based Arctic Edge exercise, which runs from Feb. 23 to March 11, is run by U.S. Northern Command and includes U.S. Army Green Berets and troops from the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) alongside Denmark’s Jaeger Corps.

“Arctic Edge 2024 provides Marines with a unique opportunity to exercise interoperable power projection from the homeland and fortify simultaneous global efforts to deter adversarial advance along the Arctic approaches,” said Lt. Gen. Brian Cavanaugh, commander of Marine Forces Northern Command in the Marine release.

Marine reservists with Fox Battery, 2nd Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division conducted a rapid insertion of the high mobility artillery rocket systems using a U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo plane, according to a NORTHCOM release.

The rocket system and plane combination gave Marines a speedy way to deepen the range of their weapons systems, said Gunnery Sgt. Jon Ohlman, a Fox Battery HIMARS operator.

“Our capability for long-range precision fires, coupled with our mobility using C-130 and C-17 transport, enables us to be swiftly positioned in areas of the battlespace that would otherwise be out of reach for conventional weapon systems,” Ohlman said.

The United States is considering deploying an elite Marine security team to Haiti because of a deteriorating security situation there, according to a defense official.

The Marines would be deployed at the request of the State Department, according to the defense official. Marine Corps Times asked the State Department for further details Thursday and didn’t receive a response.

“Deploying a FAST platoon is one option at the DoD’s disposal should the DoS request assistance with security at the U.S. Embassy in Port Au Prince,” Maj. Mason Englehart, a spokesman for Marine Corps Forces South, wrote in an email to Marine Corps Times on Friday.

Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry is struggling to stay in power as he tries to return home, where gang attacks have shuttered his country’s main international airport and freed more than 4,000 inmates in recent days.

Henry remained in Puerto Rico as of midday Wednesday. He landed in the U.S. territory on Tuesday after he was barred from landing in the neighboring Dominican Republic, where officials closed the airspace to flights to and from Haiti.

In 2023, more than 8,400 people in Haiti were reported killed, injured or kidnapped, more than double the number reported in 2022. The U.N. estimates that nearly half of Haiti’s 11 million people need humanitarian assistance, but the 2024 humanitarian appeal for $674 million has received just $17 million — about 2.5% of what’s needed.

On Wednesday, the U.S. embassy in Haiti urged Americans in the country to depart as soon as possible and said it would be on limited operations Thursday.

“Embassy operations may be further affected during the week because of gang-related violence and its effects on transportation and infrastructure,” the embassy said in the security alert.

The Corps’ fleet antiterrorism security teams, often known as FAST, are deployed around the world for limited periods of time to reinforce or recapture U.S. assets.

FAST Marines receive specialized training on noncombatant evacuation operations, close-quarters battle, military operations in urban terrain, convoy operations, shipboard operations and specialized security operations, according to a page on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.

The teams are part of the Yorktown, Virginia-based Marine Corps Security Force Regiment.

In 2019, fleet antiterrorism security team Marines embarked a U.S. merchant vessel to provide security as it transited the Strait of Hormuz, located between Oman and Iran.

In 2010, after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, they were sent to assist the Marine security guards who already had been guarding the U.S. embassy in the capital Port-au-Prince.

At a press conference Wednesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, denied that the United States was considering sending U.S. forces to Haiti.

Jean-Pierre said noted that Kenya had agreed to send police officers on a security mission to Haiti.

“So, that was recently signed, and that’s going to move forward,” she said. “But there is no plan to bring U.S. forces into Haiti.”

In 2021, President Joe Biden sent Marines from the Marine Security Guard Security Augmentation Unit to the Port-Au-Prince embassy “out of an abundance of caution” following the assassination of the Haitian president but insisted sending U.S. forces to stabilize the country was “not on the agenda.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

“Several” of the 173 attacks by Iran-backed militias would have injured or killed troops, if not for fortunate snags, CENTCOM’s commander, Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Kurilla’s comments Thursday reinforced the harrowing nature of some of these attacks to a degree not previously disclosed.

“Incidents where [an air drone] is coming into a base, hit another object, got caught up in a netting, or other incidents where, had they hit the appropriate target that they were targeting, it would have injured or killed service members,” he said.

Between Oct. 17 and Feb. 5, the majority of the attacks did not result in any injuries, as the militias only successfully struck U.S. troops a handful of times.

Still, three U.S. troops were killed on Jan. 28 in a drone attack on a U.S. base in Jordan known as Tower 22 and nearly 200 more have been injured.

Pentagon press officials have said repeatedly over recent months that most of the militia mortars, missiles and drones missed their intended targets, but they have not mentioned any close calls.

“So I think it’s important that while we did see a spate of attacks against our forces, they were largely not successful with minor damage to infrastructure,” Sabrina Singh told reporters in December.

January’s fatal attack on Tower 22 ramped up the Pentagon’s response.

“The impact of those [attacks] on our bases have not been significant until what happened at Tower 22,” Singh said last month.

After Jordan attack, Pentagon weighs options to bolster base security

Asked whether any military measures could have prevented those attacks, Kurilla pointed to eight U.S. strikes in Syria and Iraq designed to target militia leadership and destroy stored weapons.

What would really help, he added, would be for Congress to pass a $118 billion national security appropriation introduced last year, specifically to field more equipment to detect and shoot down air drones.

“I have $531 million in counter-[drone] technology that I need to get forward into the theater, that will save lives,” he said.

Program Executive Office-Land Systems announced Wednesday that General Dynamics Land Systems and Textron Systems Corporation would design, develop and manufacture an advanced reconnaissance vehicle 30-mm autocannon prototype vehicle.

The contract award is $11.8 million for Textron and $10.9 million for General Dynamics. Each company will produce one prototype to be delivered by fiscal 2025, land systems spokesman David Jordan told Marine Corps Times.

If prototyping is successful for the family of vehicles, which includes other variants, production could cost between $1.8 billion and $6.8 billion throughout five years, according to a 2022 Congressional Research Service report.

Both Textron and General Dynamics announced in January that each company had completed testing of a command and control advanced reconnaissance vehicle variant prototype, according to company websites.

Marine Corps pushes 'dramatic change' for its reconnaissance forces

This 30-mm cannon variant will use the same turret and weapon system that is on the amphibious combat vehicle-30, said Steve Myers, Marine Corps program manager for light armored vehicles.

“Ensuring commonality is crucial, especially for the Marine Corps’ capacity to maintain weapon systems with limited fleets,” Myers said in a land systems release. “The prototyping of the ARV-30 allows the government to test and confirm the requirements before entering the engineering and manufacturing development phase.”

The Marine Corps established the Light Armored Vehicle Way-Ahead plan to replace the light armored vehicle, which has been in service since the early 1980s. The light armored vehicle is a trooper carrier vehicle with radio systems and a 25 mm Bushmaster cannon that has been used extensively in Marine deployments since its fielding.

But light armored vehicle’s life cycle is expected to end in the mid-2030s, Myers said at the time.

In 2019 the service announced the advanced reconnaissance vehicle concept as the official replacement for the light armored vehicle.

But the Corps wanted more than just a newer up-armored gun truck. In the following year, Marine Corps Systems Command staff and Office of Naval Research personnel developed the advanced reconnaissance vehicle concept that would use the vehicle to conduct command and control, sensing, cyber and drone missions.

The Marines later laid out concepts for a command, control, communications and computers/unmanned aerial systems version. Textron and General Dynamics delivered those prototypes in late 2022. Marines tested and evaluated those in from January 2023 to November 2023.

What the Marines want in the advanced reconnaissance vehicle:

• An automatic medium-caliber cannon.
• Anti-armor capability to defeat close-in heavy armor threats.
• Precision-guided munitions to defeat threats beyond the engagement range of threat systems.
• Unmanned systems swarm capability to provide persistent, multifunction munitions.
• Advanced, networked, multifunctional electronic warfare capabilities.
• A modern command-and-control suite and a full range of sensors.
• Organic unmanned aerial and ground systems that can be deployed from the advanced reconnaissance vehicle.
• Active and passive vehicle protection.
• Robust cross-country/on-road mobility performance with shore-to-shore water mobility.

Source: Congressional Research Service

Early planning for the advanced reconnaissance vehicle began in 2016, prior to the Force Design 2030 launch under former Commandant Gen. David Berger in 2019.

Before force design changes, the advanced reconnaissance vehicle was slated to serve much as the light armored vehicle had in light armored reconnaissance battalions.

But the Corps continues to restructure its force, aiming for leaner, smaller formations that can operate distributed, conduct reconnaissance, and counter reconnaissance for the joint force. Platforms such as the ARV must be able to help with deep sensing and pass data for targeting and protect themselves from electromagnetic attack and detection.

In 2023, Berger spelled out in his final update to the force design how reconnaissance would change.

The service needed “littoral, multi-domain reconnaissance capabilities that our light armored reconnaissance battalions do not currently provide.” The document notes that the Corps will shift instead to “mobile reconnaissance battalions” that will include maritime, light mobile and light armored companies.”

The special-operations-capable 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, embarked across three Navy ships, left the Mediterranean Sea on Tuesday and is sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, the Navy said in a news release Wednesday.

The Marines and sailors will return to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia, the release said.

“Our presence in the Eastern Mediterranean was exactly what our nation needed: an integrated Navy and Marine Corps force ready to respond when called upon,” said Navy Capt. Martin Robertson, the Amphibious Squadron 8 commodore, in the news release.

The ships — the amphibious assault ship Bataan, the dock landing ship Carter Hall and the amphibious transport dock ship Mesa Verde — deployed from Virginia on July 10, 2023.

Initially, the ships spread out, with the Bataan and Carter Hall traveling in the Central Command region and the Mesa Verde making stops across Europe.

But in the days after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Marines departed early from a training exercise in Kuwait and returned to the Bataan and Carter Hall “to prepare for further tasking as a result of emerging events,” unit spokeswoman Marine Capt. Angelica White told Marine Corps Times.

Marine unit leaves Kuwait exercise early because of ‘emerging events’

By Oct. 18, 2023, the Bataan was in the Gulf of Aden, captions of photos posted by the Corps indicate. Thirteen days later, the service described the ship as being in an “undisclosed location” in the Middle East region.

“The 26th MEU right now does not have orders,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Oct. 26, 2023. “They are there so that the secretary and the president can make a decision if they are needed. They are in the region. But I’m not going to get into specific operational details at this time.”

The Mesa Verde, which had been receiving mid-deployment maintenance in Rota, Spain, headed out into the Mediterranean Sea in October 2023.

In February, a defense official confirmed to Military.com that the deployment of the Marine unit and the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group, as the naval component is called, had been extended. The extension came amid maintenance issues that have delayed the deployments of other amphibious ships.

By then, the three ships were in the Mediterranean Sea, and the group was transferred to NATO command to train with NATO forces and the Turkish navy.

On March 1, while the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit was in Souda Bay on the coast of the Greek island Crete, the top enlisted Marine, Sgt. Maj. Carlos Ruiz, met with its Marines and sailors aboard the ships.

The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit is the first Marine expeditionary unit to get the special-operations-capable designation in more than a decade, according to a July 2023 news release from the unit. The unit is made up of approximately 2,400 Marines and sailors from the North Carolina-based II Marine Expeditionary Force.

The Marines in the unit aren’t themselves special operators.

Rather, they received enhanced predeployment training in areas including the recovery of aircraft and people, raids, stealthy insertion and extraction of special patrols, maritime interdiction, and noncombatant evacuations. The unit’s Maritime Special Purpose Force has practiced integrating with special operators, including Navy SEALs, White previously told Marine Corps Times.

The Navy’s Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group remains in the Middle East, where U.S. carriers jets and warships have shot down dozens of missiles and drones launched by the Houthi rebel group.

David Duren, 48, was charged with wire fraud and federal program fraud charges, according to a Justice Department release. He is scheduled to appear in federal court later this week.

According to charging documents released by federal officials, Duren, also known as Dawud Hakiem Duren, allegedly filed fake invoices and reported fraudulent suicide prevention services through the E3 Foundation, a firm purportedly led by Dr. Michael Rapp that focused on treatment and training for at-risk vets.

Investigators said Duren fabricated Rapp and posed as a trained physician on phone calls and emails to VA officials. The scheme worked, and E3 was granted at least $50,000 through the Staff Sergeant Fox Suicide Prevention Grant.

“Duren and E3 Foundation also did not provide the services and products that he billed for,” Justice officials said. “Instead, Duren misused program funds on personal purchases, including landscaping, a Royal Caribbean cruise, and payments to models on OnlyFans.”

Duren faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000 for the crimes. An attorney for Duren could not be reached for comment.

Congress has authorized $174 million for the Staff Sergeant Fox Suicide Prevention Grant program to expand veteran suicide prevention efforts to more local organizations. Grants of up to $750,000 can be given to community groups that provide new avenues for outreach and treatment to veterans.

Officials said Duren’s scheme was discovered when he tried to obtain $25,000 more in funding, raising questions about what services his company had provided.

“That’s money that could be getting my kids into baseball or basketball or dozens of other activities that could improve our quality of life,” Powers said. “We’ve got enough money to survive, so I’m lucky that way. But after the military, we shouldn’t just be thinking about surviving. It should be about helping veterans thrive.”

Powers traveled from Ohio to take part in a rally outside the Capitol Tuesday in support of the Major Richard Star Act, legislation that could provide a windfall of disability payouts to nearly 50,000 veterans. More than 100 advocates took part in the event, pushing for renewed action on the long-stalled bill.

Advocates say the money is intended to establish a more fair process for how the government handles compensation for individuals injured during their time in the ranks.

Fixing disability and retirement pay is Congress’ next big vets issue

“Our veterans cannot afford to continue losing their full earned military retirement pay because Congress insists on saving money at their expense,” said Tim Peters, an Air Force veteran and state adjutant for the Montana Veterans of Foreign Wars. “It’s objectively wrong.”

The legislation has been a top priority of veterans advocates for several years and passed out of the House Armed Services Committee last summer. But it has been stalled in the House and Senate since then, in part because of cost concerns, and in part because of general congressional inaction in recent months.

Named for an Army veteran who died from cancer complications in 2021, the measure deals with how veterans’ disability benefits are classified under federal statute.

Since 2004, veterans forced to retire early from the military because of injuries receive both their full military retirement pay and full disability benefits if they have a disability rating of at least 50%. The combined total of the two benefits can amount to several thousand dollars each month.

But veterans in the same situation who have a disability rating of less than 50% are subject to dollar-for-dollar offsets under federal rules. That means that officials subtract several hundred or several thousand dollars each month from individuals receiving the disability support, leaving a gap in their income.

Navy veteran Bob Carey, executive director of the National Defense Committee, said the practice costs him $723 a month.

“I’ve had my disability rating since 2005. So that’s $158,000 I’ve lost over the years because the federal government says, ‘You don’t need all that money,’” he said. “And we’re the only federal employees who have our retirement reduced that way.”

Members of The Military Coalition echoed that sentiment, pledging the efforts of their 35 organizations in getting the measure passed this year.

Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, joined Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., at the rally in supporting the bill, but also acknowledged that more pressure will need to be put on their colleagues to force the measure to move forward.

“This is long past time,” Tester told the cheering crowd. “We’ve got 70 co-sponsors in the Senate … We need to make sure leadership puts this on the floor.”

Lawmakers said the most likely route for congressional passage is inclusion in the annual defense authorization bill, currently being crafted by the House and Senate Armed Services Committee. Advocates have about two months to convince members to do that.

If not, the measure could pass as a stand-alone bill, but congressional infighting has scuttled all but a few non-essential measures in recent months.

Gen. Eric Smith, the Marine commandant, hadn’t been performing the Corps’ top job since he was hospitalized from a cardiac arrest on Oct. 29, 2023. But he repeatedly had signaled he intended to get back to work once he had recovered.

Three weeks after his hospitalization, Smith appeared in a brief video to reassure Marines, “I’ll bounce back from this.”

In January, he underwent a successful open-heart surgery to repair the congenital heart abnormality that the Corps said caused the cardiac arrest, and he reiterated he planned to return to full duty status once he could.

Marine general taking steps to return to full duty as commandant

In recent weeks, Smith has made visits to the Pentagon and listened in on meetings in preparation for his return to the job, the Associated Press reported.

“General Smith and his family appreciate the full support of Congress, the leadership at the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, the Joint Force, and all who extended them their well wishes during his recovery,” the Marine Corps said in a news release Tuesday announcing Smith’s return to full duty status.

This will be the first time since July 2023 that the Marine Corps’ top two positions have been filled by leaders on full duty status.

When Gen. David Berger retired as commandant that month, the Senate hadn’t confirmed Smith as his successor thanks to a hold on nominations by Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who refused to confirm senior military nominees through the usual unanimous consent process, in protest of a Pentagon policy facilitating troops’ travel for abortions.

Smith, then the assistant commandant, took over the role of commandant in an acting capacity. The Senate confirmed him as commandant by individual vote in September 2023.

Without a Senate-confirmed assistant commandant, Smith still was doing the equivalent of two jobs at once, he told reporters two days before his cardiac arrest.

Smith’s hospitalization briefly left Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the most senior general in Marine Corps headquarters, in charge of the service. Days later, the Senate rushed to confirm Gen. Christopher Mahoney as the assistant commandant, who would perform the duties of commandant.

Tuberville, who insisted the blame for the military’s leadership gaps lay with Senate Democrats and Pentagon leaders, relented on his hold on hundreds of military nominations in December 2023.

Since his confirmation, Mahoney had been in a situation similar to the one Smith previously faced: performing the top two jobs in the Marine Corps at once.

The deactivation of the Camp Pendleton, California-based 5th Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, comes as the Marine Corps is shifting its artillery away from traditional capabilities, as directed by the Corps’ 2020 modernization plan Force Design 2030.

The battalion was the first in the Corps to be dedicated to firing the high mobility artillery rocket system, or HIMARS.

Now, the Marine Corps is prioritizing a ground-launched anti-ship missile capability, the Navy/Marine Corps expeditionary ship interdiction system, or NMESIS, which means the active component is divesting of some HIMARS, according to Marine spokesman Maj. Eric Flanagan.

The Corps’ active component will have two battalions with both HIMARS and howitzers, and the Reserve component will have a HIMARS-only battalion.

The deactivation of 5th Battalion, 11th Marines, “is a part of 1st Marine Division’s realignment to match and progress force design initiatives,” battalion commander Lt. Col. Courtney Boston said in a statement to Marine Corps Times on Friday.

How a Marine Corps shift to long ranges may change its strong cannoneer tradition

HIMARS platforms previously assigned to the unit will be moved to other formations under the artillery-focused 11th Marine Regiment, according to Boston.

The unit’s deactivation ceremony will occur March 29 aboard Camp Pendleton, California, and will be livestreamed, according to a webpage linked by the unit’s Facebook account.

The unit has been through a host of deactivations and reactivations in the more than eight decades since its inception.

The battalion was first activated in 1942 at New River, North Carolina, according to the unit’s website. After being redesignated as 4th Battalion, 11th Marines, the unit participated in the World War II campaigns for Guadalcanal, Eastern New Guinea, New Britain, Peleliu and Okinawa, Japan.

The battalion relocated to California in January 1947 and was deactivated the following month, only to be reactivated that July — and then deactivated again less than three months later.

The unit was reactivated in 1950 amid the Korean War, deactivated again in 1974 and reactivated in 1979. It went on to deploy in the Gulf War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the unit’s website.

In 2008, the battalion officially became the Corps’ first unit dedicated to the HIMARS.

The Corps’ artillery overhaul has also led to the deactivation of traditional cannon artillery units, including the Hawaii-based 1st Battalion, 12th Marines, in May 2023.

The airdrop included 36,800 meals bundled by U.S. soldiers and flown via three C-130 Hercules planes, according to Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman.

The mission was “part of a sustained effort to get more aid into Gaza including by expanding the flow of aid through land corridors and routes,” he added.

U.S. drops aid into Gaza, two days after deadly encounter between civilians and Israeli troops pic.twitter.com/ZLjbbtiRKb

— Military Times (@MilitaryTimes) March 4, 2024

The U.S. and Jordan made their first drop, of more than 38,000 meals, on Saturday, after President Joe Biden authorized the aid on Friday.

“In the coming days we’re going to join with our friends in Jordan and others who are providing airdrops of additional food and supplies” and will “seek to open up other avenues in, including possibly a marine corridor,” Biden said.

The U.S. is part of a larger regional effort looking into the possibility of maritime aid shipments, Ryder confirmed, including options for commercial or contracted vessels to deliver aid.

The move followed an incident Thursday in Gaza where Israeli troops fired on Palestinians rushing to an aid convoy, killing 115 and injuring more than 750, according to an estimate from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The fight in Gaza will be hell, military experts in urban combat say

An early incident investigation by the Israel Defense Forces found that most of the casualties were trampled in the rush to the convoy, but the head of Gaza City hospital said most of the casualties treated there had gunshot wounds, the Associated Press reported.

The number of aid trucks entering Gaza has been throttled in recent days, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh confirmed Monday, down to 30 to 120 trucks a day from as many as 200.

“But again, that’s clearly not enough to get everyone — to feed the population there,” she said.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin urged Israeli War Cabinet Member Benny Gantz during a meeting at the Pentagon on Tuesday to allow more aid into Gaza, according to a readout of the meeting. Ryder declined to say whether Gantz made any assurances that he would support that effort.

Lawmakers have urged the Navy to deploy the hospital ships Comfort or Mercy to help care for Gazans injured or otherwise needing medical care because of Israel’s military campaign, but the Pentagon has repeatedly said they have nothing to announce on that front.

“We’re going to work closely with the interagency to look at what the requirements are how best to meet those requirements,” Ryder said. “And as I mentioned, that include both commercial or contracted options, but recognizing that the [Defense Department] has unique capabilities, that’s what we will bring to the discussion. But again, I don’t want to get ahead of that planning process.”

Sending U.S. assets to the coast of Gaza comes with its own list of complications, including finding a port deep enough to accommodate ships, as well as a security plan to protect it from attacks.

Readers are dubious about information posted to social media and confident in their ability to spot disinformation — but they don’t have faith in their neighbors or in politicians to do the same, the results said. In a test designed to see whether readers could differentiate between real and false information online, about 90% succeeded.

While most respondents called out false claims about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol being a “PsyOp,” or psychological operation carried out by the government, there were still hundreds who answered that the claim was credible, said Scott Parrott, a professor in the journalism department at the University of Alabama who helped put together the questionnaire.

“What the results are telling me is that they’re skeptical,” Parrott said. “They’re skeptical of news media, they’re skeptical of politicians and they’re skeptical of social media.”

However, a “disturbing” number of people still indicated support for the most extreme principles of QAnon and the “Great Replacement” theory — conspiracies that have prompted violence in recent years, researchers said.

Military Times and the University of Alabama conducted the survey with Military Veterans in Journalism to discern how readers perceived disinformation and extremist beliefs ahead of the November presidential election. More than 2,400 members of the military community participated, including veterans, service members, contractors and family members. Their political ideologies were split: one-fourth identified as Republicans, 14% as Democrats and 52% as Independents.

Most readers could spot disinformation

The World Economic Forum declared disinformation as the most severe risk over the next two years, writing in its annual report in January that the spread of false information could undermine the legitimacy of newly elected governments across the globe and result in violent protests, hate crimes and terrorism.

Researchers are already seeing instances of Russian interference in the U.S. this year, including a coordinated effort around the Texas-Mexico border crisis to amplify calls for a civil war, according to Kyle Walter, head of research at Logically, a British tech company that uses artificial intelligence to monitor disinformation around the world. Walter said Russia is likely to increase its spread of falsehoods in the run-up to the November election, likely focusing on immigration and the U.S. economy.

“The perception at times is that Russia is seeking to help one candidate win an election over another candidate,” Walter said. “What they’re really trying to do is create chaos and make people question the process and validity of the democratic process and the integrity of the election.”

Election deniers are specifically recruiting veterans and service members this year to exploit their social capital and bring legitimacy to the cause, argued Human Rights First, a nonprofit human rights organization. In a report, the nonprofit urged veterans to be wary of calls to “restore election integrity” or “catch the cheaters in real time” and instead leverage their credibility to counter conspiracies about the democratic process.

In the survey, 57% of Military Times readers said they had personally been targeted with disinformation, and another 23% were unsure. They believe disinformation is spread mostly by malicious groups seeking power, followed by the news media, politicians and independent actors.

“It’s a bad sign that so many people have been targeted, and a good sign that so many people recognize at least part of the time when they’ve been targeted,” said Rachel Goldwasser, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

When asked about who’s responsible for stopping disinformation, 87% of respondents said U.S. adults as individuals bear that burden. Of the respondents, 73% said members of the mainstream media also share responsibility, and about half think government and community leaders, academics and social media companies should help stop the spread of disinformation. Only 17% said foreign government agencies are responsible for stopping it.

Overwhelmingly, Military Times readers said they could identify disinformation — about 92% were confident they could spot it. They generally believe their friends and family members can identify disinformation, too. About 64% think their friends could identify it, and 61% think their families can.

Just over half of respondents said veterans as a population can identify disinformation, but they were less confident in politicians and people in the towns where they live. About 42% think politicians can discern real and false information, and 30% think their neighbors can tell the difference.

“It’s common for people to overestimate their ability to identify disinformation,” said Wendy Via, a co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

Parrott described that as the “third-person effect,” referring to a theory coined in the 1980s that states individuals perceive others as being more influenced by mass-media messages than they are.

“It’s almost as if you think better of yourself, like ‘I’m not affected. I can figure it out. I can parse it,’” Parrott said. “But when it comes to family or friends, they say, ‘They can parse it, too, but not as well,’ and then it gets to townsfolk and they say, ‘No, they can’t.’”

The survey put readers to the test. It asked respondents to identify several posts on X, formerly Twitter, as being real or false information. Many of them were correct with their responses, but there was confusion among hundreds about what was real or false.

Via, who has conducted extensive research on disinformation and extremism, said voluntary surveys were a helpful way to understand people’s thinking, but it was important to take into account the demographics of who responded.

“For the folks who are willing to sit down and take a survey online, it’s usually because they have something to say,” Via said.

Of the respondents in this survey, 86% were men, 92% were white, 49% had earned master’s degrees and 68% had completed combat deployments. Participants were spread across the U.S., but the highest number of people, about 30%, were located in the Southeast. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and National Guard were represented in the pool of respondents, with the highest concentration — about 37% — serving in the Army. The average length of their military service was 19 years.

A concerning embrace of the Great Replacement

To determine whether disinformation had influenced readers, survey organizers asked for their beliefs about various extremist groups and prominent conspiracy theories. While most respondents reject key tenets of QAnon and the Great Replacement theory, those who do agree still amounted to a “disturbing” number, said Freddy Cruz, a researcher with the nonprofit Western States Center, a nonprofit that monitors political extremism in the U.S.

The Great Replacement theory is a baseless idea that lenient immigration policies are being designed to replace the power and culture of white people in the U.S. The survey asked respondents how strongly they agree or disagree with the notion that a group of people in the U.S. is trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants and people of color who share their political views.

While 1,770 people completely or mostly disagree with that notion, 438 respondents, or 18%, said they mostly agree, and 223 people, or 9%, completely agree.

“There seems to be some embrace of the Great Replacement narrative, which has been linked to several violent incidents in the U.S.,” Cruz said. “That’s one of the things that stood out to me as one of the more disturbing aspects of the survey.”

The conspiracy theory went from fringe to mainstream in the past couple of years, as conservative media outlets and some elected officials have amplified the message, Cruz said. The theory fueled racist violence and motivated multiple mass shootings, including the 2022 killing of 10 people in Buffalo, New York, and a shooting in El Paso, Texas, that left 23 people dead in 2019.

A poll organized by the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2022 found that one-third of Americans believe the Great Replacement theory. The findings from Military Times and the University of Alabama were on par with a similar poll conducted by the federally funded think tank RAND Corp. in 2023, which found that 29% of veterans believe it.

“The responses for ‘completely agree’ and ‘mostly agree’ with the Great Replacement theory were extremely high,” said Goldwasser, who has studied militia groups for nearly a decade. “This is a theory that was really created and used by white supremacists, so the idea that it’s moved into the mainstream to the point where Army veterans believe it is alarming.”

When asked about their thoughts on Nazis, 83% of survey respondents indicated they think the group is a threat to national security — a figure that surprised Cruz because of the embrace of the Great Replacement theory.

“In the survey, it looks like people overwhelmingly agree that white supremacy is bad, Nazism is bad, but then there’s a smaller group of people who seem to actually embrace Great Replacement, and it’s a weird discrepancy,” Cruz said. “I think it speaks to the GOP doing an excellent job of dissociating the theory from white supremacist beliefs.”

Another cause for concern was the acceptance of QAnon, Goldwasser said. QAnon is an umbrella term for several conspiracy theories that falsely allege a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles run the world. Only 2% of respondents said they completely agree and 7% mostly agree with the theory, but Goldwasser argued those amounts were concerning based on how the question was posed.

Respondents were asked whether they agreed with the idea that the government, media and financial world in the U.S. were “controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation.”

“The fact that people made it all the way to the end of that sentence and agreed with every single one of those statements is disturbing in the grand scheme of things,” Goldwasser said. “It really got to who the true believers were.”

Other surveys over the past few years have tried to ascertain how many U.S. adults overall believe in the QAnon theories. A poll by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2021 found that 15% believe it, and a poll by Yahoo in 2020 pegged acceptance of the theories at 7%.

Where readers get their information

Respondents turned to local news outlets most for accurate information. About 77% of people said they trust their local news either “a lot” or “some.” However, local news is facing a crisis. About one-fourth of local newspapers in the U.S. have shut down in the past 15 years, creating news deserts and driving more people to social media, where disinformation is rampant, according to research from the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life.

Among the Military Times readers surveyed, 59% trust national news outlets, and 29% of respondents trust the news they received through word of mouth. Social media garnered the least support, with only 14% of people trusting the information they received there. Nearly 50% said they didn’t trust information from social media at all.

The lack of trust in social media surprised Parrott, who expected more people to turn to sites like Facebook, X, YouTube and Instagram for their news. A study from Pew Research Center at the end of 2023 found that 19% of U.S. adults overall often get their news from social media, and 31% sometimes do.

“They were skeptical of news, especially on social media, which I think is really interesting,” Parrott said. “I expected more people to be getting their news there.”

Of the survey respondents who do get their news from social media, they most often turned to Facebook, followed by YouTube and X, the survey found. For people who do get their news on those platforms, Parrott suggested several questions they should try to answer to determine whether information is true, including: Does the person posting have a headshot and actual name? How long has the account been active? What other sources can you consult? Is the source objective or biased? Does the post share information that target a social or political group?

“Who’s the source? Where’d they get the information from? Are they real? Has it been confirmed? These are little things you can check,” Parrott said. “If it elicits strong emotions from you or others, if it’s enraging, that’s a sign you might want to check that out.”

Instead of social media, 53% of respondents said they get their information most often from news websites, followed by 37% who turn to television news the most.

Goldwasser warned that it’s unclear what respondents might’ve meant by “news websites.” Fake news sites have flooded the internet over the past several years and have increased in number since the advent of generative AI, which allows users to quickly create content to post online. NewsGuard, which tracks misinformation, found 725 AI-generated fake news sites in operation as of last month.

“This is something I have seen a number of times in a variety of circumstances, where people think it’s a news website, but actually, that might not be accurate,” Goldwasser said. “I think it evokes almost a sigh of relief, like, ‘OK, they get their news from news websites. That’s great.’ But actually, it might not be quite as great as it sounds.”

The survey asked about 14 news outlets specifically, including a few that skewed conservative or liberal, based on the media bias chart from the media watchdog Ad Fontes. Respondents could indicate either that they trusted the outlet, didn’t trust it or didn’t know how to feel about it.

The outlet with the most outright distrust was Fox News, with 57% of people saying they don’t trust it. About 30% said they do trust Fox News.

The Daily Caller garnered the fewest number of people who said they trusted it. Only 5% of respondents trust its news, while 48% don’t trust it and the rest don’t know how to feel about it.

Army Times, which distributed the survey through its morning newsletter, was predictably the most trusted, with 64% of people responding that they trust news found on the website. CBS followed with about 40% of respondents indicating they trust the outlet. About 27% trust USA Today, 31% trust CNN, 22% trust MSNBC and 37% trust The New York Times.

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

The military is starting to take notice: a wide-ranging Army special operations study released in 2023 highlighted barriers to service, from ill-fitting body armor to “benevolent sexism” keeping women on the sidelines.

In September 2023, the congressionally appointed Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services unanimously approved a recommendation, still pending, that the Secretary of Defense should establish a working group focused on women in the special operations community “to provide strategic oversight on and direction of current integration plans and challenges, metrics, lessons learned, and best practices.”

This, the committee wrote in its recommendation, “would enhance recruitment, integration, growth, and retention of women in SOF.”

Women in Army SOF resorted to buying their own armor, study finds

Some women who have served in elite and specialized military roles told Military Times they applauded these efforts. But they also pointed to a factor in the integration of women into special operations that was harder to manage: time.

Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain and co-chair of the board of directors at Service Women’s Action Network, said it was instructive to look at the integration of women into naval fighter aviation roles, a process that began in 1994.

While women still remain dramatically underrepresented in the fighter community, the presence of a female fighter pilot in a ready room isn’t as novel as it once was.

“I think a lot of it is a function of time and acclimation on the part of the men and the women,” Manning said of integrating women into new roles. “The women want to feel welcomed and supported. The men want to feel like, this isn’t somebody that’s slipping in here who really can’t cut the mustard.”

For naval aviation in particular, the process of cultural integration took some 15 years, Manning said.

The 1991 Tailhook scandal, in which dozens of women reported being sexually assaulted by fighter pilots at a professional symposium in Las Vegas, revealed an underlying culture of misogyny and disrespect for women.

Beyond that, though, Manning said she appreciated that developing trust in those entering new roles took time.

“You’ve got to understand it’s going to take time, and you’ve got to let them get whatever beefs they have off their chest,” Manning said of male service members skeptical that women could cut it in new roles. “And you’ve got to show them that not only can women do it, but it’s even better when you do have [them] around … because they bring an extra dimension.”

Because confidence in the abilities of military team members is so critical, Manning emphasized the care special operations leaders needed to take not to lower qualifying standards or to be perceived as doing so.

But, she said, there were also steps the military might consider to lower risk to women attempting to make it in special operations.

Attempting to enter a training pipeline with a high attrition rate ― no woman has made it completely through training to become a Marine Raider or Navy SEAL, for example ― carries the risk of consuming valuable months in service that could be used for career advancement and missing out on opportunities to lead.

Manning didn’t offer a specific proposal about how to incentivize women to attempt special operations, but said it was something leaders should keep in mind.

“If [women] are thinking, maybe I want to do this as a career, it might not be their best choice,” Manning said.

Lisa Jaster, one of the first three women to graduate from Army Ranger School in 2015 and the first female Reserve soldier to do so, told Military Times the physicality needed to fill operator roles takes many women out of the running from the start.

A competitor in Brazilian jiu-jitsu who worked in offshore construction management prior to earning her Ranger tab, Jaster argues that girls and young women are disadvantaged by lower physical standards during physical training in their school years: such as hangs instead of pullups, and pushups from their knees instead of from their toes.

“It’s, ‘Hey, if we’re being trained on one set of standards, and then we’re tested on another set of standards, I’m just not going to line up for the test,’” Jaster said. “Why would I?”

In addition to more equitable and challenging physical training prior to the military, Jaster said she would like to see more effective recruiting among the young women who do have the physical acumen to succeed.

While the military services have said they do recruit among female athletes and sports programs, lots of promising candidates are still slipping through the cracks, she said.

“I actually trained Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with this young 17-year-old high school senior,” Jaster said. “She’s as hard as woodpecker lips; she’s as tough as can be. And nobody’s talking to her about the military.”

Jaster, who was 37 and a mother of two when she graduated Ranger School, said her advice to women considering the challenge of special operations is that they are not alone, or “weird” for their interest in the field.

“You might not find people like you at the corner store,” she said. “But when I went to Ranger School, there were 19 of us there that were all driven. We weren’t competitive; we were sisters in arms. And we would support each other to this day.”

The ban was announced internally at VA medical facilities late last month in a memo from RimaAnn Nelson, the Veterans Health Administration’s top operations official. Employees were instructed to “promptly” remove any depictions of the famous photo and replace it with imagery deemed more appropriate.

“The photograph, which depicts a non-consensual act, is inconsistent with the VA’s no-tolerance policy towards sexual harassment and assault,” the memo stated.

“To foster a more trauma-informed environment that promotes the psychological safety of our employees and the veterans we serve, photographs depicting the ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ should be removed from all Veterans Health Administration facilities.”

The memo garnered public scrutiny after it was posted online by the X account EndWokeness on Tuesday.

EXCLUSIVE:

The Department Of Veterans Affairs just BANNED the V-J Day kiss photo from all department facilities.

"To promote a culture of inclusivity and awareness… your cooperation is vital." pic.twitter.com/MZfNHbpV76

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 5, 2024

Just hours later, McDonough took to social media to reverse the memo.

“This image is not banned from VA facilities — and we will keep it in VA facilities,” said a post from his official X account. Department officials echoed in a separate statement that “VA will NOT be banning this photo from VA facilities.”

Officials said the memo should not have been sent out and was formally rescinded on Tuesday. They did not provide details of whether senior leaders were consulted on the matter ahead of Nelson’s memo.

The photograph was taken by journalist Alfred Eisenstaedt in New York City on Aug. 14, 1945, as Americans celebrated Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II. Other journalists, including military reporters, also captured the moment.

Let me be clear: This image is not banned from VA facilities - and we will keep it in VA facilities. pic.twitter.com/dYSikLxHAJ

— Secretary Denis McDonough (@SecVetAffairs) March 5, 2024

The shot shows a U.S. sailor grabbing and kissing a woman he did not know amid a joyous, party atmosphere in Times Square. The identities of the individuals in the photo have been disputed over the years.

In her memo, Nelson noted that use of the photo in VA facilities “was initially intended to celebrate and commemorate the end of World War II and the triumphant return of American soldiers. However, perspectives on historical events and their representations evolve.”

Nelson wrote that the non-consensual nature of the kiss and “debates on consent and the appropriateness of celebrating such images” led to the decision. Senior leaders did not provide an explanation for the reversal.

VA officials could not provide details on how many facilities are currently displaying the photo and whether veterans have complained about use of the image.

McDonough has made veterans outreach and inclusion key priorities for the department over the last three years, including rewriting the VA motto with gender-neutral language.

But exactly what that will mean for sailors and Marines going forward remains unclear.

While the study’s findings have not been disclosed, court filings make clear that the department is now mulling changes to unspecified aspects of its policies governing when sailors and Marines with religious or medical accommodations may wear beards.

Department officials haven’t provided an update on the beard study ― which Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro initiated in November 2021 ― for months. As recently as December 2023, Del Toro’s office did not respond to emails from Navy Times seeking an update on the study’s status.

But filings in a lawsuit about beard accommodations for Marines of the Sikh faith show the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego completed the study and sent it to Del Toro by June 2023.

Now, the department is examining whether changes to its beard policies would be “operationally supportable and prudent,” according to the court filing.

In 1st, Sikh man graduates from Marine boot camp with turban, beard

Both the Navy and the Marine Corps generally don’t allow facial hair other than mustaches, but they allow beards for religious reasons or for service members with medical conditions like razor bumps.

The lawsuit in which the information about the beard study recently popped up was filed in April 2022 by Sikh men who wish to keep their articles of faith, including beards, while serving in various locations where the Marine Corps had banned beards even for religious reasons.

In the first phase of the litigation, now-Lance Cpl. Jaskirat Singh successfully sought the right to go through boot camp with an unshorn beard and a turban.

Now, the lance corporal and Capt. Sukhbir Singh Toor are seeking to lift the Marine Corps’ restrictions on deploying to combat zones — where Marines may have to use gas masks — while keeping their beards, according to the January filing. The Corps initially told Toor he couldn’t wear a beard while in ceremonial roles but dropped that restriction in January 2022, according to the plaintiff’s April 2022 complaint.

Navy leaders have in the past expressed concerns about beards hampering service members’ ability to get proper seals on gas masks.

But Singh said in August 2023 that he kept his gas mask sealed in the tear gas chamber at boot camp without difficulty. Several sailors with beards previously told Navy Times they haven’t had any issues with gas masks, either.

Some Black sailors have voiced frustration about being alienated for needing no-shave exemptions for their razor bumps, a skin condition that predominantly affects Black men.

Del Toro directed the now-completed study examining the impact of facial hair on the functioning of gas masks as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative.

Representatives for the defendants in the lawsuit — the Defense Department, the Department of the Navy and their senior leaders — sent a copy of the report on the beard study to the plaintiffs in November 2023, according to the January filing.

The Sikh Coalition, which represents the plaintiffs, said it couldn’t release the report to Marine Corps Times, citing a protective order governing sensitive or classified documents.

Terrence Clark, a spokesman for the Justice Department, which represents the military, confirmed that both parties had requested a protective order for some of the documents in the case but said he couldn’t share anything further.

A Navy spokesman on Monday declined to provide comment or updates about beard policies in the Department of the Navy, citing ongoing litigation.

The court filing doesn’t spell out the contents of the report. But it indicates the Department of the Navy, which encompasses both the Navy and the Marine Corps, is weighing changes to its beard policies now that the report is complete.

In December 2023, after reviewing the report and getting input from the assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, Del Toro issued a memorandum directing a look into the report’s implications.

Del Toro told the assistant secretary of the Navy for manpower and reserve affairs to work with the Navy and Marine Corps on “an immediate assessment of the report’s impact as applied to religious accommodation and medical waiver policies both at sea and ashore,” according to the court filing.

This assessment will include “whether bringing parity to the Department’s policies for accommodating beards is operationally supportable and prudent,” the filing said.

The filing didn’t specify what aspects of the two naval services’ policies might be brought in alignment with each other.

The Navy doesn’t allow religious accommodations for beards aboard ships but allows them with some limitations on shore duty. The Marine Corps allows accommodations for beards except in combat zones, according to Giselle Klapper, the Sikh Coalition’s interim legal director.

There are also differences in the rules for medical accommodations.

Only the Marine Corps says the facial hair must be limited to the specific areas affected by the severe razor bumps, according to the services’ official policies, provided on Monday by a Navy spokesman. Only the Navy expressly allows service members with accommodations to shape their beards by clipping or trimming the edges.

The Marine Corps, unlike the Navy, can authorize some permanent no-shave accommodations.

Del Toro has tasked his department’s assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment with making sure that “any actions” the department might implement “maintain the integrity of regulatory safety compliance,” before those actions get implemented, according to the court filing.

That assistant secretary must conduct a department-wide review of policy to make sure it complies with “respiratory protection regulatory requirements.”

Both assistant secretaries have until mid-June to inform Del Toro of “actions, if any, taken or proposed to be taken in the future.”

Although the Navy and the Marine Corps are under the same department, they have distinct guidelines governing uniforms and grooming. The Corps tends to have more rigid uniform rules than the other services, including the Navy.

For instance, male sailors can grow their hair longer than male Marines, who must trim their hair down to the skin right above their ears.

Earlier in February, when the Navy allowed sailors to start resting their hands in their pockets, the Marine Corps did not follow suit.